Quick and Dirty Oral Language Strategies

How about something I can use tomorrow in my class, Greg?

Deb Vanderwood asked me to submit some oral language strategies for a literacy newsletter she was doing for the district. I'll post them here in case you, dear reader, need a break from my recent self-indulgent thread of woodworking articles.

Here are snapshots of low-prep, high-yield speaking, listening, and thinking strategies and activities:

• The News 
• Two-Headed Story Machine 
• Picture Detectives 
• Three Pictures 
• Mini-Debates  
• One-Minute Speeches 

6. 
   

The News 

I adapted this idea from Brenda Miyanaga.  At the beginning of every day, every child can come up and say one sentence about what is going on in their lives.  It is kind of like oral Twitter. I have a mic set up in my class (so *I* can be heard without yelling), but you do not have to have one.  Guests to my class remark how comfortable students are with speaking in front of others.  It could be due to this non-threatening routine.   

 

Two-Headed Story Machine 

I lifted this one from Theatre Sports.  If you can, demonstrate this to your class with another adult or a quick-thinking student.  With a partner, tell a story together, but each partner/head only gets to say ONE WORD at a time, going back and forth.  This is a fun way to generate random story ideas.  Partners have to listen carefully to each other, and teachers can work in a lot of grammar into this strategy. 

 

Picture Detectives 

Show an illustration from a picture book, a screenshot from a movie, a photo from a Social Studies or Science book, a news photo, etc.  Students use the 5Ws to figure out who, where, when, what, and why from the picture plus explain HOW they know based on the evidence from the picture.   This strategy uses inference and evidence.  Teachers can use this as a pre-reading strategy or a story generating method.  My class used this strategy to write news stories. 

 

3 Pictures 

(Joni Tsui told me about this one which originally came from Faye Brownlie).  When introducing a new topic, show students 3 pictures, but do not tell them what the new topic is.  Instead of trying to generate statements about each picture, students generate questions orally about each picture (to expand their thinking), one at a time.  Without answering the questions, students try to figure out what connects the three pictures.  For example, to introduce the water cycle, the teacher could show a lake on a sunny day, a hurricane, and a hydroelectric dam. 

 

Mini-Debates 

(Kevin Akins used the Academic Controversy strategy that I morphed into Mini-Debates for my primary class).  Introduce this strategy with an accessible “issue” (Skittles are better than Smarties, beach vs mountains, etc.).  If you can, demo this with an adult.  Part 1: Person A (the teacher) talks for 30 seconds explaining the Pro side of the issue while Person B listens.  Then Person B has up to 30 seconds to speak about the Con side while Person A listens.  They have another 30 seconds to have a chat freely about their ideas.  Part 2: They switch sides!  Now Person B is the Pro person and speaks for 30 seconds, and so on.  This strategy exercises thinking on your feet, listening to your partner (so you can refute or use their ideas), and looking at an issue from both sides.  

 

 

One-Minute Speeches 

Students write, practice, and perform speeches one-minute long. For my 2/3 class, I get them to do a speech about a non-fiction topic.  (We do so much story writing so doing factual writing is a nice change).  We use Bev Kelly’s paragraph map (on 11x17), and adapt it into a “speech sandwich” with the box at the top for the intro, the box in the middle for the closing, and the boxes in the middle for the categorized body of the speech.  Once crafted, students cut these boxes out and they become ordered cue cards.  Students practice and perform their speeches.  The best part is when the class listens and gives the speaker feedback: “I noticed you stayed on topic.  I could hear every word.  I learned new things.  I thought you were brave.”