So again, as with math, as parents we find ourselves working to enrich the language arts outside of the classroom as well as advocating for appropriate education in the classroom.
Discuss books. This seems like a basic one. But if you read a book together and discuss it, consider how much more a child can get from the book. I actually encourage rereading books over reading new stuff at times, because I know there's often more that can be picked up from reading it a second time. Just think of all the foreshadowing in Harry Potter books for instance. On a second or third reading, my kids have picked up a lot of the story telling tools the JK Rowling uses, and through discussion, we've given them names.
Use the library. Get to know the children’s librarian. We have a rather large library system with multiple children’s librarians. At particularly difficult stages in my kids' reading development, we'll kept asking the same questions to different librarians until we found a favorite. We then made our library time consistent with that librarian's work schedule. The first time we hit on this with my daughter, it became a beautiful relationship, as she would talk to my daughter about books they’d enjoyed, and she’d recommend new books based on the discussion. It was a sad day when we showed up one Saturday to learn it was our librarian’s last day – she’d finished her degree and taken a full time position at another library. She had set aside 20 books for my daughter that she just knew that she would love.
When we’re between fantastic relationships with children’s librarians, we tend to scan for Newbery Award books for ideas.
Book club. Consider forming a book club for similar kids. The kids don’t all have to be at the same reading level. Indeed, I’ve found that for both my kids, reading levels stopped being very meaningful once they hit a 3rd or 4th grade level. Instead, it’s more about what they get from the book, which can include everything from the need to infer motivation of characters to learning about other cultures and time periods through both fiction and non-fiction. We’ve done a few summer book clubs, where meetings are centered on pizza and ice cream, and a few minutes discussing the book. I’ve found that a lot my role in the discussion is to guide them on how to discuss a book and how to listen to one another.
Younger kids might work better with a planned discussion (google the name of the book + “book club discussion”). I’ve found that older kids do well with an appointed leader, but with each child in the group emailing a question or topic to the leader before the meeting. This gets everyone thinking about it before the meeting and lets the leader focus on how to lead the group instead of leading while devising the discussion.
Junior Great Books and Classics Club are great programs. A parent at our elementary school started a K-3 JGB and a 4-5 CK program during lunch through the winter. The program is run by parent volunteers, and we’ve got a wiki set up to make it really easy for the volunteers. I’m leading a third grade group this year, and the stories and program are excellent. A group of third graders recognized symbolism in a story and were able to discuss its meaning and use. This is high quality enrichment.
Learn a foreign language. Again, keeping the goal in mind of not making things significantly worse for meeting the child’s needs at school, pick languages not offered at school.
Write a book! Some of these have been (self) published, which giv
Play with language. Learn Opish or Pig Latin or something similar. Play with “hink pinks” and make new ones, or have the dinner table discussion follow the alphabet game (have a conversation where each statement must start with the next letter of the alphabet). Make up analogies for each other. We’ve spent whole discussions coming up with homophones and homonyms. We talk about root words, and we’ve watched a lot of the BBC's The Story of English.
We’ve loved Apples to Apples (I’m not sure if it’s typical for all kids or for my kids who are gifted with language, but we’ve never had a need for the more junior levels of A2A), Password, Catchphrase, and similar games. (I also hear other families like various spelling games like Scrabble, Bananagrams, Boggle, and the like, but <ahem> not for this family’s quirky needs).