Literacy Talks

Leveraging Oral Language for Literacy Growth

• Reading Horizons • Season 6 • Episode 13

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This episode of Literacy Talks examines the fundamental role of oral language in student success and literacy development. The hosts - Stacy, Donell, and Lindsay - share their journeys of understanding the distinction between speech and language and how oral language forms the foundation for all literacy skills, from reading comprehension to writing. They explore practical strategies for creating a language-rich classroom environment, including techniques like the "strive for five" approach to extend student conversations. 

The discussion also covers effective ways to assess oral language development and research-backed interventions to support students’ language comprehension. Throughout the conversation, the experts emphasize the long-term, far-reaching impact of prioritizing oral language instruction in the classroom.

SHOW NOTES
Literacy Leaders:

Resources:

Terms:

  • Dialogic reading: a shared reading technique that involves a conversation about a book between an adult and a child. The goal is to help the child become the storyteller while the adult listens and guides the conversation. Dialogic reading can help children develop their language and literacy skills, including oral vocabulary and listening comprehension.


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Narrator:

Welcome to Literacy Talks, the podcast for literacy leaders and champions everywhere, brought to you by Reading Horizons. Literacy Talks is the place to discover new ideas, trends, insights and practical strategies for helping all learners reach reading proficiency. Our hosts are Stacy Hurst, a professor at Southern Utah University and Chief Academic Advisor for Reading Horizons. Donell pons, a recognized expert and advocate in literacy, dyslexia and special education, and Lindsay Kemeny, an elementary classroom teacher, author, and speaker. Now let's talk literacy.

Stacy Hurst:

Welcome to this episode of Literacy Talks. I'm Stacy Hurst, and I'm joined by Donell Pons and Lindsay Kemeny, and today we are going to talk about a topic that is really fundamental to student success in literacy, and it's oral language. And as we all know, oral language forms the foundation for all literacy skills, even writing and specifically reading comprehension as well. And I found in an article that we all read, there was a quote by the Ontario Human Rights Commission right to read report that I'd like to start our episode with. So it says a comprehensive approach to early literacy recognizes the instruction that focuses on word reading skills, oral language development, vocabulary and knowledge development and writing are all important components of literacy. And I think among the three of us, that kind of seems like we're stating the obvious, but to be honest, I haven't really always understood the role the oral language played in literacy, and so I am always looking forward to a chance to dive in and talk about these things. What, for example, I we had a speech and language therapist at my school, as most schools do, but I it was years into my career that I discovered that speech and language were two different things that they were addressing. I just always lumped it in together. Have you guys had similar experiences with this, with oral language and understanding its role in reading? How did you come to know what you know today about it?

Lindsay Kemeny:

Yeah, I had similar as as you Stacy, where you know, you think the SLP is speech and language, and you kind of don't think about, oh, they're working on two separate things, the speech, the articulation, and then a whole nother side is the language side. And the students could have one or the other, or they could have both, have needs in both areas that you need to work on. And I'm so excited just that we're talking about oral language, because, you know, one of our we talked about this when we went to the Big Sky literacy Summit. But what one of our biggest takeaways was like language is everything. And I loved how Elsa Cardenas Hagan would say, infuse language into everything you do, infuse language. And that just really stuck with me. So as a first grade teacher, I'm going about my day. I can think about, you know, sure, I have focus on, you know, right now we're focusing on, you know, phonemic awareness. Now we're focusing on our phonics lesson and our new skill. Now we're focusing on this text, complex text, and the knowledge that we need to understand it. But in all the pieces throughout the day. I can think about infusing language throughout all these different things that we're teaching, and maybe we'll talk more about that, but it's exciting. I'm glad we're talking about this

Stacy Hurst:

a great topic. Donell, what? What's your today. Yeah, it's background with this? Yeah,

Donell Pons:

I love that. I loved hearing Lindsay talk about that, and you guys talk about the early space, and it makes me think of my richest and early teaching experiences in the secondary space, middle and high school, and very quickly realizing, because you know my background, I love writing, and I feel like you can never write anything unless you talk about it. I mean, that was something separating those two blew my mind when you'd say, Oh, well, just write a prompt and have the kid, and you could just go into this cold you don't get to talk about it. That I thought that was crazy, because most of the writing environments I had been in, and certainly professional writing environments, it all starts with really good conversation. You dialog and talk about what it is you want to write about. That's just part of the whole process. And so that was really foreign to me to think of just putting up something cold on a board and saying to kids, go ahead and write about it. And so I remember very early on in those classrooms with my students putting up rules of engagement for conversation, and that was the first thing that would go on the board. Here are rules of engagement for conversation. And we started everything with conversation. Conversation and talk to talk. We talk about things we'd write up on the board, big ideas and things like that. And what's really interesting to me is I didn't realize how unusual that was for other people. Students loved it. Boy did they respond. And students who maybe didn't have an opportunity in the past to maybe share because maybe they needed somebody to put up a stop sign to say, let them into traffic, because there's a lot of students that know how to engage in that conversation. Maybe they come from backgrounds where there isn't a whole lot of it. And so those rules of engagement were, like some of those traffic signs and signals to be able to allow them to come into conversation. So I thought those were important. That's kind of that older space in how we talk about oral language, or those traffic road signals of getting in and out of conversation, and those need to be taught too. We talk about a lot of that in some of the oral language, pieces of pragmatics and such, but that also needs to be taught too. I love this conversation, by the way. If you didn't know,

Stacy Hurst:

yeah, and you know, I love your comment because, well, it's just a love fest today. Let's I love it all. But I really appreciated what you said because it helped me remember that that's how it that is how language develops. It starts out as oral language when we're young that develops somewhat naturally, speaking and listening, we all develop that capability. Reading is a different story, but we need to connect it to language, and then writing is a whole other level, right? And it's not out of reach, but it really is the synthesis of the two and the height of like expressiveness. So we can't not talk about writing when we're talking about oral language too. But as Donell was talking Lindsay, were you doing what I was doing? And flashing back to high school English classes and wishing that my teachers had done that, I wished that. Were you thinking that Lindsay or

Lindsay Kemeny:

I wasn't thinking that a lot? Well, I loved how she had, you know, these kind of rules for a conversation type of thing. And it's the kind of thing that, you know, you see sometimes students lacking this. So I'm like, Oh, wait, who's talking? Let's look at the person talking, you know. And and I was thinking about when she was talking. I was thinking about my son a lot of times, because he'll, like, start talking to me, and he's not, I'm not in the same room as him, and I'm like, hey, you need to come in. You need to get my attention first, and then start talking. And additionally, he will sometimes just start talking, and I don't, and I don't know what the topic is, and it's funny, because that goes into his writing, like we're working on, hey, you started right into this paragraph, but you didn't introduce the topic. So it's the same thing when you're speaking and you came to you're telling me something. Wait, what are you talking about? Where were you? When did this happen? Start again. So because I just, you know, like, I can't read your mind. And so I was just thinking about that. Some kids just do that automatically, and others need a little guidance with things like that,

Stacy Hurst:

yeah, and the structure of it, that's why we call it structured literacy, and we have a branch of that called pragmatics. And discourse for that reason, right? I don't, yeah, that. I think that's a great point to bring up, Donell, you were gonna say something.

Donell Pons:

Oh, gosh, I find this so I love this conversation, and I love Lindsay. You pointing that out just about, I mean, that's, it seems simple, but that's, that's really that teacher in you that notices, oh, hey, look, we need some instruction, right? This is a moment for instruction, so that's really great to put it and frame it that way for teachers to say, I got a student like that. Oh, okay, I see. Love this. I love sharing those ideas. One thing it brought to mind for me was an opportunity I had to teach a class in high school, and these were students who were in what was considered their basic I mean, I hate the way they rated those English classes, but there you go. It was called a basic English class. And so there was even regular English. And then we had, I mean, there were so many levels, it was ridiculous. But I had the class that was considered, well, these kids are barely passing type of thing. And I remember when I came in and we did that rules of conversation. This is what we're going to do. Chose something approachable. It was a magazine article, and it was something very approachable for the students, so that they would be able to read it, we can engage in it. Something interesting. It was about graduation rates for women versus men, and how they've improved for women, not men. And it was a really interesting conversation amongst the class. And I remember there was a student that midway through putting this up on the board, because we eventually we were going to get to the right so I love that we're bringing this thing full circle. This whole thing was to lead to the big thing, which was writing. Each of them had to produce a paragraph, and we were just doing the basics of argument for them to be able to get into this kind of writing style of writing, doing a whole pre so this is a whole week of pre. Before we get there. That's the other thing is this takes time, right? We set up the rules. We give time. And it was interesting because midway through there was a student who got into trouble with the law, and so he wasn't able to come back to class. And I was given a notice that said the student is in trouble with the law. He shouldn't be found in the school. He's been escorted off. Well, the windows are open because it's warm. And midway through class, the kids are going, Uh, hey, hey, hey, teacher, look. And they're pointing over the windows, and it's that student, and he's got his head in the window. He has poked his head up in the window, and he goes, how about if I just stand out here? I won't come into class. I won't but I can't miss the discussion. I remember what we were talking about. I didn't get to finish. Can you believe that he showed up. He got himself there. That's how engaged students. They love this, right? Because it speaks to you're treating me as a person who can engage in this conversation. You've given me some rules of engagement, showing me how to do it. I love it. Yeah,

Stacy Hurst:

that's so great. And you know this conversation is naturally like, I have a list of questions. You guys are covering them. I'm not even asking the question. The conversation is going that way. One thing I do want to talk about, Lindsay, you mentioned this right out of the gate, but let's be explicit about the question, as teachers, how can we create a classroom environment or an instructional environment that actively promotes that language development for all students? Let's just start broadly first.

Lindsay Kemeny:

The thing is that is so broad because you can, like, narrow down and think about things like each part of your day, but something I just want to bring up like, is the conversations that we have with our students and through, you know, Sonia Cabell and Tricia Zucker, I learned about the strive for five turns in a conversation, and that that is really easy. Like to fit in. I mean, you can fit it. You can't always do this. Like when you're giving your, you know, kind of comprehension focused lessons, sometimes you can. But a lot, I use this a lot in the in between times, like when students are coming in and hanging up their backpacks, and I can initiate a conversation with a student, and what you want to do is you strive for five turns. So a lot of times we only do three turns. So I ask something to the student, they respond, and then I'm like, That's great. Like, what are you drawing a dog? I love it, and then it's over. But instead of doing that, you're going to, like, extend the conversation by asking something else. So you know, you say, what are you drawing a dog. I love your dog. Tell me why you decided to draw that dog. And so you're engaging them in a little bit more the student response, and then you can follow up again by kind of extending on what they said. And I love it. They have a book out that I read that I really liked for this great for that oral language. And also just talking about when, however the student does responds, you can kind of scaffold down to help them, or scaffold up, right? So I had, like last year, one of my students who had weak oral language skills in both English and his home language. And so I remember he was drawing something once, and I asked him what it was, and he said, big. No. He said, truck. Big. Truck, big, right? And so I can now I can model, oh, you're drawing a big truck, right? And then ask him something to follow up. And so anyway, I just think that's a easy thing to to add in, is just those conversations, and to think of extending the conversations to five turns. Yeah,

Stacy Hurst:

that strive for five book. I recommend it for everyone. I read it as well, and it's easy to incorporate into any part of your day, really, anytime you're having a conversation with a student. What I did for my students, because those of you who know me, and I probably say this a lot, and even all of our episodes, I am a big fan of dialogic reading, dialogic read aloud, and teaching that very explicitly to my pre service teachers, so they're aware about being intentional in something as common as a read aloud, that we're developing language as we do that for the purpose of communicating and for comprehension, right? So that strive for five those five turns we incorporated into the read aloud time. So when you ask one of the prompt in the dialogic read aloud structure, then you're doing five turns. You're focusing on that. And we've seen some really fun things with that. Another thing you mentioned, actually, it might have been before we started. Recording, but we were talking about Elsa, Cardenas Hagan, and something I've learned from her, and again, very simple, easy things that you can apply today is that she requires all of her students to always respond with a complete sentence. That's very easy to facilitate in a classroom, because there are a lot of questions and answers. And I think those are some ways that we can do it. Donnell, what would you add to to those?

Donell Pons:

Yeah, I was just thinking I work, obviously, with older students in the older adult space, college students, and also students that are in junior and high school, middle school and high school. And so, you know, many of these things you can also use, like extending. If you have a student that's giving you monosyllabic answers, and you're extending that suggestion you had about a student who maybe starts in the middle of a thought, and you're talking about within your own household, making sure they frame it up. Now back up. Tell me where we're at the beginning. It's got a beginning, a middle and end. Help orient me these sorts of things. But being explicit, again, the key is explicit, having for the classroom those rules of conversation that we had on the board, so that everybody understands how they get into and out of the conversation, and we're all participating. Oftentimes, I would also put a sticky note on a student's desk. You can do this discreetly in a classroom, they know what the sticky notes are for. For some of the students, it would have a mark of three if I had a student who shares too much, so it would let them know that you're going to have three opportunities I still want you to speak. That's the other thing, because you'll have some students that might have suppression challenges where they're just always saying everything they need to learn. Also, this is part of oral language, turn taking and making sure I'm not over sharing and that I can suppress some of my thoughts. So not the most important. That's a part of oral language too, that we don't really talk about much about. We usually talk about trying to get more out of students. But there also comes a time when I need to know that I'm saying too much. And so that would be three times that you get to have. So make sure you gage those three opportunities and really save them to make sure you're engaging in what you really want to talk about. Likewise, with another student, I'd say I'd need three out of you. So we haven't had three yet, and you can mark them off when you get to your three engagements. So you can use that really discrete kind of thing with students. Sometimes I would also have a sticky note on a student's desk that I will want them to be the observer for the classroom. And say, for today, I want you to be the observer. So when we get to a certain point in the class, I'd like you to give me back these observations about a certain thing that we're doing that would be for a student usually didn't have much to say, would say, Oh, I don't know what to say. I don't know what to talk about. And you give them something to talk about, but, I mean, we can use a lot of these things, scaffolds for older students,

Stacy Hurst:

and they don't take a lot of time to prepare or to even implement

Lindsay Kemeny:

well and doing a lot of turn in talks to give a lot of students opportunities more you know, if we're just always just calling on one student, one student is getting the opportunity to express themselves, but for doing a lot of turn and talks, then they're getting more help and or getting more opportunities. And I like how Julie Washington at Big Sky talk, she pointed out, stop think, talk about it. And I like that, because sometimes I'm just like, turn to your neighbor and talk, you know, and to say the question, but it's good to wait, stop, think about this question, and then you're going to turn and talk. And then I just have to be ready. I know certain students in my classroom that really struggle with the turn and talk. In fact, I have one student right now who just turns and just, she doesn't say a word, and the partner just speaks. And so I am always right over there, okay, so, and I'm helping her through, and if she can just get a little phrases out, then I help her, like, let's put that together in a sentence, and I'll model it and have her repeat, right? So some students just need the opportunity, and others will need scaffolding within that opportunity.

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah, I've even seen teachers start the with a stem for the student. I need a response from you, and I wanted to start with I have four members, you know, in and then they repeat and finish the sentence. Having

Lindsay Kemeny:

a sentence stem is really important for a lot of them. A lot of students, it can be tricky when they can't read them yet. So you know, because you can say, start it this way, and some students will remember and some students will not remember. So yeah, sometimes be tricky, but so helpful,

Stacy Hurst:

and I'm glad you brought that up, because honestly, when we're talking about oral language anyway, working memory plays a role there, too, right? One thing I want to address as well. We talk a lot about Scarborough's reading rope, but let's talk about the role of oral language on both strands of the rope. What is the role of oral language in phonemic awareness, sight recognition and fluent reading at that point and decoding? Donnell,

Donell Pons:

yeah, I mean, oral language is all over the rope. I'm just gonna say it's coded in oral language, right? That's. That's how I see it. It's all over that rope you're not getting to decoding if you don't have, like, you say the sounds, right, we got, we have the sounds. You put them to the symbol, so that oral language is everywhere, like they were saying the assumptions we make about students entering school, because we think they all come in. We don't make the same assumptions about math, the same assumptions about science. We think we have to start at the basics with those. But we make a lot of assumptions about language, don't we, when students arrive at the school. I thought that was a really interesting point made in one of the pieces of literature that you gave us Stacy to look at. And I thought it's a really good way to put that. Yeah,

Stacy Hurst:

and I think you mentioned this too. And Lindsay, your student who doesn't speak English as their first language is something as simple as phoneme production matters when we're talking about communication, and you both mentioned this in one way or the other, but teachers, knowing it to model efficiently, effectively, correctly, those phonemes will help students be more efficient with connecting those phonemes to the graphemes the spellings for those so their reading comprehension will be affected in the long run as they become more proficient with that.

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Donell Pons:

Okay, I've got a funny story about that, though, because you're absolutely right, and I always tried to make sure that I was doing correct pronunciation, making sure to enunciate my words clearly for my students. And I had a student raise your hand and say, Are you from England? Because you don't sound like God. So I thought maybe I'm overdoing it. Yeah,

Stacy Hurst:

maybe, yeah. And we see that with dialect too, which comes into play here, right? Because we're all the three of us are teaching and living and working in Utah, and we have a habit of swallowing our teas, so we use buttons, and we live by the mountains. And I remember I was in we were focusing on that. Because somebody, as I was training teachers, I don't remember what state, but they had said, They noted that you swallow your your teas, you know, you don't say that. So the very next week, I was working with teachers in New Jersey, and I'm emphasizing my teas when you use your button, you know. And one teacher raised her hand and said, Why do you keep emphasizing is that important for students to know? And, oh, man, I can't win like dialect, but it's important to know for our students too, so we can point out those differences and account for them in print too. Yeah,

Lindsay Kemeny:

and focusing on the articulation is really important for that phonemic awareness. It will come into play. We know, you know, so many students who spell Baff, Bath, bath, like that, like so the spell BA, F, because that's how they say it, instead of B, A, th and surely that. You know, yes, that sound like I'm first grade. A lot of them are still developing that sound. But those you know, focusing on articulation is part of that oral language. Because, like you, if you have a conversation with students who struggle with a lot of sounds, it's really hard to have a conversation with them because you can't understand them and say, and I have this year, I think I've mentioned on the podcast that this year I have 10 students receiving speech services. Seven are on an IEP, and three more receiving interventions. And I am just like, wow, there's we have. You know, sometimes it can be a little difficult to be like, What are they saying? Because there's so many different there's some really great needs right there. So reinforcing that during phonemic awareness and phonics is going to support their oral language. So right now, I have a student who, you know, like we're sounding out very beginner books. Sam sat right. And he can do that individually. And then when he goes and, like, says it, he'll say sa for Sam sat and I'm like, correcting him. Listen, you said SA, it's Sam. Let me hear that last sound, and I had him do it again. And it's really funny, because our speech teacher had. Come in my room for something else during that time, and later, she told me, I was so happy to hear you saying that with the student, because that's exactly what we're working on. So now, if he has you, you know, working on him with that and he that's gonna really help reinforce but you know, we might not think of that stuff as oral language, but it does support it. Yeah,

Stacy Hurst:

I really appreciate those comments. So that's the lower strands of the rope. We're gonna talk about assessment in a minute. But let's talk about, I feel like oral language and the upper strands of the rope are more obvious, right, to me they are. But how would you speak to those upper strands and the role the oral language plays in that the development of those abilities.

Lindsay Kemeny:

I mean, definitely you've got vocabulary here, right? They need to know the meaning of the words, and we have more, you know, academic vocabulary, then you have understanding syntax and the way the words go together, and how the words function, and those little words that sometimes we take for granted. So, you know, when I had a student, I would put up these slides, if you're let's see, it's the syntax project. So they're free. You go online, it's the syntax project, and they have these different slides. And we would come up with sentences orally. And so, like, if it's a dog jumping over a fence, and the students would identify the who identify the do, turn it into a sentence. We might gradually add on a where, right or a why. But so I had a student that would look at it and say, dog jump and I and you would just, you might think that they automatically would know the dog is jumping, but they may not. And so I would say the dog, and he would repeat, the dog is jumping, is jumping. And now put it together, the dog is jumping, so it's, you know, so there's so much more than just the vocabulary, but it's the way everything connects

Donell Pons:

together. You know, I think this is interesting because, again, the older space, so thinking about older students, and I had a high school, another high school class that I was teaching, we were doing a book, and it was a great book. We were very engaged. We'd gotten through the book. And a point in the book, there's an experience that happens with the lead character in the book, and the lead character in the book, who's already thought of as kind of unusual eccentric, does something at the school. So she's also in high school. This is great because it was really relatable for the students. And it what she does is she takes a flower, a particular flower, and she gives it away to somebody in the hallway, just randomly, she did these random acts of kindness kind of thing, and then the reactions that she got. So we've had a lot of discussion around this. We're going to do some writing, and I could still see that for a lot of the students, this just wasn't connecting, because it just seemed like really foreign. And this is around the words that are associated with the experience, too. So there's vocabulary that goes with this. There's a way of speaking about it in order of words. And so what I did is I thought, You know what I'm going to do. We're going to have the experience. So I just brought a flower for each of them, put it on their desk. And when they arrived, of course, it was curiosity. Like, what is this doing on our desk? These are high school students, right? So you have to be cool. You can't just suddenly go, wow. So they come in, they sit down, and I can see by their faces, wow. This is curious. And so I said you probably have an idea about what I'm going to ask you to do. So what I'm going to ask you when you leave today is you're going to do what happens in the book. And each one of you is going to go out and random. It can't be somebody, you know, randomly hand the flower to somebody, and you don't have to stay around. You don't have to talk to them. What? Just hand them the flower and then move on, just like our character does in the book. Well, first, some of the kids are really anxious to do it, right? Wow, this will be so fun. Others are like, what I've got to do, what? And then I said, the thing is, though, when you come back, you have to have a few things to say about the experience, whether it was frightening because you weren't sure about how they were going to react, whether you were surprised because they reacted differently than you thought they would. But you need to have something to say about the experience. You don't have to talk to the person if you don't want you don't want to, you just have to have something to say about it. So they all leave the bell rings, and I said, Good luck to everyone. The bell rings. They all got their flowers. They go out in the hall. These are juniors in high school. It's really interesting. So interesting. The next day, when they come back, there wasn't one student out of that class. And I had a classroom about 20 students, and they were all on various levels. As you can imagine, I have some students who are new to America. For one thing, this was their first year, so all kinds of levels in the class, and everybody had something to say. Now, we had actually experienced it. You'd actually stood in those shoes. So then having those words, and using those words that went with that experience, you owned them more. They were more first person than they had been before, because you were, you were separated from this experience. And so it's, it was so interesting how that turned the tables for a lot of students, to suddenly be able to say, Oh yes, I I felt this way. I was such and such. I felt like this or that. Very interesting. And we had a really good engagement conversation. Then, of course, we moved to a writing assignment. But I think that taught me a lot about being you have to experience some things in order to have words to use and to know how to use those words for those things kind of interesting. So

Stacy Hurst:

there is an approach that I learned. And remember in my pre service education, I was learning about whole language, not even balanced literacy at that point is whole language. And we did learn the language experience approach. I had a lot of powerful results from that approach. In with younger students, you have a common experience like you just described, and then you actually transcribe their comments about it, so they're visually seeing their conversation in print. Now, I'm not going to get into the complexities. I think this is definitely a let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater kind of thing. And we could probably look at it from our new lens of like, let's look at it through the the research that we know now, but I felt like it was a good activity to help connect speech and print and to help our students very concretely understand that print represents speech. And so I love that, and it helped with syntax too. I actually when I taught the language development class in my school for students who were learning English as a second or third language, we used that Lea language experience approach a lot, and we focused on syntax, and we would modify and arrange it according to how they say it in their first language, and then how they would organize those words in English. So oral language in those upper strands are all over those upper strands, right? One thing that the researchers really associated with oral language Margaret, snowing and Charles Hulme are massive in this area, and they helped us make the distinction between students comprehension and their oral language development, that's major. So if we have students who are struggling with comprehending, whether it's reading or speaking and listening, then we have to look at their oral language development. One thing I noticed in preparing for this conversation is that for those lower strands, we have assessments for those, for younger students, especially, right? They're screened, if you're using something like Acadians or DIBELS, they're screened for those lower strand skills. We don't have systematized that I'm aware of. Tell me if you know differently, we don't have an oral language screener that is ubiquitous in most schools or districts. So I guess my major question is, how do we assess oral language development as a classroom teacher? What are we looking for? How do we know if a student's struggling with that?

Lindsay Kemeny:

Well, can I go back just a minute before answering that question? Because I wanted to end kind of going, like you were saying, that comprehension of the oral language really plays into it. And and I just had, oh, there's so many things I could say about ways to we were talking about things you could do in the classroom to support oral language. So another thing we want to do is we want to expose them to rich and complex language, and one of the best ways to do that is through text, so that can be read aloud, or it can be them reading a complex text, or both. Right? So we want to expose them and have them listening to that language, but then we're also going to need a scaffold their understanding of it, right? So that's just another thing to think about. And sometimes, like honestly, sometimes you have your reading program and you know your it has questions for you to ask, maybe either as you're reading aloud to students or at the end. And honestly, sometimes I'm like, Okay, well, that's obvious. They'll know that, but sometimes they don't. And it really like, if you look at those questions you want to really think about, okay, let's, let's pause here and make sure everyone is with me and has is understanding so far what's happening. You know, what were the directions that were given to Little Red Riding Hood? What did her mom tell her to do? And why do you think that's important? Okay, let's keep going and see what's going to happen next. And just some of those, you know, kind of helping them get a sense of the text. And of course, you're going to notice, like I did in my classroom when I'm doing things, asking questions or turning talks, like I told you, there's that student that wasn't saying anything, right? And when I went over there, I noticed her struggle. Well, I'm lucky, because in our district, we have a an oral language screener that they've started this. Is only the second year they've done it. I wish I knew the name of it, but it's interesting because I kind of knew beforehand, Oh, I bet these two students will fail, and they did, but there were some others that had gotten red flagged, and some I was surprised. You know, I remember how that happened last year, where I was surprised, but then, when I went and started doing little interventions with her, I was like, Oh no, yeah, she struggles with some, you know, kind of grammar related things. I wish I knew the name, because it's probably not that helpful of

Stacy Hurst:

a well, if you get it, we can put it in show notes or with the list of resources. But that is interesting, Lindsay, because when you were talking about your class this year and all of your students on IEP or that are receiving speech and language services, I was like, wow, how do they know that? Like in my experience, without a screener, those Speech and Language Therapists are only dealing with the most obvious cases, right? Well,

Lindsay Kemeny:

so not necessarily. I mean, we had, we had students that we had to refer this year, and we were like, we couldn't believe they hadn't been referred already. But like one of the students who had failed this or a language screener this year, she is not she, so she would be an 11th, right? When I said I have 10 students, so she, you know, was definitely not on anybody's radar. So,

Stacy Hurst:

and that's how assessment goes, right? Once you're aware, then, as a classroom teacher, and you already, you already mentioned this, you intervene, you provide that. So I'm going to kind of take us back a little step and add to the list of how do you know when a student is struggling? We can go to the simple view of reading that language comprehension piece. And we had a whole episode on this, Donnell, when we were it was your episode. That's why I said Donnell with the article by Hugh Catts. And he pointed out this is how if your students are struggling with language comprehension, these are ways that you can know. And he did mention that as far as difficulty answering questions after they something has been read to them, mentioned also challenges with understanding grammatically complex sentences, and he's talking at this point in spoken language, something like difficulty following New Directions, also an indicator. And then the other thing is difficulties understanding jokes, analogies or inferences. I think we do as classroom teachers. If we're tuned into that, we have a lot of opportunities to recognize that Donell in your space, what do you see?

Donell Pons:

Yeah, I think all of this, and then also thinking about paying attention to the vocabulary that's being used by the students, so use of high utility words, and also the depth and breadth of their understanding of words, and you'll figure that out by usage too, as well with students, that can be a tip off. And it's not just when they're producing a piece of writing, because this is the other thing, interesting thing that happens in those older spaces in middle and high school. You may never hear a student read anything out loud, depending on what you know, what interaction you're having with a student. So there are lots of ways in which a student's flying under the radio radar when they may have a lot of challenges with language that are never addressed, right?

Stacy Hurst:

So a bigger question too, and Lindsay you, you mentioned this with the student who you was identified in part from the screener. That was number 11, we'll call her. Then what do you do? Then, how do we intervene? What are some we talked about having a language rich environment in the classroom. But how do you specifically help a student who is struggling with language comprehension. What are you doing for that particular student to start with, Lindsay?

Lindsay Kemeny:

Well, that's like one where I do turn and talks, and I'm gonna go over there and scaffold right and help her. Same with what I was mentioning earlier, where you can have a picture. What's the who in this picture? What? What are they doing? Okay, can we turn that into a sentence? Right? And I think that's a a great way to engage it's like the same things I've kind of been talking about engaging her in conversations to get you know that practice with that. And then sometimes, you know, if you reach out to your SLP, they may have specific, like, they'll have specific things or, like, a book with, like, pictures and different, you know, exercises you can do for specifically what that student needs. Yeah,

Stacy Hurst:

and some research that I. Read in all of our review of these things was the impact the oral narrative skill training had on students who struggled so giving them the opportunity to narrate stories orally, retell and really refine how they're doing that retail in addition to vocabulary development, we've already mentioned dialogic reading. I just can't say enough about that, because even the prompts, even the questions that you ask the students, are so intentional, and you could absolutely differentiate that for what your student is, you know, struggling with.

Lindsay Kemeny:

So a lot of those things are at least in the primary grades, it's things we do already a lot, right? Like we I read them a story, and then we map the story elements. And then after we've mapped the story elements, we practice retelling. I model retelling, then I have them go with their partners in retail. I mean, the difference is that with certain students, I need to which is hard when you have so many that need help, but you're going around and you're helping kind of provide and making sure they're paired with a positive peer, right? Who's Who's going to be a good model for them and also patient with them.

Stacy Hurst:

So on that note, and Donnell, this is going to be a question for you, because I know you're you have a particular interest in this. So Lindsay's one classroom teacher. She has 10 plus one students who need some form of support with oral language development. What role could technology play in this scenario? What would be the limitations? What would be the opportunities? That

Donell Pons:

depends on what's available to Lindsay right within your classroom. Let's

Stacy Hurst:

do pie in the sky, just like say she has access to whatever.

Donell Pons:

I mean, I hate to name names of programs, but there are quite a few. And when we go to conferences, we hear a lot of really great researchers mentioning them, and even Stanislas Dehaene has one that he's been working on. So I think this is exciting space. In other words, we're doing a lot in this area to have programs available that address these various issues, and I'm hoping that just gets better and better. But that would be an opportunity, as you say, so not only within class, being able to have a few moments here or there, to be able to put a student with and match them up with something that maybe is really great, so they can have some few one on ones, and then also meet back again with Lindsay or someone else, but then also at home, being able to reinforce and use that as well. That's what the great thing of software is, is it just doesn't have to be in a classroom setting. Can also be at home too. So there are ways in which, and like I said, I'm hopeful that we get even more so that people have opportunities to engage with really good software that's being driven by the research,

Stacy Hurst:

yeah, yeah.

Lindsay Kemeny:

I would love to Yeah, because I don't have a lot of ideas of for software that helps with oral language. But just a thought, a way to to have students practice more of that oral language is I love the seesaw app, which is free for teachers, and I use it a lot, where, actually, actually, I guess I kind of do do this. But, you know, where take a picture of something that they drew or something they wrote, and then they can speak in the microphone and they can explain it. So doing that, maybe a little more intentionally, maybe even even having their like, I keep saying Little Red Riding Hood, because that's what we did today. So, you know, maybe if they have, like, a picture of the beginning, middle and end of Little Red Riding Hood in that app, and it's, they're just gonna retell the story now. So they're gonna, you know, push record and record themselves telling the story. The trick is, for teachers, we probably need to limit it to so many minutes because otherwise, yeah, but that would just give them another opportunity to practice. And what's neat is you can, like, connect parents and caregivers at home with, you know, whatever they do in school, so it gives them an authentic audience. So even if you're not able to listen to it right after school, the parents probably are and they can hear them retell. So the kids know I'm going to retell the story, and my mom or dad or my grandma is going to hear this.

Donell Pons:

And you know, this just just a tag on to that, because this is an interesting moment to just add for those older students. A lot of them are being introduced to a speech to text situation where people are saying, Oh, this is such a great technology, then you can just go ahead and use a speech to text. You don't have to worry about the writing and the spelling, if those are challenges, and if we think of this as such a great thing, and it can be, but we need the scaffolds, just like Lindsay's talking about having that beginning, middle and end. I never put a student with speech to text and just say, hey, go for it. Just Just tell everything right into that, that mic, and it'll be fantastic. No, we do all the pre write. You do all of that scaffolding for the right and then the student may use that, but that's one of the things where I see it not being used correctly, as a student's just placed their cold again with a cold page in front of them. And that's a challenge. So just remember that well, and

Stacy Hurst:

you're. Both making me think of something that we see a lot. You were all talk. You were both all two of you talking about narrative retails and beginning, middle and end, very important, valid things. But then it made me automatically think of non fiction text, and we frequently give students graphic organizers to help organize that information. But how can we turn that into an oral language opportunity? Maybe just explaining what's on the graphic organizer using using complete sentences?

Donell Pons:

That's where I love to use that doing a newspaper article, because there that's information and informative. And what you when you have the lead, it's the who, what, when, where, why and how can students still fill that in for information. And that seems to work really well, because it's a great formal formula. Lindsay, you probably got other formulas. Yeah,

Lindsay Kemeny:

what we use for informational writing is tied, T is topic, I is information, D is detail, E is end, and and I to right now I have a graphic organizer for them, and what we do is three IDs. So it's T, I D, I D, I D, E, because we have three pieces of information and three details about the information where we expand. And right now I have a graphic organizer for them, but eventually they will be able to just write, tie it on a blank piece of paper, and be able to do this anyway. After we have written our notes, we orally construct our paragraph before writing it. So it is like I always tell my students, if you can't say it, you can't write it. So we'll take those little notes that we've written and then we practice turning them into a sentence. Now, at the end of the year, I can model like, not at the end, but maybe the middle of the year. I can, we can have done our outline, and I model the whole thing out loud for students right now. That's a little and then they do it in partners right now. That's a little much. So I take it one at a time, I model the topic sentence, and then the students practice their topic sentence, and then I model the information sentence, and then they practice different ways they can combine those words into a sentence. So it's like all oral language, right?

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah, all that regulation is moderated through oral language. It's awesome, Donnell, were you going to add something to that?

Donell Pons:

No, just that. I saw a presentation Lindsay, and I'm dying to talk to you about because that's Leslie laud, right? Yeah,

Stacy Hurst:

self regulated strategy development, which and Donnell and I were talking about that, because you were telling me a little bit about that. That is a strategy. That's something that's been around. I remember reading about it 20 years ago. It's been around for 40 years. I think it's time we Leslie laud wouldn't say that she's already dusted it off the shelf, taken off the shelf, dusted it, shined it up. But for me, I need to take it off the shelf and revisit it, because I think there's so many powerful things there, and we could do another episode on that. Lindsay, I know you're applying that in your classroom, so we'd have, you'd have a lot to say. One thing that I just want to mention in closing too, and we're talking about reading comprehension and even writing ability, is just emphasizing with our students that it like we have been throughout this whole conversation. It all hinges on oral language. Everything is about speech, and so I think that will help with not only the interventions we need to provide, but for them to understand something as simple as a purpose for reading or writing, is that we're communicating ideas and we're learning, and before we had print, people did that through talking. So we're taking the good news is to anytime we focus on that or intervene. This is another big takeaway from Snowling and Hulme's research is the long term effects of oral language, addressing it, and especially with intervention, they found that early oral language intervention not only improves reading comprehension, but it also helps mitigate broader literacy difficulties as children grow older. So they were talking about early intervention, for example, improvements in vocabulary and listening comprehension lead to better understanding texts in later years. So this is really a, in a way, a foundational it's a foundational skill, right? Something we need to be attending to. And I know that I sometimes in my early teaching career, I probably hyper focused on the print part without making that appropriate connections to speech. So I'm happy to visit this. Yeah, Lindsay,

Lindsay Kemeny:

I just want to say because I have my notes out here in front of me from Julie Washington's for. A yes presentation, and she said that the kids don't realize that the oral language supports the reading either. So just as like as teachers, you kind of, oh, maybe you've, you know, you forgot or you didn't realize that in the past. I think we need to really kind of explicitly state that to the kids so they understand that, hey, this is important, that we're talking and we're, you know, having these conversations, and that you're speaking to your neighbor and you're speaking to me, that all is going to help your reading and

Stacy Hurst:

writing. Yeah, Donnell, anything else you'd like to say

Donell Pons:

that we made just the same thing.

Stacy Hurst:

This is a great conversation. I love this topic. I'm leaving with a lot of ideas like we had already looked over. We'll include all of these resources, but it was a big list, and I have to thank Lindsay and Donnell, because I may or may not have been under the influence of NyQuil, but I wanted to get ahead. And I was like, here's a list. We're going to talk about oral language. Here's some possible angles. A day or so later, Lindsay texts back. Is there a specific one of these resources you

Lindsay Kemeny:

want to focus because

Stacy Hurst:

it's like 100 pages. And I've had other settings and situations that I've had more time with that because, you know, other things, but I love that we get to focus on this, and even in all of that pre work that I personally was able to do, and then I'm the one that chose those and sent them to you, our conversation has led me to even more insights and actionable things with my university students, even that I can do this afternoon if I want to. So I hope our listeners have got the same just emphasizing the importance of oral language its connection to written text. It is, it is written text in a visual form, in an oral form, but then also things we can do in our own instructional settings to facilitate that growth and understanding the impact that will have on literacy, all aspects of literacy, as we talked about so thank you again, guys for this conversation. I am really looking forward to our next topic, and also very much looking forward to the fact that I'm not choosing it. So it'll be a fun conversation. We hope that those of you listening will join us for the next episode of literacy talks.

Narrator:

Thanks for joining us today. Literacy Talks comes to you from Reading Horizons, where reading momentum begins. Visit readinghorizons.com/literacytalks to access episodes and resources to support your journey in the science of reading.