1. Literacy Coordinator Day Thursday 11th August Loddon Mallee Region
Literacy and Numeracy Week runs from 29 August – 4 September with the theme of ‘The Fundamentals are Fun!’
Literacy and Numeracy Week website:
The revised Literacy and Numeracy 18 Month  Strategy documents.

2. Speaking and Listening in the Classroom
P-12 – Session 1 Loddon Mallee Region
Acknowledgements to Simone Fraser (Speech therapist at Bendigo and MEC)
When we talk about oral language across the classroom we are not talking about teaching children to speak but to improve their ability to talk and communicate more effectively – How can we help our children develop oral proficiency? What do we need to do as teachers to facilitate this?
Throughout life oral language skills remain essential for engagement in dialogue and for the communication of ideas

3. Professional learning to help teachers of middle years students to understand the central role of oral language in supporting students learning.
Precision – we have a large range of abilities in reading and writing – yet students are marked very similar to where they should be at.

4. Overview of the knowledge we need as professionals.
Knowledge of Oral Language Learning
Knowledge of the Learner
Speaking and Listening in the Classroom
Partnerships
Handout 1 – Key Vocabulary
01 - Key Vocabulary.doc

5. Knowledge of Oral Language Learning
Session 1
Knowledge of Oral Language Learning
Oral language learning supports learning across
the curriculum
Speaking and listening involves thinking, knowledge and skills
Proficiency in oral language provides children with a vital tool for thought. Without fluent and structured oral language, children will find it very difficult to think. Bruner 1983

6. Knowledge of Oral Language Learning Speech and Language
Speech = how you say/pronounce the sounds in words with your tongue, lips and teeth
“The Sounds of Speech- the ages and stages of children’s speech”, Speech Pathology Australia handout
Handout 2: _The_Sound_of_Speech.pdf
Language = how you understand/say a series of words in a sentence to tell an idea
“Learning to speak and listen- what to expect in the first five years”, Speech Pathology Australia handout
Handout 3: _Learning_to_speak_and_listen.pdf
Oral language acquisition is a natural process for children – the ability to speak grows with age, but it does not mean that such growth will automatically lead to perfection. To speak in more effective ways requires particular attention and constant practice.
Language is code made up of rules that include what words mean, how to make words, how to put them together, and what word combinations are best in what situations. Speech is the oral form of language.”
There is a normal pattern of speech sound development.
For example- by the age of 4 most children can say the /k/ in ‘cow’ and the ‘g’ in ‘goat’. If a child is 4 or older, and they can’t say this sound, they may be saying “tow” for ‘cow’, “doat” for ‘goat’. Delayed speech sounds can lead to difficulties learning phonological awareness skills which are important for learning to read and spell.
Adults should be able to understand a 4 year old’s speech.

7. Knowledge of Oral Language Learning Why is Oral Language Important?
Oral language underpins literacy development
Making meaning in speaking, listening, reading and writing depends on underlying oral language abilities
Oral language is the primary mode of learning in the classroom
Oral language involves thinking, knowledge and skills
Oral language is for social interaction and belonging to social groups
We know that many of the children in our area come from language poor families- that is they do not have rich language experiences and may not have been to the city, to the zoo, to a farm, to the library, to the ocean, to the snow, or explored environments outside of where they live. Of course we can’t experience everything, but if you have talked about things that you see, heard or touched then you have the vocabulary at your fingertips and you have practiced hearing and saying sentences about these experiences. This is one of the reasons books are powerful tools for promoting oral language. You can generate discussion, ask questions, make predictions, infer meanings for actions and facial expressions. You can sequence ideas, retell parts of the story etc. All these experiences are rich in oral language and this makes the transition to literacy that little bit easier.
There is no flag on your head if you have poor oral language- it’s not like a physical difficulty that you can see

8. Oral language is not merely a language issue but it is also an intellectual issue. Oral language provides a foundation for the development of all other language skills. It is through speech children learn to organise their thinking and focus their ideas (Lyle 1993)

9. Knowledge of Oral Language Learning What is Oral Language?
Receptive/Listening
Understanding what is said to us
Handout 4: receptive-language-jul08.pdf
Expressive/Speaking
The words we use while speaking
Handout 5: expressive-language-jul08.pdf
Social Communication
The choices that we make about the appropriate use of oral language: when to speak, which words to use, how to say them
Handout 6: pragmatics-jul08.pdf
Activity: Listening Activity
Language can be broken into three different areas
Receptive language/understanding of words and sentences (e.g. If an adult gives an instruction: “get your lunch out of your bag then sit on the floor”; or someone asks a question “what did the clown do at the circus?”- then the child uses their receptive language skills to understand the message)
Expressive language/speaking and using language (e.g. if a child says “the mouses ranned away from the cat” or “where’s my Cars dvd?” then they are using their expressive language to tell an idea or ask a question)
Pragmatic language/social use of language (e.g. knowing how to use language to say ‘hello’, appropriate ways to ask to join in a game, knowing how to use and understand facial expressions, body language and eye contact appropriately)
- Leading to problems with written language. What I think I can say, what I say can be written, what is written can be read.
Children’s speaking and listening skills lead the way for their reading and writing skills, and together these language skills are the primary tools of the mind for all future learning. Roskos, Tabors, & Lenhart, 2005,
Why do students need to learn how to Listen?
Reading comprehension is strongly related to oral language comprehension. Recent brain research has revealed an important finding: when individuals are engaged in active, strategic listening they use the same executive functions in the brain that are engaged during active, strategic reading (Osaka et al., 2004; Schumacher et al., 1996). This finding confirms an important relationship: the same strategies and skills that allow a listener to make sense of oral language—predicting, monitoring, connecting to background knowledge and summarizing—allow a reader to make sense of written language.
Listening comprehension is critical to reading comprehension because listening and reading require the same strategies. Students who do not know how to listen carefully and strategically also will not know how to read carefully and strategically.
Before learning to use reading strategies, students need to practise through oral strategies.
For example, the student listens to a text and
visualises part of it, draws pictures, acts out or paraphrases what was heard
predicts what may happen next or earlier, suggests the general context
uses context and syntax to suggest meanings of words, test possible synonyms
recognises miscues or errors in the text
re-tells the story, suggests a title, describes the theme, the sequence of ideas in the story
describes the actions used while listening and modifys them  (Munro, 2005)

10. By the time students start school they
Knowledge of Oral Language Learning Developing Knowledge of Oral Language
By the time students start school they
Have learned the meanings of many words
Use their understanding of how words are used together to make meaningful sentences
Know that intonation and body language add meaning to the message
Students need time & a great deal of engagement in both S&L to develop their knowledge of how oral language works. This knowledge is built through using oral language every day and also through explicit instruction.
Proficiency in oral language provides children with a vital tool for thought. Without fluent and structured oral language, children will find it very difficult to think. Brunner 1983

11. Children in kindergarten will learn up to __ new words per day to as many as _____ words in total by age 6. By Year 1 children are capable of understanding up to approx ______ words.
Ref p37 LEP 9
14 000
Children in kindergarten will learn up to 9 new words per day to as many as 14,000 words in total by age 6. By Year 1 children are capable of understanding up to approx 20,000 words. P 37 LEP
20 000

12. Betty Hart & Todd Risley, 1995
Betty Hart & Todd Risley, 1995, The link b/n low SES & vocab devt is further exemplified thru research which indicates by age 4: chn of prof parents - 35 million words, working class parents -26 million, welfare parents - 13 million
A good early start in verbal knowledge and world knowledge leads children to accrue still more knowledge each subsequent year, as in an interest-bearing bank account.
(pp )

14. Snow, Burns & Griffith (1998) What is most striking about the results of preceding studies is the power of early pre-school lang to predict reading 3-5 years later.
Early Language and Reading Comprehension
It is in early language learning that the Matthew effect begins to take hold. Those who know many words and who possess the background knowledge to comprehend what they mean will learn more words and world knowledge later on, while those who know few words in early grades fall further and further behind in later grades.
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In education the term Matthew effect has been adopted by Keith Stanovich from sociology, a psychologist who has done extensive research on reading and language disabilities. Stanovich used the term to describe a phenomenon that has been observed in research on how new readers acquire the skills to read: early success in acquiring reading skills usually leads to later successes in reading as the learner grows, while failing to learn to read before the third or fourth year of schooling may be indicative of life-long problems in learning new skills. This is because children who fall behind in reading, read less, increasing the gap between them and their peers. Later, when students need to "read to learn" (where before they were learning to read) their reading difficulty creates difficulty in most other subjects. In this way they fall further and further behind in school, dropping out at a much higher rate than their peers.
Stanovitch
Hirsch (2006), pp

15. Processing skills include Attending Anticipating
Knowledge of Oral Language Learning Developing Oral Language Strategies
Processing skills include
Attending
Anticipating
Checking and confirming
Comprehension strategies are similar for oral language and reading and include
Making connections
Predicting
Summarising etc
Oral language competence involves fluency, clarity and sensitivity (Holbrook 1983)
P 18 Learning Through Talk. 1-3 NZ

16. Knowledge of Oral Language Learning Developing Oral Language Awareness
Metacognition Students need to learn how to apply and control their knowledge and strategies both in their use of oral language and their learning for example: Processing skills: During formal talk using eye contact, adapting volume to situation, poise/body language in different situations. Comprehension: Listen to gain information or listening critically to a variety of speakers. What impact does this have for us as teachers? What are implications for our multicultural society? Turn and talk.
Learners develop extensive understandings about language and they already use many S&L strategies but may not be able to articulate these.
When teachers provide an environment in which thinking is made explicit through planned tasks & conversations about texts of all kinds, students can develop their metalanguage awareness.
Students who speak more than one language are likely to have well developed metalinguistic awareness (of the structure and grammar of language rather than vocab) because they are making decisions about their language choices all the time
Make links to Persuasive Writing... What impact does this have for us as teachers?

17. When we think about Oral Language we need to understand the following.
Definitions
 Phonemes: are the individual sounds each letter of the alphabet makes.
 Phonics: is the relationship between letters and sounds in written word form.
 Phonemic awareness is having an understanding that each word is made up of a series of phonemes or sounds.
Phonological awareness is the ability to tune into the sound system of our language.
For further information see

18. Knowledge of Oral Language Learning What is Phonological Awareness?
Phonological awareness is the ability to ‘tune into’ the
sound system of language
Phonological awareness includes:
Word awareness
Identifying syllables
Hearing and saying rhyming words
Identifying individual sounds in words
Blending sounds and segmenting sounds
A child’s level of Phonological Awareness is an
important predictor of their later reading
development (Love & Reilly)
PA examples:
Syllables- croc-o-dile
Rhyme- does cat and hat rhyme? What rhymes with tree, bee…
ID sounds- ‘fish’ start with /f/, ‘cap’ ends in /p/, ‘crab’ starts with a /k/ not a ‘cr’ which is two sounds, ‘shark’ starts with /sh/
Blending- /m/ /oo/ /n/ says the words ‘moon’,
Segmenting- ‘light’ has the sounds /l/ /igh/ /t/, ‘spot’ has the sounds /s/ /p/ /o/ /t/
If children do not have strong PA skills, they are unlikely to learn the mappings of letter-sound patterns and will find it difficult to tackle the reading or spelling of unfamiliar words.
Students who have poor phonological awareness skills may:
- Confuse similar sounding words eg. comb/cone, letter/ladder
- Have difficulty saying multisyllabic words
e.g. besketti for spaghetti, ambliance for ambulance
- Have difficulty sequencing the sounds in the correct order when saying words
eg. arks for ask, pacific for specific
- Have difficulty spelling or reading unfamiliar words

19. Knowledge of Oral Language Learning Developing Phonological Awareness
“The ability to hear sounds within words is essential to
reading and writing successfully.”
NZ Ministry of Education. Sound Sense
The development of phonological awareness underpins
the ability to decode and encode print.
Foundation_to_year_10_curriculum.pdf – see page 22
Handout 7: vels speaking and listening.rtf
How is this learned or acquired?
What are the implications for our ELL students?
Phonological awareness: an awareness and understanding of the sound system of language. Eg. An awareness that words are made up of a combination of sounds.
Phonemic awareness:

20. References Victorian Essential Learning Standards
Learning Through Talk. Ministry of education New Zealand
Language Support program. DEECD
Love & Reilly newsletters
Lyn Watts Only The Brave Should Teach
Australian Curriculum. DRAFT