SLT Margaret at TOD

2. Introductions & Expectations
• A bit about me…
• A bit about you…
What do you want to learn today?

3. Aims for today’s workshop
• To explore how oral language relates to the
curriculum
• Increase awareness of the impact of language
difficulties on learning
• Gain an understanding of normal language
development
• Discuss strategies to support language development
in the classroom

4. Exploring Language
> Discussion – oral language & the curriculum
9.10
> The impact of language difficulties on learning
> How language develops… 10.00
> Conversational styles…
Morning tea 11:00
> Oral language strategies 11.30
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5. Discussion cards
• Discuss the points on
the card with people at
your table
(“ratings” are personal, and do not
need to be shared – this is just for
personal reflection)
• Offer feedback to the
whole group

6. Key Competencies
Managing self
• Understands verbal and written instructions.
• Seeks and requests information.
Thinking
• Uses different question types.
• Sequences information logically.
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7. Key Competencies
Relating to Others
• Understands a listener’s perspective.
• Gives sufficient relevant information.
Participating and contributing
• Expresses ideas confidently.
• Understands rules and expectations for
interaction
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8. Key Competencies
Managing self, Relating to others,
Participating and Contributing
Understands facial
Follows routines Listens to others
expressions and
independently Takes turns
body language
Understands rules
for classroom and
Follows instructions Asks questions
games
Provides relevant
Responds to
and sufficient
Expresses feelings questions
information
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9. Literacy Foundations
Responding to texts in ways that
demonstrate engagement
Follows adult finger
Understands the Points to a picture
when pointing to a
concept of a story named by an adult
picture
Understands that
print has a Names pictures in a Makes comments
meaning book about pictures
Answers questions Takes turns in
Asks questions about the characters conversations about
about the story and events books
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10. Numeracy Foundations
Count a set of objects or form sets of objects.
Order and compare objects or events by
length, area, volume and capacity.
Understands, describes or explains:
One, two... objects More than one One-to-one
object correspondence
Shapes, colours, Items that don’t
Comparisons:
functions, physical belong in a group
big, bigger, biggest
attributes
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11. Why link language and learning ?
• Oral language underpins all learning and all
social interaction (Learning through talk: Years
1-3, p.7).
• Strong oral language skills are linked to
literacy and numeracy achievement.
(Tunmer et al., 2006)

12. Evidence
• Oral language underpins written language
(Effective Literacy Practice in years 1-4)
Plus
• Language
Plus
• Interaction
Plus
• Classroom Environment
Increased success with Literacy

13. Language difficulties
When school age children have significant language
difficulties they are likely to need learning support.
• Children’s early identified language difficulties may
persist into their school years.
• Children with spoken language difficulties may
experience difficulties learning to read and write.

14. The impact of language difficulties at school
> Consider how language difficulties affect:
 following teacher instructions
 sharing news
 asking questions
 answering questions
 expressing feelings
 asking for help
 reading
 writing
 numeracy
 making friends
 expressing wants
 anything else?
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15. The impact of language difficulties at home
and in the community
> Consider how language difficulties affect:
 sharing news
 asking for help
 sharing ideas
 answering questions
 expressing feelings
 making friends
 talking with whānau/family
 expressing wants
 anything else?
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16. Other risks
Children’s language difficulties may have an impact on
their:
• behaviour
(Snow & Powell , 2004; 2008).
• social and emotional development
self-esteem
establishing peer relationships.
(Jerome, Fujiki, Brinton, & James, 2002)

17. What helps children with language difficulties?
• Frequent engagement in interactions with responsive
conversational partners.
• We know from the research that responsive
conversational partners :
– wait for the child to initiate or respond
– talk about the child’s interests
– balance questions with comments
– provide models
– give constructive feedback.

18. What is Language?
In pairs:
What is language in 3 words only?

19. Language Model
Form or
syntax
Meaning
Use or
or
pragmatics
semantics

20. Three components of language
• What
• How
• Why
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21. What
• Content of what is understood and
expressed.
• Includes vocabulary:
 labels (nouns)
 action words (verbs)
 describing words (adjectives)
• The meaning of the message.
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22. How
• Content is understood and expressed in various ways.
• May involve pointing, gestures, facial expressions, eye
contact, sounds, reaching, actions, pictures.
• Children might use signs, speech sounds, words or
sentences.
• Includes interaction skills, such as taking turns, and
the ability to start, maintain and finish a conversation.
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23. Why
• The reason for communicating.
• Includes understanding and using language for
purposes such as:
 following instructions
 questioning
 learning new information
 responding
 greeting
 gaining attention
 commenting
 giving instructions
 re-telling
 Protesting.
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24. Language steps
• Early words user
• Word combiner.
• Early sentence user.
• Complex sentence user.
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25. Early words user (think 1-2 years)
• Follows familiar instructions,
eg, “Get your coat.”
• Responds to simple questions,
eg, “What’s this?”, “Where’s …?”
• Single word stage … uses up to 50 words.
• A single word conveys a whole message.
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26. Word combiner (think 2-3 years)
• Follows instructions with two key words,
eg. “Put the book on the shelf”.
• Understands what things are used for,
eg. lunch box holds their lunch.
• Combines two words together,
eg. “Bye Mark”, “Daddy gone”, “More drink”.
• Makes simple requests,
eg. “My turn?” “What’s that?”
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27. Early sentence user (think 3-4 years)
• Follows instructions with two related steps
without cues.
• Understands a variety of questions
eg, ‘who’, ‘why’, ‘where’.
• Uses sentences of three or more words – may not
be grammatically correct or complete.
• Talks about objects and activities that are
not present, eg, their bike at home.
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28. Complex sentence user (think 4-5 years)
• Follows instructions with two unrelated steps.
• Understands a variety of concepts
eg. big, bigger, biggest.
• Retells a sequence of events using grammatically
correct sentences most of the time.
• Listens to simple stories and answers related
questions, eg. ‘when’
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29. Language steps
Complex sentence user
Early sentence user
Word combiner
Early words user
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30. Conversational styles
There are 4 styles
• Participator.
• Responder.
• Do my own thing.
• Reserved communicator.
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31. Responsiveness
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32. Participator
• Children who initiate and take
part in interactions.
• They are responsive and will try
(and keep trying) to communicate.
• Adults might describe them as
“easy to talk to”.
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33. Responder
• Children rarely start the
conversation.
• They may find it easier to
respond more to adults than
their peers.
• Adults might say the child
“takes a while to warm up”.
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34. Do my own thing
• Children mostly communicate
about their interests and needs.
• Rarely respond to attempts to
engage them in conversation.
• Adults might think they are
“in their own world”.
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35. Reserved communicator
• Children often have little or no
response to your efforts to
engage them.
• Children rarely initiate and show
little interest in people or objects
in their environment.
• Adults find it difficult to engage
the child.
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36. 36

38. A teacher’s role
Teachers are significant conversational partners
in a child’s life.
Talk is the central tool of teachers’ trade. With
it they mediate children’s activity and
experience, and help them make sense of
learning, literacy, life, and themselves.
Johnston, 2004

39. Implications for teachers
Critical relationship between oral language and learning -
means close attention to speaking and listening skills is
necessary
Students with less developed oral language skills need more
teacher time, explicit instruction, and more opportunities to
talk to support their learning.
Need to consider oral language requirements of learning tasks.
Implications for teaching include –
1. waiting time,
2. clarification ,
3. links been their use of strategies for spoken and written language.

40. Where’s the time?

41. Knowledge of the learner
Teachers need extensive and continually developing
knowledge of their students
Not all children need focused oral language
assessments
Contexts for gathering data
What should an assessment process involve
Commonly used standardised assessment tools.

42. Scaffolding students learning
To help a child participate in classroom talk, need to know if they
understanding this way of speaking.
Can do this by: looking for signs that a student hasn’t
understood (watch facial expression, listen for signs of
hesitation)
Encourage to ask questions
Ask to restate an instruction or idea or ask to explain to another
student
Establish a signal (thumbs up) as a non-verbal way for quieter
students to signal they need something clarifying.
Repetition is a powerful way to scaffold oral learning

43. What are the features of a great conversation?
• An opportunity to:
 talk
 ask questions or clarify.
• A shared understanding and context.
• A shared interest.
• Ideas are listened to, acknowledged and
valued.
• One speaker does not dominate the talking
time.
• The conversation reaches a natural end.
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44. What does the research tell us about
classroom conversations?
• Most of the talk in classrooms is teacher talk.
• Research in New Zealand new entrant classrooms
found that:
> teachers’ talk made up 76% of classroom talk
> teachers’ requests for information and actions
made up 60% of their classroom talk
> children’s questions ranged from 2% to 8% of their
total talk.
(Doell , 2005) 44

45. Initiation, response, feedback (IRF)
Initiation (I) Teacher: “What day is it today?”
Response (R) Child: “Tuesday.”
Feedback (F) Teacher:(optional)
“That’s right it is Tuesday today.”
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46. Importance of follow-ups
“The most powerful single moderator that enhances
achievement is feedback.”
(Hattie, 1999, p. 9)
Feedback must be constructive and provide information about
how and why the child understands or misunderstands.
New Zealand research found that constructive
feedback was not used frequently.
• Approximately 20% of children’s responses received feedback.
• 63% of the feedback was constructive.
(Doell, 2005)
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47. Deliberate acts of teaching
Deliberate use of interactional strategies is crucial to student
achievement.
These strategies are effective across all curriculum areas
Different types of deliberate acts of teaching are :
Modelling,
prompting,
questioning,
giving feedback,
telling,
explaining
directing

48. Classroom talk
What teachers need to consider when planning
Look at classroom talk in terms of:
• social language,
• independent listening,
• independent speaking
• discussion.

49. Social language - the way we use language to
engage with people in social settings, particularly the form
and use of holding a conversation
Formulaic phrases and expressions need to repeated frequently by
teachers and students to embed them into everyday talk
There are established ways of initiating, joining, ending conversation
and introducing new topics.
In conversations partners have to work at making sense of
things, responding, checking for meaning
Teachers can support the many uses of social language through
explicit instruction, which includes explaining, modelling and creating
language opportunities. How?

50. Independent listening– the ability to listen to
extended talk and retain information to recall without the
support of a conversational partner
Progression through school requires the student to listen for longer
periods of time without responding immediately.
Children at school need to develop skills when listening to text.
Teachers can effectively scaffold development of independent
listening. When reading txt teachers can :
1) control the length of time
2)Use strategies such as summarising what has happened so far
3)Encourage students to make connections with other texts
4)Use a graphic organiser to help keep track of events and characters in a
story read over several sessions

51. Independent speaking– the ability to use extended
talk (retelling a story, news, or express an idea) without support of a
conversational partner.
Independent speaking requires the speaker to use precise and
sophisticated language to ensure they convey their message
clearly
Some students develop independent speaking skills easily
Some don’t - Teacher can help develop independent speaking
by:
1. Providing opportunities to recall/ retell events that are important to them
2. Providing scaffolding
3. Use routines such as do and review (locke and beech 05)
4. Use wordless picture books to encourage narrative talking
5. Allow time for students to practice and become competent
6. Notice when a child uses new vocabulary and language structures.

52. Discussions - Are the purposeful learning
conversations that help thinking and learning to develop
Within a discussion students learn to build knowledge and
understanding, expand vocabulary, learn new ways of expressing ideas
and develop critical thinking.
Teachers can support students learning before and during discussions
by:
1. Teaching the protocols of group interactions
2. Allow time for initiation, response and reflection
3. Carefully scaffolding instructions to encourage purposeful talk
4. Monitoring groups
5. Providing feedback
Types of discussion – group discussions, paired discussions, think pair and
share and using buddies.

53. StoryTalk Organiser
• Contributes to a literate environment
• Child-directed, play-based event
• Narrative discussion (photos or drawing)
• Print awareness
• Enriched language
• Phonological awareness
• Sound production PrepTalk Project, Jenny
Matthews and Catriona
Pine, EQ SLPs, 2006

54. Activities
• Sandpit Volcano
• Vegetable faces
• Chickens hatching
• Outside play
• Dress-ups
• Building blocks
• Argument
PrepTalk Project, Jenny Matthews
and Catriona Pine, EQ
SLPs, 2006

55. Narrative discussion (during activity)
Focus on the communicative intent of the speaker
/writer.
• Talk about photos
• Use sequencing
Use:
• Commenting
• Blank’s levels of questioning
PrepTalk Project, Jenny Matthews
and Catriona Pine, EQ SLPs,
2006

56. Print awareness
Focus on the writing
process.
• Write the story together.
Use and comment on:
• Speech bubbles
• Left  right
• Space between each word
• Words vs a sentence
PrepTalk Project, Jenny Matthews
and Catriona Pine, EQ
SLPs, 2006

57. Enriched language
Focus on word
meaning, grammar and
sentence length.
• Expand sentences.
Use:
• past tense to retell
• future tense to predict
• adjectives
PrepTalk Project, Jenny Matthews
and Catriona Pine, EQ SLPs,
2006

58. Phonological awareness
Focus on listening to
the sounds spoken.
• Look at words in the
story.
Use:
• syllables
• rhyming
• first and last sounds PrepTalk Project, Jenny
Matthews and Catriona
• letters Pine, EQ SLPs, 2006

59. Sound production
Focus on the spoken
production of words.
• Choose a sound.
Use words to describe:
• body part used
• length (long/short)
• voice (soft/noisy)
PrepTalk Project, Jenny Matthews
and Catriona Pine, EQ SLPs,
2006

60. Discussion time
• Chose an activity to could use with the
StoryTalk oral language organiser.
• Discuss how you would apply it in your class.
• Give feedback and ideas to whole group.
PrepTalk Project, Jenny Matthews
and Catriona Pine, EQ
SLPs, 2006

61. Building vocabulary
Vocabulary - develops in many different ways
1. learn words associated with topics, contexts and environments.
2. Extend the range of words known
3. Knowledge of morphology generates new forms of words
4. Understand words in a greater depth
Building academic language
Academic language –
• is likely to be associated with abstract concepts - ‘fairytale’ ‘explain’
• Has specialised vocabulary and language structures - ‘uppercase’
• Uses general vocabulary of academic language - ‘task’ ‘learning goal
• Includes more specialised vocabulary of discourse structures of the
curriculum – measure, beat, order

62. Time for a role-play

63. Ultracrepidarian
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64. ULTRACREPIDARIAN:
One who speaks or offers opinions
on matters beyond their knowledge.
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65. What helped you engage in the interaction?
• Introducing the topic.
• Making links with known information.
• Talking slowly and repeating.
• Using visual supports.
• Sharing relevant information.
• Sticking to the point!
• Maintaining eye contact.
• Responding to body language.
• Encouraging questions.
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66. Summary – How to engage children in conversations
• Be face-to-face with children.
• Respond to children’s attempts to initiate.
• Notice children who are feeling ‘left out’ or
uncomfortable.
• Pause to give time for responses.
• Make comments and wait for the child to initiate
a comment.
• Repeat and go slow.
• Provide encouraging and explicit feedback.
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67. Workshop evaluation
Thank you for participating in
this workshop.
Please take some time to complete
the evaluation form.
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