Top 10 Synthesis ECI 540

Carolina Musawwir

Oral Language, the key to closing the achievement gap

I begin this paper with what is the foundational prerequisite for all other learning, oral

language. A topic that jumped out at me in just about every reading that I did for this course.

This is a topic which I have been particularly interested in for years, partly because of my own

schooling in a different country where I feel that children’s oral language is developed through

social interactions, conversations and debates, both at home with the extended family and in the

school. Every time I visit my country I am always amazed by the verbal abilities of children,

who seem to me to be very opinionated, informed and inquisitive about the world around them. I

mention this because I think I have found my overarching question that I would like to explore

for the Master’s program! Something like… How does culture affect the oral development of

children and thus their readiness for reading?

Oral language lays the foundation for phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary,

comprehension and fluency. The size of the child’s vocabulary has tremendous impact on their

school performance. The National Early Literacy Panel (NELP) names expressive and receptive

oral language as the 1st out of 6 variables they identified as essential to early literacy success

(Gambrell & Morrow, 87). In my experience as a teacher who works with students’ struggling

with reading and ELL students and their families, I am convinced that this should be our starting

point as we aim to close the achievement gap that currently exists between our student

subgroups. Through the many readings assigned for this class, it became apparent to me that the

classroom should be a social environment where children learn from the teacher and each other

through activities which require oral language interactions. This is especially important for
children who come from environments that are not language rich, which tend to be lower income

families. Many studies point to the importance of oral language to school success, such as the

research of Hart and Risley (1995) who “reported that children who lack access to particular

types of oral language experiences in their homes are not well equipped to acquire new content

knowledge and forms of discourse in school.” (Pearson & Hiebert, 2015)

I agree with these studies and have noticed myself that regardless of, if the child is a

native speaker of English or not, if they have poor command of their native language (any

language), they will likely struggle academically and the opposite is true also. Now, the question

arises… how do we as teachers catch these children up, children who have spent the most

important part of their language acquisition period in environments which lacked the exposure to

language needed. Is it doable?

The book “Research-Based Practices for Teaching Common Core Literacy” dedicates a

chapter to the topic of oral language, and states that the CCSS has brought important recognition

to this area by identifying it as a significant proficiency that merits attention in all of the

disciplines. This emphasis in oral language is a relatively new addition to the responsibilities

that we have assigned to schooling in the United States and it's one which I don’t believe has

been focused on enough as we discuss educational issues and the CCSS. I am very excited for

this addition to the standards, which states that children “should participate in rich structured

conversations with an adult in response to the written texts that are read aloud, orally comparing

and contrasting as well as analyzing and synthesizing” (CCSS, pg 33) From our Action Book

Project I plan to start this conversation at my school, because I believe that a language rich

environment is how children learn best, and I know that we as teacher want to do what is best

for all students. Which brings me to the topic of Teachers.

Effective Teachers

While reading for this class and during class discussions one point that we often came

back to, was the importance of teacher quality. In the case of reading instruction, we know that

well trained and knowledgeable teachers made a much more powerful impact on student

achievement than the program they used to teach reading. A good teacher shapes and molds

instruction to meet the needs of the students, and the more knowledgeable the teacher is about

best practices, than the more tools he/she will have available to support student learning.

Looking back at the five-part framework for intentional instruction from “What Research has to

say about Reading Instruction”, I come back to the focus of oral language. The five components

that effective teacher use are: “establish purpose, model their thinking, guide students’ thinking

through the strategic use of questions, prompts, and cues, provide students with productive

group tasks that are meaningful, allow students to practice language and consolidate

understanding, and assign independent tasks that require students to apply what they have

learned” This framework for intentional instruction stems from the three major theories, one of

which is literacy as a social practice. (Samuels & Farstrup, 360- 366) Again, reminding us of

the importance of oral language which stem from interactions in the classroom and pointing out

that effective teachers intentionally plan for group activities which implore students to talk with

each other and the teacher in order to better understand.

The parent/teacher team

When we discuss using conversations to solidify and expand learning we must not forget

the role that parents play. Teachers and parents should work as partners for the benefit of the

child and through this collaboration they maintain constant language and academic support. For

my ELL students this is tricky because many times there is a language barrier which exists
between parents who don’t speak a lot of English and their children who many times have only

limited command of the Spanish language, having been raised in an English speaking country.

For example if a student learns about the Civil Rights Movement at school and later that

afternoon the parents ask him what he learned in school, it is very doubtful that the child would

be able to explain that topic to the parent, because they wouldn't have the vocabulary needed to

explain it in Spanish. This is very concerning because this lack of home reinforcement further

prevents student advancement. As it concerns reading instruction, this lack of reinforcement

from the home environment means that children will have less background knowledge, which

will hurt their comprehension as they read. Best Practices for ELL students is to encourage and

support full command of both the school language and the home language, which will allow

them to transfer knowledge from one language to the other and from the home environment to

the school and vice versa.

In order for this to take place the schools need to encourage, celebrate and embrace the

home language, both in the classroom and with their choices of afterschool activities and

celebrations. We need to focus more on engaging families in the school system, as soon as the

child enters kindergarten, in meaningful activities which will help the parent in seeing the school

as a partner in their child’s education, a partner which encourages and supports bilingualism.

Schools should encourage families to develop their children's first language and we need to teach

parents about the importance of talk at home. Which brings us to our next topic...how will

families who have limited vocabulary and low levels of education create enriching conversations

with their children? Through books!

Books as tools for language development

The ultimate tools to close the achievement gap are books. Books expose students to

ideas, vocabulary, different points of view and a wealth of experiences which enrich

conversations both at school and in the home. Schools need to encourage families to read to

their children in the native language and to have discussions around the reading. Read aloud at

school should encourage sharing of opinions and ideas surrounding the text, they should be the

catalyst for oral language. Authentic text need to be the tools that we use to teach vocabulary,

writing, and reading. We as teachers need to be deliberate and thoughtful in the choice of books

we use for read aloud and the ones that we put out for children to read. The books should mirror

our student population and their experiences, and we as teachers need to foster the love of

reading through example.

Teachers as motivators

Motivation plays a huge role in learning to read. I believe that as a teacher this might be

our biggest task. Thinking back on my own schooling, I know that the teachers that I learned the

most from, and that influenced my life the most, were the ones that brought a sense of

excitement and purpose to the classroom and which made me feel like I was a valued part of the

classroom community. Some of the most important things that you can do to motivate students

is to get to know them (and it’s even better if you get to know some of the family) and to give

them choice. What are their interests? What are their challenges or concerns? Once you know

the answers to these you could incorporate books about these topics to your classroom library,

read aloud, or their independent reading baskets. You could have class discussions and do

research on these topics. When we choose topics which children have some background
knowledge from life experience then we are also validating them and their culture, and bring

relevance to the learning.

Comprehension= what is on the page + our life experiences, background knowledge &

beliefs

Reading comprehension is the ultimate goal of reading instruction, but what does that

mean? Is it to extract meaning from the text, or to make meaning from the text? Is it enough to

teach reading strategies? And how do you “teach” someone to understand? This is a complex

subject but what we do know is that decoding instruction, fluency practice and vocabulary

instruction are not enough to achieve reading comprehension. There is a lot that goes into how

we make meaning of text, and while research done by Edmonds and colleagues in 2009 states

that“ comprehension interventions were superior to all other types of interventions for enhancing

comprehension, and the most effective interventions were those that taught multiple strategies”

(Gambrell & Morrow, 225), teaching the strategies alone is not enough.

From my understanding of how to best support comprehension, it is through creating safe

environment in which children express their understanding, learn from each other through dialog

and group activities and have a window into the thinking process of the teacher and their peers

through open ended questions, think-aloud and metacognitive activities.

Fluency and its relation to comprehension

When we talk about comprehension we must discuss fluency, because comprehension is

essential to fluency. Fluency is achieved when students are given material to read at their

independent reading level, so that the decoding is not arduous and they have some background

knowledge to the topic, which aids their comprehension. What is clear from the research is that

fluency does not equate to speed of reading. In order to help students in this area we need to
start with automaticity of word recognition. We allow students ample exposure to what readers

should sound like through animated read aloud, by the teacher or/and through technology. We

allow them to practice with a partner who is a little more fluent. We give them ample exposure

to the text either through repeated reading or through wide reading that exposes them to the same

vocabulary in different texts/context. And because of the importance of making meaning from

the story in order to read fluently, real books are best for practicing and encouraging fluency.

Real books give early readers support through the illustrations and they immerse the reader in a

story, which through context cues will help them to make meaning of unknown vocabulary and

help the reader to figure out the intonation needed.

Vocabulary...windows to comprehension

Words give children the language for ideas. The ability to effectively express one-self is

liberating and empowering. Through vocabulary instruction we help students to understand their

world and the language to express their understandings. In the classroom, explicit vocabulary

instruction should be part of all subjects. Oral language activities reinforce the vocabulary in

ways that solidify the learning. Vocabulary should be taught in context and with multiple

exposures to the vocabulary. The CCSS “Staying on Topic Within a Grade and Across Grades:

How to Build Knowledge Systematically in English Language Arts K–5” suggest that schools

select themes which to focus on and expand on these themes across the grades (CCSS, 33). This

sort of systematic exposure to a growing complexity of vocabulary within a theme helps students

to develop depth of knowledge.

Phonemic awareness and Phonics are essential to understanding the print code

I work with children in the very early stages of the reading process, with ELL students and

students who come into the school with very little knowledge of how print works. For this
reason we work on phonemic awareness and phonics a lot in the classroom, and I always

encourage parents to support these in their native language at home. Both of these skills are

verbal skills which require social interactions and oral language. The conclusion from the

research “that children do need systematic phonics instruction but there is no one best way to

teach phonics” (Gambrell & Morrow, 192) was reassuring to me. Because this is a large part of

what I do with my students I have through the years of doing this, and by pulling pieces from a

variety of places, found a system that works well for my students, my school and myself.

Independent Reading

Lastly, but of great importance on my list of takeaways from this course, is the

importance of making time in the school day for students to read for enjoyment. The reason we

teach reading is because we want children to become independent readers, who are able to access

text for information and for pleasure, yet we many times see independent reading as just a time

filler and don’t give it the importance that it should have in the school day.

For struggling readers specially, time reading and engaged in text in specially important,

since practice reading makes better readers, which will make them want to read more. I say this

because we as teachers tend to spend a lot of time trying to get them to master isolated skills, like

CVC words, sight words, etc. that we forget sometimes that the most important goal is to get

them to be interested in books so that they will practice reading. Our book on Best Practices

states that “the role of the teacher is critical in motivating students to read for their own reasons

and purposes by assuring an appropriate student-book match so that time spent reading is both

profitable and enjoyable for the reader”(Gambrell & Morrow, 24).

Much of what I focused on for my takeaways from this course have to do with the

importance of creating social interactions that foster oral language, which provide the foundation
needed for reading and comprehending. It might seem odd that I end this paper with the subtopic

of independent reading. Yet, it’s not. Independent reading, although contrary to the title, is not

independent. Independent reading is still a social act of conversation between the reader and the

author. Through lots of independent reading, like we have done for this course, could we then

synthesize the ideas that we then share in our conversations.

As reading teachers we support the child’s journey, to the knowledge which they will

discover when they read independently, by the scaffolding that we provide through oral

language. We explain the reading code, we give them plenty of practice and we motivate them

to find out for themselves the wonderful conversations that are possible through books.
 Works Cited

CCSS found at http://www.corestandards.org/wp-content/uploads/ELA_Standards1.pdf

Gambrell, L. B., & Morrow, L. M. (2014). "Best Practices in Literacy Instruction, Fifth

Edition"

Pearson, P. D., & Hiebert, E. H. (2015). Research-based practices for teaching common core

literacy. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Samuels, S. J., & Farstrup, A. E. (2011). What Research Has to Say About Reading Instruction.

International Reading Association.