“Talk is how education happens” (Gibbons, 2015, p. 94). If we want our students to be lifelong learners and readers, we must let conversation flow in our classrooms. Language, specifically oral language, is the vehicle for learning. It is where learning of all content areas starts. Students need chances to talk about what they are learning.
To support students’ language development, a classroom should be a language rich environment. It should be a place where students are encouraged to converse with each other and their teacher. Just as toddlers are constantly asking “why” questions, we need to turn the tables on our students and ask them “why” as often as possible (Wildcatter Productions, 2009).
How to Prepare a Language Rich Classroom
A rich oral environment can be designed by the way interaction occurs between the students in the classroom. A classroom should be divided into language experiences, so that students are actually communicating with peers. This can look like students arranged in table groups, pretend play centers, turn and talk opportunities, and instructional rotations (group work). Students need to be encouraged to describe events and retell stories; therefore, incorporating a daily read aloud is a recommended strategy in creating a language rich classroom. Modeling the use of new words, discussing word meanings, and asking open ended questions are all techniques to increase oral language among students (Wildcatter Productions, 2009). Oral language development can be made fun through the use of synonym games, word play, and storytelling.
Impacts of Adult-Child Interactions
Students should be treated as worthy conversational partners by their teachers (Gibbons, 2015). Students should feel comfortable taking risks with language and voicing their thoughts and opinions. A teacher can build up students’ confidences when they are speaking by affirming that what is being said is understood and to give opportunities to extend their contributions with positive evaluation and interaction.
When working with young students or English language learners, teachers should be mindful of slowing down the dialogue. This includes increasing wait time when students are mentally preparing a response and allowing the students the chance to self correct before rewording what they say. “The pace of the conversation allows sufficient time for learners to think about what they are going to say” (Gibbons, 2015, p. 41).
These teacher-student interactions not only build up students' language development and confidence, but also serve a purpose for later word and print awareness. “Spoken language and written language are better understood as a continuum rather than as two discrete forms of language” (Gibbons, 2015, p. 79). With speaking and writing being two of the four language domains, it makes sense that when speaking and writing are working together, it will lead to stronger reading as well. If students are frequently interacting with language with their teachers, they will become more familiar with the phonemes, graphemes, and morphemes that make up our language. With a solid foundation of letter-sound correspondence and word meanings, a student is well prepared to read, write, and comprehend text. The students who do not interact in conversation with adults are the students we see struggling to write reflections of what they are learning or express themselves orally.
Overall, when a child and the teacher are interacting verbally, it opens a two way street for dialogue and meaningful communication.
Scaffolding Language in the Classroom
Scaffolding simply means to build on what a student can already do or already knows (Wildcatter Productions, 2009). Psychologist, Lev Vygotsky, introduced the idea of the zone of proximal development. This is the distance, or cognitive gap, between what a child can do on his/her own and what the child can do with assistance (Gibbons, 2015). This is exactly the idea of scaffolding, where a teacher meets a student where he/she is at and gives him/her the needed help to become individually successful at the task. Scaffolding is not just holding a student’s hand or giving help one time. It is a special kind of assistance that moves the learner from dependent to independent learning. Scaffolding “is future-oriented and aimed at increasing a learner’s autonomy” (Gibbons, 2015, p. 16).
Best practice shows that the maximum opportunity for learning happens when students are immersed in a high-challenge, high-support classroom, meaning activities involve higher order thinking, with an increased amount of scaffolding given by the teacher. This is where students are engaged in learning in their zone of proximal development (Gibbons, 2015). If a teacher is designing her classroom around conversational experiences and open dialogue, then she is, in fact, scaffolding the oral language development of her students.
Classroom Activities for Developing Oral Language Skills
Well designed group work is one of the easiest ways to incorporate a language-rich environment. This type of experience cannot be duplicated through whole class work and instruction (Gibbons, 2015). These group activities should be set up with clear instructions and a clear outcome, be supplied with examples of useful group work language, and require - not just encourage - talk.
While many oral language activities can be modified and implemented across an array of grade levels and content areas, the expectations of oral language development starts at the beginning, in PreK classrooms. I can think of no better place for these skills to take off. After all, what four and five year old children do not like to talk and share their ideas?
Donut Circles are an easy, but coordinated way to implement peer to peer conversations. Children sit in two circles. The outer circle faces inward, and the inner circle faces outward. This design allows each student to be facing a classmate from the other circle. Students are given the chance to talk in pairs for a minute or two about a teacher chosen topic. After both students have had a turn, one of the circles moves clockwise (or counterclockwise) to face a new person, while the other circle stands still. Now, everyone is across from a new partner. The communication process is repeated as many times as the teacher feels necessary. One benefit from the Donut Circle strategy is the use of peer scaffolding. Students are able to glean oral language skills from their classmates. Since they are frequently changing with whom they are interacting, they have the opportunity to hear correct syntax, semantics, and grammar, as well as have the chance to respond to more complex and thoughtful questions (Gibbons, 2015).
Other activities that would improve young learners’ language skills include I’m Thinking Of… where students use picture cards and the sentence stem “I’m thinking of…” to describe the object on the picture card. The student who guesses correctly is the next to draw a card and describe. Describe and Draw has children working in pairs, each with a blank sheet of paper. The first student describes (using position words) what he is drawing. The second student reproduces the drawing according to the first student’s description. What Did You See is an excellent resource for practicing vocabulary. With a small group of students, the teacher can have a selection of objects or pictures of objects that are related to a topic of study. After children have examined the objects, the teacher should cover them and see how many objects the students can recall (Gibbons, 2015).
Making Time to Talk
Oral language is, in fact, the vehicle that drives all other learning. In order to become a fluent communicator, reader, writer, and thinker, oral language skills must be developed as an intentional part of the school day for young learners. As often as we ask our students to work quietly, we must also have time when we ask them to TALK!
References
Gibbons, P. (2015). Scaffolding language, Scaffolding Learning: Teaching English language
learners in the mainstream classroom (Second). Heinemann.
Wildcatter Productions. (2009). Scaffolding Language Development. YouTube. LBCC Learning
Innovation Center. Retrieved October 20, 2022, from
https://www.youtue.com/watch?v=gLXxcspCeK8&t=3s.
