Many educationalists believe there is a high correlation between oral language proficiency and success in reading. Good communication skills give a child confidence and a sense of well being in all aspects of their lives.
So where does this leave the children who come to school with widely differing oral language capability? These children often have a relatively small vocabulary of a mixture of English, their mother tongue and gestures? How can we mitigate these differences in the classroom setting and make a difference to children's lives?
I am participating in an oral language workshop run by the Speech Language Therapists team Korero Manaiakalani. The philosophy behind the workshops is -
"Increasing oral language skills for our Tamariki Mokopuna through a strength based approach to collectively impact wellbeing, participation, learning and achievement in our Kahui Ako."
The action plan from our first session was to attempt to put in place the "Strive for Five" conversation experience with two children in our class. "Strive for Five" is to have a purposeful conversation with a child where you have five or more exchanges. During the exchange, you give children two or three opportunities to hear new words in a meaningful context, you ask at least one open ended question and you give a validating response.
By encouraging more talking and drawing out the conversation, a child will hear
- more quality vocabulary
- grammatically correct sentences
- be given a model of how to ask and answer questions
- and children learn that their thoughts and ideas are of interest to others. This encourages them to communicate more which in turn strengthens their oral language even more.
This sounds like a very simple and effective way of helping our children but it is something that needs to be planned for, purposefully done and practised. I have chosen two children with whom I am actively trying to use the "Strive for Five" technique. This does not mean I do not use it with the whole class. One is a lot more conscious of how you engage in conversation with all of the children.
I have been using this technique for a few days. Sometimes a topic of conversation can arise without planning. You would normally gift the child words in an ordinary conversation but now you are conscious are your questions open ended or going to close the conversation? Can you add a personal comment to illicit further conversation? Do you know something about what the child has commented on? Can you add to the conversation with some factual information? All of this takes time to think through. A teacher will often do some of these actions without thought. You immediately gift this child with words he or she needs. It is only later that you think - "I could have asked ... or I could have told the child about ..." all things that would have added to the conversation.
What happens when a child rejects your invitation to converse and does not engage with you? What happens when a child does not have the language to begin a simple conversation but relies heavily on gestures to make his wants known? I am finding in these situations you gift a lot of words and find a way to kindly insert the words into the conversations. Sometimes there is a repetition of what you offer and there is a reward of a shy smile. Using photos of the children doing daily activities that have been posted on the class blog has been a great way to start and attempt a "Strive for Five" conversation. Another time that has been successful is to ask to join in a game or activity they are playing.
At present I am having to find the time to have a purposeful conversation and planning it in the day so that I can reflect back on it and say perhaps I need to practise this aspect more or I enjoyed practising the questions with that conversation. Using "Strive for Five" in the classroom looks to be a very practical way of helping children gain a stronger oral language.
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