Speaking skills
Speaking for reading
Developing the spoken language to improve the quality of children’s reading.
Copying sounds.
Learning to read involves phonics, which involve listening to all sorts of sounds, but specifically spoken sounds.
It is not only the teacher making letter sounds and writing them on the board or holding up a letter card for the whole class to mimic.The individual child must have opportunities to say those sounds himself, even watching his mouth in a mirror, which makes it even more fun, or breathing the sound onto the skin of his arm. It is so important to note that phonic sounds are breath sounds, and so blend easily one into the next. The harsh phonic sounds taught years and years ago do not blend and so these harsh sounds turn c a t into ker a ter, which do not blend to make the word cat! Teachers must make sure they teach the soft breath sounds of phonics and not the harsh ones of yesteryear!
At its earliest stages, exchanging sounds is the very beginning of developing speech and of developing conversation in all languages. Children need to hear how to pronounce sounds, words, phrases and sentences.
They need to practice making sounds themselves as a pre-reading skill, using the face muscles they need to make those sounds.
Speaking enhances the acquiring of reading skills.
Talking about a picture in a book, the teacher explaining, the child asking or imagining or suggesting ideas, improves the motivation to read.
Book picture reading improves the fluency of word reading and encourages children to learn to take contextual clues, firstly from the illustrations and later from the text. Even as adults, we enjoy this type of reading, when we thumb through a coffee table book.
Two way talking allows children to develop pronunciation, tone, volume, encouraging them to use speech in a way that readily communicates ideas.
We call the mechanical, expressionless, poor quality reading that is merely seeing a word and reading it, “Barking at print!” The child does not develop an understanding of the text …and later, teachers complain,
“He cannot read with expression!”
"He is unable to imagine the content of the text!"
Talking about the picture in a book also encourages children to create a visual image of the story, something that sadly many poor readers cannot do, as their brains are fully occupied decoding a too-difficult-for- them text. Later on, the teacher will complain,
“She is hopeless at comprehension!"
This is because the difficult decoding stops her acquiring a visual image of what she is reading about! So how can she answer questions about the text in a comprehension exercise?
Books forward facing.
Books on a shelf with their dreary spines facing out do not easily inspire a child to try them. But a book held up in the classroom or stood up on a book display, front facing the class and a teacher or child recommending it verbally is much better.
Naming the author and illustrator, verbally describing the picture on the front cover and predicting the story, peeking inside at the size of font and illustrations, soon inspires children, and there will be a waiting list for that book, and those who borrow the book will have others urging them on to finish it soon, so that they can have their turn. The waiting list could be a classroom chart headed, "Who would like to read this book next?" Without the talking beforehand, such motivation would not be there. Quality reading often depends on such speech before text.
Children recommending a book.
When reporting back on recently completed reading homework, ask one child to give to the class, an impromptu spoken synopsis of the book read.
Then ask the speaker "Who do you think would most enjoy the book next and why?". The rest of the class sit up to be chosen.
"I think Tom would like this, because he likes adventure stories about space."
Tom will look proud to have been chosen.Ask Tom if this is true and if he would like to read the book next.
Then ask the speaker when he thinks he will have finished the book and by now Tom, or someone else will be keen to borrow it. Make a list if children other than Tom are inspired to read the book.
A small technique, but I have found that children often respond more positively to another child recommending a book to them, than an adult doing the same.