For elementary school students (5-10 years old), what are some developmentally appropriate practices to promote language development?

1. At this age, language development in children will be the teacher's most important goal. 2. Active learning both whole-group and small-group activities, together with writing about the topics they're learning are essential. 3. Sensitivity to gender and cultural issues has to be taken into consideration. For example, boys' language skills develop less rapidly than girls', and some cultural minorities may not be comfortable interacting with adults as conversation partners (Berk, 2013). 4. Questioning is one of the most powerful tools that you can have for promoting language development. It not only provides students with access to advanced vocabulary and modeled correct sentence constructions, but it also provides them with opportunities to practice their own developing language skills. 5. Young students' working memories are still developing, which limits their ability to understand complex directions (Jack, Simcock, & Hayne, 2012). Simplifying directions is important to these students.