Oral Language Strategies
The most basic strategy is to let the children practise oral language. So, therefore, your classroom should be noisy!
Story aprons to let children come to love stories and practice retellings
Story props (like Clifford, Arthur, Franklin, Chicka Chicka Tree) for children
Finger puppets for retellings, creating stories
Computer software for stimulating language development
Games and materials that encourage capital and lower case letter learning
Add new verses to existing poems
Discussions that focus on a variety of topics, including problem solving
Activities that help children understand the world, in and out of the classroom
Songs, chants, and poems that are fun to sing and say
Concept development and vocabulary-building lessons
Games and other activities that involve talking, listening, and following directions
Activities that help children to understand that print represents spoken language
Activities that highlight the meanings, uses, and production of print found in classroom signs, label, notes, posters, calendars, and directions.
Activities in which children practice with predictable and patterned language stories.
Practice activities that involve blending together the components of sounded-out words.
"Word play" activities in which children change beginning, middle, or ending letters of related words, thus changing the words they decode and spell.
Language games that teach children to identify rhyming words and to create rhymes on their own.
Activities that help children understand that spoken sentences are made up of groups of separate words, that words are made up of syllables, and that words can be broken down into separate sounds.
Alphabetic awareness activities in which children learn that printed words are made up of patterns of letters.
Lessons in sound-letter relationships that are organized systematically and that provide as much practice and review as is needed.
As children exhibit behaviors indicative of emergent literacy, parents and teachers can seize the teachable moments, and provide developmentally appropriate materials and interactions to further literacy development.
Alphabetic knowledge activities in which children learn the names of letters and learn to identify them rapidly and accurately.
Activities that are related to the words that children are reading and writing.
Activities that surround children in words and make reading and writing purpose-filled.
Activities that help children learn to preview selections, anticipate content, and make connections between what they will read and what they already know.
Guidance in helping children compare characters, events, and themes of different stories.
Activities that encourage discussion about what is being read and how ideas can be linked (e.g. to draw conclusions and make predictions).
Activities that help children extend their reading experiences through the reading of more difficult texts with the teacher.
Early support of letter knowledge and phonemic awareness.
Instruction on letter-sound correspondences and spelling conventions.
Opportunity and encouragement to use spelling-sound knowledge in reading and writing.
Daily sessions for independent and supported reading with attention to both fluency and comprehension.
Practice in decoding and identifying words that contain the letter-sound relationships children are learning to read and need for reading and writing.