• Offer specific praise e.g. “That was a really good sentence. You remembered to use the ‘is’ word”. General comments like “Clever boy” do not help the child to become aware of what he/she did well.
• Try to avoid anticipating or completing your child’s sentences, which limits his/her opportunity to express his/her self and reduces self-esteem.
• Discourage others from interrupting whilst your child is speaking.
• Give your child time to respond – count to 6 in your head after asking a question to give them this ‘thinking time’

Building Sentences

Children of this age will begin joining 2 words together e.g., more juice, mummy work, eat banana.

Note: A child needs to learn around 50 words before they can start joining words.

Activity sheet

Communication Station Video: Let’s get moving – action words

Building Sentences

Children of this age progress to joining 3-4 words together in a sentence. At this age, it is common for children to:

• start to use past tense e.g. kicked, clapped.
• begin to mark possession e.g. girl’s hat, dog’s tail.
• use regular plurals e.g. cats, dogs, socks.
• miss out function words such as ‘the’ and ‘is’.

Activity sheet

Communication Station Video: Saying simple sentences

Building Sentences

Children of this age are producing longer sentences by putting lots of words together and may use joining words such as ‘and’ & ‘because’. They may also:

• use auxiliary verbs (is, was, has) i.e. “the man is eating”
• use determiners e.g. “the man is kicking the ball”.
• increasingly use past tense and 3rd person singular e.g. he drinks, she eats.
• overgeneralise irregular verb endings e.g. “throwed” (instead of ‘threw’).

Activity sheet

Pip Action Pictures

Monkey Action Pictures

Building Sentences

Your child will be able to:

• Link lots of words together and may use joining words such as ‘and’
• Ask lots of questions e.g. Why? What? Where?
• Use the grammatical words (e.g. is, was, has, the, a) i.e. “the man is eating” instead of “man eating”
• Increased use of verb tenses e.g. he drinks, she eats. S/he may make mistakes such as saying ‘throwed’ instead of ‘threw’, ‘runned’ instead of ‘ran’
• Use pronouns – his/hers, they/theirs, him/her, ours, himself/herself/yourself/ ourselves

Activity sheet

Building Sentences

Your child is able to:

• Use well formed sentences with more details
• Use some irregular past tense e.g. “I drank all my milk”, “She took my teddy” but may still make some errors
• Start to use words: ‘if’, ‘because’, ‘so’, ‘could
• Show that they can use language to reason and persuade e.g. “Can I go outside because it’s stopped raining?”

Activity sheet

Building Sentences

Your child will:

• Ask lots of questions to find out specific information including ‘how’ and ‘why’ e.g. “How do we know burglars can’t get in?”
• Use descriptive language to give more specific information in sentences e.g. “Suddenly, he saw a huge hairy creature”
• Use more complicated grammar and different ways to join phrases to help explain or justify an event e.g. “It was scary because even the man with the dog looked worried, so we decided to get out of there”

Activity sheet

Building Sentences

Your child will:

• Use a wide range of regular and unusual word endings, with few errors being made e.g. Fought, fell, brought, geese, fish
• Use long and complex sentence structures and more complex joining words to make language flow e.g. ‘Meanwhile’, ‘therefore’ or ‘yet’
• Use complex grammar and sentences effectively to communicate in different ways to clarify, summarise, explain choices and plan
• Uses language to reason and persuade
• Explain some rules of grammar and know when a sentence is not grammatically correct
• Sentences average about 7-10 words –longer in stories than in conversation

Ask lots of questions e.g. Why? What? Where?

Activity sheet

Building Sentences

Your child will:

• Uses a range of connectives in speech and writing
• Average length of spoken sentences 7-11+ words

Activity sheet

Building Sentences Secondary Self-help Strategies

Building Sentences

Your child will:

• Uses a wider range of connectives in speech and writing e.g. even though, however, provided that, similarly
• Average length of spoken sentences 7-13+ words

Activity sheet

Building Sentences Secondary Self-help Strategies