Let's Talk it out

We just can't stop talking so let's continue with this post...

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Take a second and think about the first thing we did as a baby, it wasn’t reading it wasn’t learning how to write or use social media it was talking! Oral Communication goes way back…all the way to our first words as a baby.

Oral communication is so important in more then just the subject of language, it is a part of every subject, a part of a student’s everyday life and their future endeavors in perusing their careers. We need to make students confident in their communication skills so they become confident reading out loud to their peers, speak in front of a group and communicate with others on a daily basis. Like outlined in the OME, oral communication skills are fundamental in the development of a student’s learning. Tied directly to speaking is listening and being an active listener and respecting others and their voice.  

“Through talk, students not only communicate information but also explore and come to understand ideas and concepts; identify and solve problems organize their experiences and knowledge and express and clarify their thoughts, feelings, and opinions,”

-Ontario Language Curriculum Grades 1-8

When I reflect back on my experience in 8P24 with Carol we built our communication and listening skills each class, we worked in groups, shared our ideas through talk, expression and beliefs and without subconsciously knowing we are working on improving this fundamental skill. Collaborative group work is reliant on speaking and listening, presentations work on a student’s confidence in front of a class and their speaking skills.

As educators we should continue to build on these fundamental skills for our students, give them the opportunities throughout the classroom working together to share ideas, work through word problems in math and other subjects. Help build their public speaking skills first with small groups and then progress them to bigger classroom discussions and presentations.

As students work to become active listeners and effective speakers it is imperative we ask them to reflect on their work and performances, help them focus on their strengths and weaknesses and set goals to improve themselves in this area of learning. This is outlined in the Ontario Curriculum for us educators to include into our lesson planning and teaching not just in language and other subjects but life skills as well.

“It also emphasizes the use of higher-order thinking skills to stimulate student’s interest and engage them in their own learning.”

-Ontario Language Curriculum Grades 1-8

For my lesson plan I decided to work with the Oral Communication strand because I enjoyed the forum reading by Burek & Losos ‘Debate: Where speaking & listening come first.’  When I first thought of oral communication I thought of presentations, speeches and public speaking lesson plans. However debates would also be a very fun and interactive lesson that would incorporate a variety of skills students would be working towards improving such as:

• Speaking skills
• Becoming active listeners
• Developing ideas and delivering them orally
• Developing confidence to publicly speak in front of a group  
• Working collaboratively with peers
• Learning to take initiative and build leadership skills

Debates are also a creative and effective way to build lesson plans that can cross into other subject areas, for instance like my lesson plan on the Parthenon Marbles and their whereabouts. Students will research the Parthenon Marbles that have been a part of history for centuries (History) that contribute to the learning of different art work and art pieces (Art).  I thoroughly enjoyed learning about debates and their positive contribution to a student’s development of oral communication skills.

To end something I really enjoyed from this past week in literature was the video 13 Words, Lemony Snicket. It has definitely been added to the resources toolkit for literature. 

There is a lot more to writing beside’ s your penmanship ✍🏽

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Writing is an important skill in life that everyone should possess and work to perfect over the years. It improves one’s communication skills, creativity and creative thinking abilities. Writing helps to express one’s ideas and beliefs and gives personality to each one of us. Exposing our students to the skills needed to be good writer’s starts at a young age. Writing is a complex process that brings personality and perspective to a student’s work , it is important for us educators to encourage students to think critically when writing for an essay, a test, perspective piece or persuasive writing. Writing goes beyond language arts, it is involved in all subjects in school and helps build individuals communication and reading skills. 

The curriculum highlights the importance of writing effectively and identifies the expectations we as teachers should follow to ensure our students build their writing skills.

“Through writing students organize their thoughts, remember important information, solve problems, reflect on a widening range of perspectives. And learn how to communication effectively for specific purposes and audiences.”

-Ontario CurriculumGrades 1-8

Throughout this course we have been exposed to multiple resources and tools we as educators can use to teach our future students. Pinterest has been a media resource that will come very handy and a popular app used on my technology devices! It comes fully loaded with resources in multiple subject areas and within each subject area has a variety of activities and lesson plans that other teachers have implemented in their classrooms. A writing prompt activity that I explored for a PLC week was from Pinterest and it involved a Lego building activity that was connected to writing. This activity came from the site ‘We areTEACHERS’ that provides a number of ideas, inspiration and giveaways to teachers. This activity provides students the opportunity to build and create a story first with Lego pieces and then asks the students to create a story from their Lego creation. This can be a great starting point when creating stories, I personally always had a difficult time starting a writing piece and students sometimes lack that ability as well. However with an activity that first gets the students to create a visual and then a story can provide them the opportunity to produce a writing piece that interests them. This activity can also be adapted for a number of grades, for Grade 1’s we can start by asking them to just build a small character and then write a piece on who they have built, why they built them looking the way it does, etc. Then as we get into the older grades we can ask them to build a scene and create a short story detailing what is to come from that one scene. This is just one example of many different writing prompts that are available to teachers online.  

When I reflect back on my education in writing I remember my teachers really focus on structure of writing and how a writing piece is broken into introduction, conclusion and body paragraphs. Structuring a writing piece is only part of learning how to write, I believe as educators we should also focus on teaching our students about persuasive writing and opinion pieces, such as explaining one’s point of view and expressing their thoughts onto paper. Articulating my thoughts to paper is what I found most difficult, I didn’t know how to express my words and transition my thoughts from one point to another. Learning how to do these skills as well as structuring writing pieces can build on one’s writing skills.

Hope you enjoyed reading my writing blog, check out my blog in a few weeks as I talk about the importance of oral communication with our future students, and the connection it has with our writing, reading and media literacy strands.

If you are reading this then your about to read my latest blog post 📖👓

Reading happens in our everyday lives, it’s hard to think of a day where we don’t go without reading. Growing up I enjoyed reading books in my spare time outside of school during the summer months. Some of my favourite reads included Nancy Drew collection, The Twilight series and novels by the murder/mystery artist Joan Lowery Nixon. I choose to read novels that were interesting to me which then led me to envision the story in my imagination. I think it is important to have our students tap into their imaginations and creative minds when we ask them to read. We need to give reading a purpose and allow students to appreciate reading more, and not just read because we ask them too.

“…imaginative powers will go a long way towards convincing them that reading can be a rich source of pleasure and knowledge”

-Ontario Curriculum Grades 1-8

This is a key point that I have highlighted from the curriculum. As educators we need to give choice and options to our students so that they can feel empowered making decisions with their reading materials, getting in touch with their imaginations and allowing them to make connections with their reading material to themselves and real world experiences. 

Reading is not only important in language arts but can apply to every subject and daily activities. We as educators need to help students understand the significance of reading and how it encompasses comprehension strategies outlined in the curriculum such as predicting, visualizing, questioning and drawing interference, identifying main ideas and summarizing (Ontario Curriculum, pg. 10).  Reading is a topic of learning that will apply cross curricular to other subjects but also will help strengthen the writing, oral communication and media literacy strands of language arts as well. An activity I really enjoyed from class was the reading-writing connection activity, as a group we created a story with the simple direction of choosing an opening prompt. Activities such as this one can help a student begin organizing their thoughts and give students ideas where to start. However students need to understand writing prompts and be able to visualize and predict a story.

As important as it is to get students reading material that interests them I think it is also important as an educator to get my students to read different material to build their vocabulary, and expand their comprehension on different topics that both fictional books and non-fiction books can teach young learners. Gathering material to add into my toolbox of resources is important as a future educator. Gathering a variety of reading prompts, ideas to start read-along in my classroom and online sources (i.e., Storybird) can help enrich the learning and interest of reading in my classroom.

As an educator it is important to know your students and where their prior knowledge lies with regards to reading.

“Reading is a complex process that involves the application of many strategies before, during and after reading. –Students might prepare by identifying the purpose of the reading activity and by activation their prior knowledge about the topic of the text.”

-OntarioCurriculum Grades 1-8

It is important to build on our students and their knowledge and help to create a strong and sound foundation that incorporates the enjoyment of reading for our young learners. As en educator I will work towards doing just this in my classroom and foster the interest in my students so they can continue to become good readers and appreciate and understand what they read.  

So let's bring the enjoyment back into reading, hope you enjoyed!  


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