Oral Communication

Students need opportunities to “talk” for many reasons:

• communicate information

• explore and understand ideas and concepts

• solve problems

• organize experiences and knowledge

• express thoughts, feelings, and opinions

Students of all ages need continuous opportunities to develop their oral language skills. Before students can read and write, they need to be able to speak and listen.  Ideas are developed and language patterns are learned when students engage in ongoing talk.  As students get older, they develop additional skills, such as the use of tone, vocabulary and non-verbal cues to support their oral language.

Some prompts you can ask your child to help express thoughts, ideas, and opinions:

• What does this make you think about?

• What do you notice in this picture /story?

• What do you think is happening?

Sometimes when we’re talking, we have different opinions.  Learning how to explain yourself is a skill that takes time.  Here’s a few prompts to help your child justify a point of view:

• Why do you think that?

• Explain why you think that….

• How do you know that?