During the second half of this term, we have continued to use our Yvette Theodoresen’s PODD Focus Sheets as a support to target specific areas of language in our PODD books.  Over the last month we have looked at

Commenting and Expressing opinions

When commenting and expressing opinions we use the “I think it’s” branch starter in our PODD books. We use "I think it's" to teach students to comment and express an opinion in lots of situations across the day such as: Commenting on a book or activity, commenting on a funny movie or something that has happened in the classroom, comment on their artwork or an assembly item.   Teaching "I think it's" has given our students the power and skills to comment on things that are happening around them.  It's great to see personalities and a sense of humour shining through in our students where we may have previously missed it.

We quite often understand our students in our class when they have a problem, and we maybe just verbalise what we can see is wrong (EG. I can see you've fell over and cut your leg).  By modelling this on the PODD book, it shows the students how they could express themselves when something is wrong and gives them the skills to tell someone across multiple settings with different people.  

To make a request we use the “I want” branch starter in the PODD book. Using this branch starter we can model language in a number of situations throughout the day to ask to do different activities, to go outside or to make something.