Boosting Oral Language to Effectively Support Your Child with Home Reading

“Oral Language is the child’s first, most important, and most frequently used structured medium of communication. It is the primary means through which each individual child will be enabled to structure, to evaluate, to describe and to control his/her experience. In addition, and most significantly, oral language is the primary mediator of culture, the way in which children locate themselves in the world, and define themselves.” (Cregan, 1998) 

This is the seventh blog entry this school year, all focused on Home Reading, to help families successfully support children as they learn to read :)

When our children are infants just beginning to vocalize, repeat words and phrases, and eventually identify their world through the spoken word, we celebrate every new sound and word with great joy and enthusiasm! They are learning to 'speak their world' into existence, to communicate with us as their parents and with other family members, as well as outside their homes, in the real world. Sometimes we have to 'translate' what children are saying as they grapple with pronunciations, tenses or particularly challenging sounds - there are some speech anomalies that emerge in many children (such as lisping their 'r' sounds) in the early years, but for the most part, all children acquire oral language within their first three years of life quite successfully. And this firm foundation of shared speaking between you and your child becomes the bedrock upon which their reading skills will be built and flourish!

Oral language is not only about communicating with others; it also requires thinking, background knowledge, awareness of one's surroundings, making connections, use of memory and skills with understanding multiple meanings for known words, metaphors, nicknames, etc. Literacy researchers identify the five primary components of oral language as auditory memory, listening and speaking skills, conceptual knowledge, understanding language in a wide variety of settings and reading one's environment effectively (Eisenhart, 1990).  When children begin speaking their world into existence for themselves as well as the other humans they come into contact with, they are actually melding numerous skills together to help make sense of what they are experiencing. It is these strong foundational skills in oral language development that beautifully act as groundwork for learning to read, and there are numerous ways a parent with an early reader at home can boost the development of reading by encouraging the continued elaboration of oral language.

Conversations

Children are keen observers and listeners, curious to make sense of every new experience and amalgamate what they already know with new information all the time. Through conversations, both those they participate in and those they listen to, children develop pragmatic knowledge about language and how it is used to serve a wide variety of purposes - for everything from ordering a meal to imaginary play to arguing with a sibling, for example. Having conversations with a child not only increases their fluency with the language, it builds vocabulary, expands their notions of what effective oral language use is, and encourages them to think through language problems to discover new meanings. 

Parents with early readers who are just beginning to make connections between text and meaning have tremendous opportunities to build oral language understanding with their children through ongoing conversations where opinions, ideas, questions, disagreements, eureka! moments and playful interaction with language are shared easily as verbal interactions. Conversations offer wait time while a child puzzles over a question or a new piece of information, opportunities for children to interpret new meanings from unfamiliar words and the ability to make sense of non-verbal messages as well. As a parent converses with a young child, they are modeling information about how listening and speaking happen between two or more humans, while also offering insights and new words to the child, almost like gifts, that the child will put to excellent use as they begin to bring clarity to their understandings and appreciations of the world. 

What do you see?

When a young reader brings home a text for home reading, take the time to comfortably sit with the child to share the book. Be excited and nudge their excitement with a few well-placed questions and observations. Before attempting to read a new book, take the time to explore the pictures with your child, asking them to tell you what they see. If there are words you anticipate your child might not know (for example, enormous) in the text and they are describing it differently (such as 'really big'), slip the word into your conversation as you look through the book together. This way, your child will have at least heard the word before attempting to decode it, and also will have made a connection in their own thinking. Taking the time to look at the book and explain what they see offers the child an opportunity to become familiar with the ideas before attempting to read the words - a highly successful boost to making sense of text while learning to read.

Celebrate every attempt 

Usually, children tend to bring home narrative stories when home reading first begins, with limited characters and settings. Reading reflects the novice status of the young reader attempting to notice sight words or use their beginning knowledge of how letters and sounds work together, often resulting in choppy or hesitant reading. Applaud this encouragingly - we were all apprentice readers once, and it is only through attempting anything that is new to us repeated times that we develop proficiency and fluency. Celebrate the efforts - as in "Wow! You worked so hard to figure out what that word was!" or "That was good thinking, looking back to see the word on the other page so you would remember it!" Celebrate the effort, not your child - when we say to children things like "Look how smart you are!" and they know they are not as good as other readers, they don't understand why you think they are smart and begin to doubt themselves. Even if they have made repeated mistakes, the very fact they persevered and didn't give up is an awesome strategy for successfully learning to be a proficient reader. Celebrating the effort and the strategies children use as they attempt to read let's them know you recognize learning to read is hard work and they are doing their best!

Repeated Readings

If your child is willing, try reading through the text twice (they may only be willing to read it once through and that is perfectly okay - learning to read and struggling to make sense of all the letters/sounds/text/pictures is hard work! Try again tomorrow evening :) Encourage your child to build a small collection of books they have read numerous times and are willing to keep reading because reading familiar texts builds confidence, sight word recall, language rhythm, awareness of sentence structures and text features (such as punctuation) and familiarity with vocabulary. Books become like good friends, always there to make you feel good as ou read more and more proficiently with successive readings. If your child needs to return the home reading book to the school after a few days' reading, the book will go back as an easily recognizable old friend and they will take the book knowledge they absorbed from that text forward with them to meet the next text. Repeated readings build confidence and fluency as children read the words aloud with increasing success.

What kind of book is this?

Each time you finish reading with your child, stop to talk about the book after you have praised their efforts. Ask them what kind of book they think this was - a story? (narrative) An instruction book? A poetry book? A rule book? A science book? An imaginary story book? A math book? These are book clues proficient readers learn to look for that help them anticipate structure, vocabulary and purpose as they continually build their reading skills. 

Acting out the story/Retelling

Some children are excited to 'pretend' a story, following the reading. Encouraging them to repeat the words of a character, or describe a setting helps children connect the arduous process of orally reading text to the possible meanings embedded in the words. The purpose of reading is, after all, to make sense of text and embed new understandings and meanings with prior knowledge. Even with the simplest 'learning to read' text, students are able to find a way to act out the story quickly in words with just a little encouragement! One fun way to get kids acting out the story is to pretend you are a reporter interviewing the character in the story and then interview your child with questions about the text. Or, conversely, your child could be a reporter asking you the questions to bring the story to life!

What would you do?

One way to extend the story and help your child make connections with prior knowledge and experiences, is to ask your child 'what would you do if you were in the story?' As they make up new ideas, they are accessing new pieces of information in their brain, making sense of new data they are just receiving as they were attempting to read the text. As they combine their own knowledge with new information, they begin to understand the purposes of reading in a new way.

Rhyming Books

If your child has access to rhyming books, they are most fortunate as an early reader! Rhymes are the easiest way for children to learn to make sense of text in reading as they often have similar sounds the child may recognize as 'repeating language'. Repeating rhymes with your child, especially silly rhymes, offers a unique opportunity to play with the language while expanding your child's awareness of letters/sounds/meanings of words and language. 

These are not the only ways to boost your child's home reading experience, but they are the easiest and most familiar for most of us as parents. Taking the time to play with your child's reading development offers them reassurance they are still loved even though their reading may be a bit choppy, and as you praise their efforts, they begin to see the value in trying their best. For our earliest readers, these side-by-side, supported at home reading interactions are immeasurably important for reinforcing and elevating children's knowledge of letters, sounds, text and meaning.

Lorraine Kinsman, Principal 

Previous blog entries on Home Reading include:

SNAPSHOT: HOW HOME READING BECAME ONE MORE THING ON THE 'TO DO LIST' FOR FAMILIES (SEPT. 8/19)  

WHAT DO PARENTS NEED TO NOTICE AND KNOW ABOUT HOME READING? (SEPT. 15/19) 

STRATEGIES FOR HOME READING WITH A CHILD - WHAT MAKES SENSE FOR A PARENT? (SEPT. 23/19)

READING AT HOME WITH EARLY READERS (SEPT. 29/19)

WHY READING AT HOME MAKES SUCH A DIFFERENCE FOR CHILDREN LEARNING TO READ (OCTOBER 15/19)

SPRINKLING FUN INTO HOME READING (OCTOBER 22/19)