In 2022 I was fortunate to participate in oral language workshops run by the Speech Language Therapists team Korero Manaiakalani. The philosophy behind the workshop was to increase oral language skills to "impact wellbeing, participation, learning and achievement."
The importance of oral language as the foundation to help children become successful readers and good communicators is again the focus of my 2023 Inquiry. This year I was looking for a method of assessment which could measure, and help me understand my learners strengths and weaknesses in oral language. When discussing this in our initial Inquiry group, Deb Shirley mentioned the work she had done the in her 2022 MIT study, which was available for teachers to use. Her site contains assessment tools which can be downloaded and adapted to our own settings where needed. Deb has also suggested various resources and ideas that she has used in her classroom.
This was exactly what I was looking for to be able to gather data on strengths and weaknesses in children's oral language skills and to find strategies to overcome any weaknesses. I will use Deb Shirley's assessment sheet ( see "Tuning into Oral Language") to gather data and record observations. It is hoped to be able to repeat these observations to record progress over time and target specific areas if help is needed.
Deb has four areas of observation.
- Observations are made of formal language used during learning and informal language used during play.
- Grammar and articulation (where so many of our children have difficulty with English grammatical structure.)
- Vocabulary and expressive language (using simple pictures and recording answers)
- Sequencing and making meaning (talking about pictures and sequencing an event)
Thanks to Deb for making such a valuable resource available for others to use.
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