Today let us discuss about "ORAL LANGUAGE SKILLS".. Oral language is not just speaking. It is a large set of skills that encompasses listening comprehension, understanding and producing complex language, vocabulary and word knowledge, grammatical knowledge, phonological skills, and so much more. A Few Strategies for Building Oral Language Skills:
1) Show and Tell: Students bring an item from home that they want to talk about and there is a precious question and answer session that ensues.
2) Daily Oral Language (D.O.L.): Traditionally, this is an activity where each day, there is a prompt written on the board for students, such as a sentence written with incorrect grammar for students to correct individually. I prefer to have the students create grammatically correct sentences in small groups (like their tables or with a partner). Show the vocabulary word and have students talk about its meaning together in a small group and have them draw a group picture representing that word.
3) Dramatic Vocabulary: The students get in a circle and the teacher has a set of cards with that week’s vocabulary words on them (the students can make these cards in groups before the activity for added learning).
4) Word Wall: I think it is used mostly in elementary and middle school, but I can see its value in secondary classrooms with added elements, such as grouping by prefix, suffix, roots, etc. Basically, it is a wall of words that are frequently used in the classroom that are posted for easy reference. Teachers, feel free to comment on how you elaborate on the classic Word Wall.
5) Debates and “Take A Stand” activities: You can start out by providing a prompt for a related lesson, such as “Every student should wear uniforms to school” for a lesson on persuasive writing. Place a line of masking tape in your classroom that ranges from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” with “not sure” in the middle.
Have students “take a stand” on where they fall on the continuum. Then, group the students to form teams for a debate on the issue (“not sure” kids can be equally divided or be their own group). From there, you can provide reading materials for the students to support their argument, or begin a research project for students to find their own material for a debate.
6) Listening Activities: For students, teaching listening skills can be in the form of teaching good note-taking skills during lecture. Give the class a list of key phrases that they want to listen for in a lecture such as, “This is important..”, “One of the main things…” “The first thing you have to do is…, etc”, “You will need to know…” To begin, you could ring a little bell or something when you use the key phrase, then transfer that job to a student.
7) Fancy Tech Stuff: I must admit, there are many many tech applications that frighten me with their newfangledness. However, I really think that we should be harnessing the students’ natural interest in tech and social media.
Maybe kids across the country could Sykpe-talk to each other about an issue/project/modern day pen pal thingy, build a personal word or spelling dictionary in their iPhones/iTouches, find an App for site words (there’s an app for that!), making a classroom Podcast, etc.
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