Oral Language Development

In first grade, we try to give students time to practice speaking in a fluid, grammatically correct sentences. If students can speak properly, this will translate to their writing. During morning meeting today, we asked each student to share one thing that happened to them that weekend. I provided them with the sentence starter, "This weekend I…" then had all the students repeat it back to me, to practice how they would formulate their idea. Each student had the chance to share in the circle. When students stumbled over their words, I repeated the sentence starter which helped them get back on track. Some students paused for a very long time between the sentence starter and sharing what it was that they did. In these cases, I had students say the whole completed phrase again, which allowed them to hear the string of words altogether and promote their oral fluency. Oral fluency is another form of literacy and at times needs to be directly taught.

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