Crocodiles, iPads & Buffalo Wranglers ………………………. Diary of an Oral Language Coach

Teaching indigenous children is one of the greatest gifts of being a teacher in the remote parts of Australia’s Top End.

Indigenous children often come from a cultural background based on an oral tradition, rather than a written one (Gledhill, 1994), and may not have experienced at home the types of Oral Language opportunities that are privileged at school, those that contribute to literacy acquisition. Consequently, these language skills need to be developed explicitly in the classroom. Oral language development is the platform to thinking, reading and writing. Poor Oral Language skills have an ongoing impact on literacy development. It is important, therefore, that these skills be developed in the early years, so that there is a strong foundation of Oral Language on which children can build upon when they are learning to read and write.

What are some of your celebrations in Oral Language this year?

It was exciting to hear the inspirational words of play-based educator Kathy Walker alongside international great Dr. Lillian Katz in Melbourne recently.

Kathy Walker unpacked the idea of investigative play-based learning as a philosophy that places the child at the centre of the curriculum and teaching strategies. The approach ensures authentic personalised learning. Formal instruction is still used, honoured and explicit, and taught alongside a much more active engagement time where children are working on their own investigations. Investigative play promotes student engagement through the children’s interests yet it still requires formal teaching in literacy and numeracy. The investigative approach stresses the importance of ensuring a balanced curriculum including authentic, rigorous and planned for direction, scaffolding and explicit teaching.

The investigative play-based approach is based upon brain research, child development theory and the range of cultural and social influences. It requires careful consideration and implementation by schools in order to ensure effective teaching and learning occurs. It is a wonderful approach to developing young vocabularies and build Oral Language skills. The investigative approach to learning is something some remote teachers are embracing and learning more about.

What 3 tips do you have to implementing this approach in learning environments?

The next speaker was Dr. Lilian Katz, Professor at the University of Illinois. Dr. Katz is an international leader in early childhood education who for decades, has lectured and taught all over the world. She is a champion of project-based play and gave us many examples of how the project approach ‘changes’ children’s lives.

“Curriculum,” Dr. Katz explained, “should help children make deeper and fuller understanding of their own experience.” Going outside the classroom – and observing what is right there – that is where meaningful learning happens.” From leaves to industrial parks, Dr. Katz gave examples of early childhood experiences that tapped into children’s natural capacity for interest, and provided opportunities for children to draw from observation – to look closely at and represent on paper what is really there, as in the Reggio Emilia approach.

She urged teachers of young children to have “continuous contingent interactions” with young children, explaining that recent brain research has shown how neurological connections happen when children engage in extended, meaningful conversations that drive and build on making meaning and connections to prior knowledge. This wonderful promotion of Oral Language was highlighted again and again in her presentation.

Investigations and a project-based approaches to play-based learning were explored at the conference. What understandings, celebrations or questions do you have about play?

“Experts in literacy and child development have discovered that if children know eight nursery rhymes by heart by the time they’re four years old, they’re usually among the best readers by the time they’re eight.” Mem Fox 2001

Poetry is a brilliant way to encourage Oral Language development because of its simplicity and brevity of thought. You can convey a lot with a few words. (Ambika Gopal) Poetry should not be a luxurious dessert, it should be the bread, a staple part of the meal in a classroom. Poetry for young children is meant to be read aloud, sung-along, and repeated often. It is to bring joy and playfulness, evoke feelings and create mood and images. Poetry is linked closely to music and encouraging musical ability in children, is known to encourage complex thinking patterns in the brain. Poetry also supports development of Oral Language, phonological awareness, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. So keep a place for students to post amazing, beautiful, interesting, vivid words and sentences collected from stories, poems, and spoken words heard around the classroom. Poems will live in children’s hearts and sing to them all of their lives.

There are so many wonderful ways to incorporate poetry.
1. Make your own POETree

2. Make Book Spine Poems
Simply stack books using the titles on the spines to create a poem.

3. Poem In Your Pocket Day
Celebrate national Poem In Your Pocket Day on Thursday, April 26, 2012
The idea is simple: select a poem you love then carry it with you to share at school. You can also share your poem on Twitter by using the hashtag #pocketpoem.
Around the world, poems from pockets will be unfolded throughout the day with events in parks, libraries, schools, workplaces, and bookstores.

How have you used poetry in your classroom to develop Oral Language?

Our 21st century learners require REAL audiences and REAL purposes for talk, collaboration, innovation, investigations and project-based learning.

I am trialling iPads in remote classrooms to support Oral Language. Here is my Prezi.

Last week I was privileged enough to spend the week in Melbourne shadowing and attending lectures by Dr John Munro. I was able to unpack Oral Language at a deep and critical level and learn some important message to filter to my colleagues back in remote NT.

Oral language is crucial to literacy development, with an increasing body of evidence identifying it as a key indicator of children’s reading abilities (Dickinson, Cote, & Smith, 1993).  The week of Masterclasses aimed to enhance my teacher knowledge of Oral Language as it scaffolds early literacy learning.  The lectures and workshops explored the research which links Oral Language development and the development of literacy skills, introduced the ICPALER model (John Munro 2007) as a framework used to understand the language use of young students and explored the use of an Oral Language developmental sequence to further inform teaching.

Dr John Munro went further and looked at how Oral Language difficulties linked to reading, writing and spelling difficulties.We learnt how to create effect sizes in teacher-led action-research influenced by John Hattie’s work and how to tailor intervention programs to your context. We discussed and unpacked how 21st century technology can assist and support Oral Language intervention including iPad apps, Web 2.0 tools and blogging as vehicles to engage and support Oral Language.

Oral Language influences literacy development, school attachment, social interactions, friendships, mental health and has even been linked to student expulsions and detainment in the juvenile system. Oral Language is the platform to life! It is so often overlooked as the ugly sister to reading, writing and spelling. But we MUST scale-up our planned and rigorous work to ensure our students speak English proficiently and with meaning.

An excerpt of Dr John Munro work is below.

“Play is the highest form of research.” ~ Albert Einstein

I come from an Early Childhood background and have worked in Steiner and Reggio Emilia settings. I know the importance of play in Oral Language development and was thrilled to learn more about it this week and how it must be part of the primary years. Many of the the remote schools I have been visiting have been implementing ‘The Walker Learning Approach’ in their classrooms. Whilst a major element of ‘The Walker Learning Approach’ is student engagement through the children’s investigations and interests, it still requires formal teaching in literacy and numeracy. Kathy Walker stresses the importance of ensuring a balanced curriculum of authentic student interests and engagement alongside teacher scaffolding, direction and explicit teaching.

In language-rich and investigative, play-based environments, children develop and use a wide range of both non-verbal and verbal communication to convey and construct meaning and share in the enjoyment of language. Oral Language is an important link in the process of children’s learning and thinking development . Through play, teachers can extend and model innovative and new vocabulary in context and meaningful situations. They can have fun with language, encourage children to talk about their experiences, answer children’s questions and find opportunities to explain new words. It is through talking that children learn to organise their thinking and focus their ideas

• Play is universal.
• Play helps develop Oral Language skills and extends vocabulary
• It is essential to every aspect of children’s development: social, physical and cognitive.
• Play fosters important social skills, including sharing, turn taking, and developing and consolidating friendships.
• It is a vehicle to challenge gender roles and stereotypes.
• Play is a progressive arena for the expression of children’s feelings, anger, love and joy.
• Play provides children with the opportunity to be in control and make their own choices.
• It is through imaginative and subversive play that children explore the world around them.
• Through traditional game playing children learn about rules and values of their cultures. This is particularly significant for Australia’s multicultural society where playing traditional games can be used to promote inter-cultural understanding of others.
• Play develops imagination and creativity.
• Play is part of everyone’s heritage – play links the past, present and future.

Oral Language through Play on PhotoPeach

Through play teachers can use different techniques to help young children learn to speak and build vocabulary.

Parallel Talk: (child centered) Short phrase (4­5 words) the teacher describes what the child is doing, seeing, hearing, as they do it e.g., “You are digging in the sand”, “You are drawing a picture”. Give the child words to describe the action they are involved in.

Self­Talk: The teacher uses short sentences to describe what they are doing, seeing, hearing, e.g., “I am washing the cups”, “I am writing a letter”. Use short, simple sentences to help the child know there are words to describe things people do. Give children words for what they see you doing.

Description: (object centered) Short phrase or sentence that describes objects the child sees or interacts with. “That’s a big brush”, “The water is cold”.

Comments: Teacher talk that sets the stage for activities or provides children with additional information: “We are going to paint after lunch”, “The aprons are to keep paint off of our clothes”.

Open­ended Questions: Questions that are broad in their context; that allow for multiple responses and that do not limit the child to single word responses such as “yes” or “no” responses. Good example of open­ended question: “What do you think will happen if ….?, or “I wonder what you could use this for?”

Expansion: Repeat the child’s “sentences” the way an adult would have said them. You are providing a good model for the child by revising their speech. For example, the child says “Dog runned”, and the adult would say, “Yes, the dog is running”.

Expansion Plus: The adult expands on the child’s short “sentences” by adding one more sentence; the adult is adding a little more information: The child says “crocodile puzzle”, and the adult responds “You have a crocodile puzzle. It’s a big puzzle with many pieces.”

Repetition: Teacher repeats exactly what the child says, but uses correct articulation. For example, the child says, “Widdle wed wabbit”, and the teacher would say, “Little red rabbit”.

 
How do you use investigations or play to drive your Oral Language program?

Try our video maker at Animoto.

ESL Indigenous learners may come from homes with limited to no exposure to the formal schooling system, or the literacies required of the formal education system. Indigenous learners may have different values related to learning, expectations, obligations and assumptions to those of teachers. Many Indigenous children growing up in the Northern Territory live in remote communities where the language they hear at home, in the community and sometimes in the playground is not Standard Australian English, but rather their Indigenous language, or an English-based creole or a mixed language. However, SAE is something they must be explicitly taught at school in order to have access to the wider community and global demands of 21st century living. Indigenous children receive little reinforcement in learning SAE at home and their limited daily interaction with good models of SAE speakers makes their task in learning SAE more difficult. Indigenous children may also come from families who have low levels of literacy. So when they go to school, they must learn an unfamiliar language, and they must learn the relatively unfamiliar concepts of finding out information through reading and writing which for many students is extremely difficult.

What is the role of Oral Language in Indigenous education?

The teachers of the Top End of Australia, that I have been visiting through my new role as Oral Language coach, champion the acquisition of Oral Language rigorously. They are passionate, energetic and staunch believers in the springboard to literacy Oral Language skills provide. The ability to communicate effectively is fundamental. Students must be able to listen, view and speak with purpose, demonstrate understanding and critical awareness and be able to select and apply strategies for conveying and making meaning in a wide range of contexts. The development of Oral Language skills is pivotal to the acquisition of literacy. A strong Oral Language focus is essential if students are to become proficient readers and writers.

Teachers in the Top End have so far taught me that every lesson is a language lesson. That as teachers, we must explicitly teach about the language and teach how to use the language, in addition to teaching content. Opportunities for the development of spoken language, both formal and informal, should be constantly available. The teacher must become familiar with the student’s cultural, linguistic and familial backgrounds, provide a safe, supportive class environment where students are encouraged to take risks in their learning, provide an environment where talk is valued and encouraged, provide good models of language and be aware of the language demands of tasks.

These inspiring Top End teachers support and ensure Oral Language tasks are rich, challenging and engaging to the learners. They facilitate shared language experiences, both inside and outside the classroom, provide hands on learning, model and scaffold, maintain high expectations, provide practice time before expecting independent construction, accept approximations towards the target language and believe in ‘wait time.’

Indigenous languages are some of the most endangered in the word and so valuing a child’s first language is also paramount in the Top End.

How are you promoting Oral language in your classrooms?
Is it valued at your school?

This is a year of firsts for me. First time in ten years out of the classroom. First time working as an ESL-ILSS (Indigenous Language Speaking Students) support teacher. First time working in remote Northern Territory schools. First time actually unpacking Oral Language. First time totally bewildered that I have never known just how important Oral Language acquisition is in the early years.

Oral Language refers to the ability to produce and comprehend spoken language (NELP, 2008, p. 43). It is a broad construct consisting of a variety of language skills such as expressive and receptive vocabulary, grammar, definitional vocabulary, syntax, and listening comprehension.  Until recently, the acquisition of Oral Language skills for me has been largely overshadowed by teaching children reading, writing, spelling, and numeracy. I admit, I just believed Oral Language happened through miraculous osmosis. I thought by providing play and inquiry project-based experiences, I was providing language learning opportunities. I’m only now realising that providing opportunities for Oral Language does not necessarily equate to learning for students at risk. The Indigenous students I am now meeting on remote islands off the coast of Northern Territory are without basic language skills, and in the open-ended interactiveness of my classroom, they would have slipped through the net. My teaching has gaps. A sort of humbling, daunting & exhilarating realisation really.

I’ve also discovered Oral Language competence is crucial for literacy development, with an increasing body of evidence identifying it as THE key indicator of literacy success or failure. Chan and Dally (2000.) Let me reiterate that…. limitations in Oral Language abilities are THE basis of literacy problems experienced by students. WOW! Profound!

It is estimated that up to one-in-ten children have some level of speech, language or communication need. In remote localities where English is a second language this can be as high as one-in-two. The effects of Oral Language difficulties can be all encompassing, negatively impacting upon literacy development, academic achievement and associated with social, emotional and behavioural problems that are far reaching. Of great concern is that the negative impacts of poor Oral Language abilities can persist well into the future for children. Research further indicates that Oral Language development in the early years is strongly linked not only to literacy but more broadly to the development of social skills, friendships, problem-solving & conflict resolution skills, self-esteem, school engagement and mental health (Snow & Powell 2008).

So this year I am on an action-research journey. One in which I aim to improve my teacher knowledge of Oral Language and its role in facilitating early literacy acquisition to enhance my instructional teaching and learning interactions in the classroom. I hope to bring personalised, invitational, explicit and thought-provoking 1:1 interactions with the Indigenous students I visit in remote localities across the Top End. I will blog successes, failures and ask you to share my journey. Join this #changechallenge invitation and disrupt your practice. Interrogate, probe, examine, inquire, question, advocate, critique, think, trial strategies in Oral Language in 2012.

. . . as long as we incorrectly view progress in reading as something separate from progress in oral language, students will continue to fail. Oral Language leads children to accrue more experiences, exposures, connections and knowledge in literacy. Think of it as in an interest-bearing bank account. “The importance of Oral Language to an individual’s success cannot be overstated” (Benner et al, 2002)

How important do you think Oral Language is? How do you think it can be fostered?

This year I am starting a new role. I will be the ESL & Oral Language coach for the Top End Group School in the Northern Territory of Australia. I will be travelling to remote parts of Arhnem Land sharing and celebrating with teachers best practice in ESL & Oral Language strategies.

So far this year  I have begun the #changechallenge movement on twitter. It is a 365project in which a new change-maker tweetpic is uploaded daily and discussion provoked. The aim is to get us all thinking, innovating, disrupting, aggitating, critiquing, trialing, disagreeing or advocating new paradigms in our own journey and educational pedagogy. The mission by the end of the year is to have one aspect of our practice challenged evoking change, growth, renewal, metamorphosis or simply looking through new eyes at an old way of doing something.

If your teaching for today’s vision in education, you’re already too late. Some of the seeds for disruption floating about for me this year are best described through a Wordle cloud.

What are some of your missions, innovations or disruptors for 2012?