Week #1 - Blog #3

Armbruster and Lehr, in their text Put Reading First: The Research Building Blocks for Teaching Children to Read, have noted that oral language development is crucial to literacy development.  "It is a key indicator of children's reading ability."  

Reflecting on all our reading has shown me that as the diversity of the United States increases so does the need for oral language experiences in our classroom increase.  We must provide print rich environments, appropriate and accessible materials, and carefully planned literacy activities that will immerse our students in language in both the oral and written forms.  Thus children begin to make a transition from oral language to written language so that they can read.  But how does this happen?

Children love to be read to and in turn to talk about that reading.  Sharing books with young children allows for the opportunity to develop vocabulary, conduct think alouds, and then enter into the "grand conversations" about reading that Gibbons talks about in Scaffolding Language, Scaffolding Learning. We take these opportunities to encourage the oral language piece and partner them with reading instruction as children make the connections they need to enter a lifelong pursuit of reading.  

Oral language is truly a key indicator of reading ability and the more we provide opportunities for its practice in, application of, and connections to within the reading framework, the more we encourage our students to utilize it to become proficient readers and hopefully proficient writers.