Overview

Oral Language Books provide opportunities for a child’s oral language to develop in the following areas:

• Vocabulary enrichment and word-building
• Sentence-structure skills (elements of speech—singular and plural nouns, verbs, and verb tenses)
• Receptive and expressive language skills (including familiarity with pronouns, conjunctions, sequencing words, spatial language, language of quantity and size, ordinal expressions, inclusion, and exclusion language)
• Behaviors expected when using the book and practicing oral communication, e.g. look at someone when talking to them; use appropriate body distance; ask for clarification; practice rephrasing and taking turns
• Questioning and answering skills, e.g. use question matrix—who, what, when, why, where

Multiple Literacies

Oral Language Books are a multi-modal approach to developing literacy through a diverse range of stimulus pictures. The multi-modal literacy components covered are:

• Linguistic—through vocabulary development
• Visual—through discussing and analyzing the (visuals) pictures to enhance literacy concepts
• Gestural—through the analysis of body language and facial expressions in the different scenarios presented
• Spatial—through discussing the layout, position, and size of objects that are presented.

Multiple Purpose

• To develop oral language skills in students who have English as their first language
• To develop oral language skills in ELL/ESL students, where English is their second language
• To develop oral language skills in students who have a language disorder

A number of skills will be taught through the use of:

• A double-page spread varying in visual content, e.g. scene/diagram/images
• Extensive teaching notes relating to each double-page spread
• An interactive whiteboard

Essential Skills and Knowledge

Oral Language Books cover a range of essential skills and knowledge:

• Grammatical concepts
• Skills to extend vocabulary
• Thinking beyond
• Behavior expected when talking to others

Grammatical Concepts

• Nouns
• Singular and plural nouns
• Gender language and pronouns (I, me, we, us, you, they, he, him, she, her)
• Verbs and verb tenses
• Adjectives
• Adverbs

Skills To Extend Vocabulary

• Convergent categorization (e.g. all these vehicles have a steering wheel)
• Divergent categorization (e.g. pouched animals include kangaroos, koalas, and opossums)
• Spatial vocabulary (e.g. prepositions: in, on, under, near)
• Language of quantity and size (e.g. more, less, many, few, large, small)
• Sequencing:
  • ordering events in categories such as daily, weekly, or yearly
  • ordering events in time order such as first, next, then, after, before, today, yesterday

Thinking beyond Familiarity with the following will stimulate children’s language:

• Inferring of emotions and events
• Recognizing cause and effect