Supporting Oral Language Development in your Home
Dear Parents,
It's a known fact, kids start to talk well before they start to read. For this reason, oral language abilities are the building blocks for reading. Vocabulary plays a large role in the quality of oral language as well. While your child learns different kinds of words, they will start to use language in different ways. For example, they start telling stories, making predictions, and describing their favourite activities. The ability to tell stories, or narratives, is important for social, academic, and cultural learning. Narrative language is made up of small and large components. The small component of narratives are the words that make up the story; are they small and familiar words or larger more complex words? The large components of narratives are things like the characters, plot, motivations, and emotions of characters.
On the other hand, expository language is being able to describe, explain, and compare situations. Using expository language paves the way for learning through reading in the early years of elementary school (about grade 3). Reading-to-learn is much like what you are doing right now, by reading this post you are learning about different ways to support your child's oral language development. Given that the school curriculum places a large emphasis on reading-to-learn, it's important that your child has strong expository language in order to develop this valuable skill.
Helping your child use language in different ways will benefit their academic, social, and cultural learning.
Here are some tips to help your child develop oral language skills:
-Use labels for familiar and unfamiliar objects, actions, and emotions (Child: "I need to be careful" Adult: "That's right. You need to be precise")
-Have a 'Question of the Day' using open ended question. NO yes/no questions! (ex. "what would you do with a million dollars?")
-Extend you child's utterances: repeat what your child says and add more information. (ex. Child:"Cinderalla was scared." Adult:"Yes, Cinderella was scared because her step sisters were mean.")
-Play barrier games: Your child has to explain an object or scene you cannot see. (ex. Get two identical magnetic play scenes. Have your child create a picture. Then, ask them to explain to you how to make the same picture- without looking at their picture!)
-Give them positive feedback when they use language in a new way (ex. "I like the way you told your story about the snowman")
-Role play: take turns pretending to be different characters. Even better, role play their favourite characters from books or tv shows!
-Summarize books after reading them (ex."Chase, Rubble, and Marshal were the characters in our book and they were all excited for the big party.")
-Play 'I Spy': use words that describe the objects position, attributes, and function (ex. It's beside the couch and on top of the carpet")
Online resources for oral language development:
http://teaching.monster.com/benefits/articles/9454-strategies-for-building-oral-language-skills?page=3
https://sites.educ.ualberta.ca/staff/olenka.bilash/Best%20of%20Bilash/strat%20act%20oral.html
https://www.teachstarter.com/teaching-resource/spy-oral-language-activity/
http://www.teacherwritingcenter.org/Oral_Language_Practice_Activities.pdf
Resources:
Dockrell, J. E., Bakopoulou, I., Law, J., Spencer, S. & Lindsay, G. (2012). Communication Supporting Classroom Observation Tool [Observational Instrument].
http://www.readingrockets.org/article/oral-language-expanding-your-childs-vocabulary