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Progressing from single words to full sentences is essential for learners’ confidence and access to the curriculum. The first goal is to build vocabulary and meaning. Start with key vocabulary using visuals, repetition, and word banks. Next, support learners with sentence stems and substitution tables to build phrases and gradually progress to expanding sentences with adjectives and conjunctions. You can also help to reduce cognitive load by using consistent, visual supports, limiting choices, and repeating model sentences so learners can focus on meaning rather than decoding complex language.
Tip or Idea: To build confidence for SEND and early EAL learners, encourage them to ‘say it first, write it after’. This might be through role play, talk partners, listen and repeat activities, or recording their own speech on a device.
Learning Village resource: Use our Scaffolding a Literacy Lesson resource to support learners from word to sentence level. Why not ask your learners to role play the conversations shown in Step 5 for a fun spoken activity?
During the school summer holidays pupils may lack opportunities to practise and revisit skills they have been learning in class. Research indicates that students can lose between one to three months of learning during their extended break! Considering ways to keep learners engaged throughout the summer is an important step in reducing lost learning. This is especially important for students with additional needs who may face challenges with learning retention, retrieval, and recall.
Graphic organisers can be a powerful tool for learners with dyslexia. They enable learners to plan and structure their ideas in a visual and accessible way. Focusing on getting ideas organised before navigating challenges with grammar and spelling can be a positive approach. The visual scaffold reduces working memory strain by keeping ideas clearly organised and structured. This allows more cognitive space for sentence construction and spelling, which might be challenging.
Understanding the needs of your learners is essential. Learners who use English as an additional language may also have additional learning needs, and sometimes separating language needs from learning needs can be challenging. Assessment results and classroom work offer some insight; however, taking the time to carefully observe your learners’ behaviours can provide a deeper appreciation of their needs. This can help you consider necessary adjustments or interventions, or support further assessments of specific SEND needs.