In the past few years, "oracy" has been a key phrase in USD #457. Professional Development days and inservices were created to improve the use of oracy in the classroom. According to Wendy Sparrow, orally is all language skills that produce literate learners. Wendy Sparrow from Literacy Squared® Institute shared a wonderful PowerPoint about oracy in the classroom. Click on Wendy Sparrow's Oracy PowerPoint link to find out more information about oracy. This graphic shows what oracy could and should look like with a group of students found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/hebergersite/3648205233/.
In reading in "Writing Essentials" by Regie Routman I am reminded of the importance of oracy in teaching writing. Many of the students that I teach are English Language Learners. The students speak English as a second language to Spanish or another language. The students are working to blend two different languages that have different grammatical rules. Some students have difficulties making the transition between their first language and English in daily conversations. Then, these same students are required to write in English using correct grammatical rules.
Therefore, new emphasis should be put on having conversations about writing before the students actually write during a writing class period. If students are given the chance to speak about what they are going to write, they can first think about what the sentence sounds like and discuss those sentences with other students. Kagan® activities, such as think-pair-share or mix-pair-share, would be helpful in opening up the conversations in writing. I use Kagan® activities in my classroom on a daily basis. Here is a link to the Kagan website. It has great materials to buy and use to increase oracy in the classroom.
Sometimes it is hard to spend time during writing class speaking because it doesn't seem "right," but it is important to have dialogues with students before the students start to write.
I hadn't really thought about the importance of having students verbalize their ideas before writing. This sure makes sense! The teacher can listen in on these conversations and gain a sense of a child's oral skills along with their readiness to write their ideas. Such a simple thing can be such a powerful tool.
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