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"Oral language skills are the foundation for reading comprehension. Development of language skills before formal reading instruction begins can be a significant factor in reading success. Oral language is the ability that provides children with pathways to thought." ~Unknown

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"How quickly and successfully the young brain learns to read is greatly influenced by the development of two capabilities: speech comprehension and visual recognition."
~David A. Sousa (2014)

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Students are exposed to a vast array of visual media. When we hear the jazzy term 'visual text' we may immediately think of its expression in the digital age, but the roots of visual texts stretch deep into our history; all the way back to our beginnings. Think of the cave paintings in Lascaux!

However, today there are so many more forms of visual text to consider. From cave walls to computer screens and all points in between, students are exposed to billboards, photographs, TV, video, maps, memes, digital stories, video games, timelines, signs, political cartoons, posters, flyers, newspapers, magazines, Facebook, Instagram, movies, DVDs, and cell phones wallpaper - to name but twenty! All these can serve as the jumping off point for a lesson on visual literacy.

The digital age has opened the floodgate on images spilling into our consciousness and unconsciousness alike. The implications for visual literacy stretches far beyond the limits of the English classroom into all areas of our lives. From the math student interpreting graphs to the music student following musical notation, or the geography student poring over Google Earth. For a multitude of purposes, in an array of modalities, visual literacy is ever more important.

Visual Literacy Clues: What Are They and How Do We Read Them?

"Visual Literacy is the ability to construct meaning from images. It's not a skill. It uses skills as a toolbox. It's a form of critical thinking that enhances your intellectual capacity."

Brian Kennedy

Director, Toledo Museum of Art

If visual literacy is about decoding meaning from images of various kinds, we need to teach our students how to set about this intimidating task - just as we do when we teach them how to approach a written text. Regardless of the nature of the image, this process follows three general steps:
1. What Can You See?
To answer this, students must become familiar with Visual Literacy Clues (VLCs). When students are familiar with these clues they will have a method of approaching any image with a view to decoding its meaning. The VLCs are: subject matter, colors, angles, symbols vectors, lighting, gaze, gestures, and shapes. These categories provide an approach to examine the details of the various aspects of the image they are reading.
2. How Does It Make You Feel?
After the students have had time to note what they can see in the image through examination of the VLCs, it is now time for them to consider their emotional response to what they have viewed.

With close reference to the VLCs they have previously identified, students express how the image makes them feel and how it has influenced them to feel this way. They may feel anger, anguish, excited, happy etc. There is no limit to the emotions they may refer to, provided they can point to evidence from the image. Here are some suggested questions to help the students explore their responses:

Subject Matter: What is the topic of the movie? Who and what are in the image? What is the image about?

Color: How is color used in the image? What effect do the colors chosen have on the viewer?

Angles: Are we looking from above or below? What is the camera angle? How does this affect what we see and how we feel about it?

Symbols: What symbols are used in this image? What do you think they represent? Are the colors that were chosen symbolic?

Vectors: Can you see the major lines in the image? Are they broken or unbroken? How do the lines create reading paths for our eyes?

Lighting: Can you describe the lighting used in the movie. How does it affect the 'mood' of the movie?

Gaze: What type of look is the character giving? Where is their gaze directed? What does this say?

Gesture: What type of gestures is the character giving? What is communicated by these gestures?

Shapes: What geometric shapes can you recognize in the image? Do they repeat? Is there a pattern? Is order or chaos conveyed?
3. What Is The Image Trying To Tell Us?
This third aspect peels back another level of meaning to get to the overall message underlying the image. This question asks the students to delve into the intentions of the image maker themselves. The genre of the image will be of significance here too, as the student considers the nature of the image as art, entertainment, advertisement or a fusion of the various genres.

What Are Some Activities for the Teaching of Visual Literacy in the Classroom?

1. Caption a Photograph

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Teaching Visual Literacy In the Classroom - Literacy Ideas

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Students are exposed to a vast array of visual media. When we hear the jazzy term 'visual text' we may immediately think of its expression in the digital age, but the roots of visual texts stretch deep into our history; all the way back to our beginnings.

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Generating an image while reading requires that the reader be actively engaged with the text.

Creating mental images while reading can improve comprehension.

How to use visual imagery

Follow these few simple steps to provide practice developing students' mental images:

Begin reading. Pause after a few sentences or paragraphs that contain good descriptive information.

Share the image you've created in your mind, and talk about which words from the book helped you "draw" your picture. Your picture can relate to the setting, the characters, or the actions. By doing this, you are modeling the kind of picture making you want your child to do.

Talk about how these pictures help you understand what's happening in the story.

Continue reading. Pause again and share the new image you created. Then ask your child to share what he sees, hears, tastes, smells and feels. Ask what words helped him create the mental image and emotions. By doing this, you are providing your child with practice with this new skill.

Are your images identical? Probably not! This is a great time to talk about why your images might be different. Perhaps your child went on a school field trip or had a school assembly that changed the way they created the picture in their mind. Perhaps experiences you've had as an adult influenced what you "drew." These differences are important to understand and respect.

Read a longer portion of text and continue the sharing process.

Once this is a familiar skill, encourage your child to use mental imagery when she is reading by herself. You can feel confident that these mental pictures will help your child understand the story in an important way.

Resources

Into the Book: lesson plans that help students learn to visualize:

Article from Reading Rockets:

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Visual Imagery | Classroom Strategy | Reading Rockets

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Good readers construct mental images as they read a text. By using prior knowledge and background experiences, readers connect the author's writing with a personal picture. Through guided visualization, students learn how to create mental pictures as they read.

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Mystery Bag: Developing Oral Language Skills in First Grade

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"Learning to read and spell is a process of matching oral and written language at three different levels: (1) the discourse level, at which the text is organized into phases and sentences, (2) the sentence level of words within sentences, and (3) the word level off sounds and letters within words and syllables."
~ Bear et al. (2016)

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"To communicate effectively, the words must be arranged in a sequence that makes sense. Languages have developed certain rules (called grammar) that govern the order of words so that speakers of the language can understand each other."
~ David A. Sousa (2014)

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New Talent English - File 1 - Very first sight word sentences

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Ways to Improve Oral Language in the Classroom:

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Ways to Improve Oral Language in the Classroom:

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Oral language is one of the most important skills your students can master-both for social and academic success. Learners use this skill throughout the day to process and deliver instructions, make requests, ask questions, receive new information, and interact with peers.

As a teacher, there's a lot you can do during your everyday lessons to support the development of strong oral language skills in your students. Today's post, excerpted and adapted from Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, OWL LD, and Dyscalculia , by Berninger & Wolf, gives you 14 ideas for supporting oral language development in your students who are verbal. These teaching strategies can help students with specific language disabilities (including dyslexia), and they can boost the language skills of your other learners, too. Try these and see which ones work best for your students!

Encourage conversation.

Every social interaction gives students a new opportunity to practice language. Some of your students might need a little guidance from you to engage in conversations, so spark interactions whenever you can. Ask questions, rephrase the student's answers, and give prompts that encourage oral conversations to continue.

Model syntactic structure.

Your students may not use complete oral syntax in informal speech, but encourage them to do so when they're in the classroom. When a student uses fragmented syntax, model complete syntax back to them. This builds oral language skills and gives students practice in a skill necessary for mastering written language.

Engage in eye contact with students during instruction and encourage them to do the same. Maintaining eye contact will help learners gauge their audience's attention and adjust their language, their volume, or the organization of their speech. This will help them be better understood, communicate more clearly, and successfully interpret nonverbal cues about their clarity.

Remind students to speak loudly and articulate clearly.

Ask students to feel the muscles used for speech while they're talking and monitor their volume and articulation. Remind them that clear and loud-enough speech is essential for holding the attention of the group and communicating their information and opinions effectively.

Have students summarize heard information.

Encourage students to verbally summarize or otherwise discuss the information they hear. This should begin in kindergarten and continue with increasingly difficult questions as students grow older. Teach students to ask for clarification when they don't understand something, and emphasize that they can ask you directly or query fellow students.

Model and guide sentence construction.

Some students have trouble getting started with the wording of a sentence. Saying the beginning word or phrase for the student can help the student structure their response. Give students time for thinking and formulating an oral or written response. Students' explicit experience in both producing their own oral language and processing others' language will help facilitate their comprehension of reading material.

Explain the subtleties of tone.

Your students have probably experienced playground arguments related to tone; misunderstandings are common when students are using loud outdoor voices. Remind your students how tone of voice-which includes pitch, volume, speed, and rhythm-can change the meaning of what a speaker says. Often, it's not what they say, it's how they say it that can lead to misunderstanding of motives and attitudes. Ask your students to be mindful of tone when they're trying to get a message across, and adjust their volume and pitch accordingly.

Attend to listening skills.

Ensure that your students are listening by using consistent cues to get their attention. You might use a phrase like "It's listening time" to give students a reminder. Some students might also benefit from written reminders posted prominently on your wall.

Incorporate a "question of the day."

During each school day's opening activities, ask a question to encourage talk. (You can even write one on the board so your students can read it and start thinking about their answer as soon as they come in.) Start with simple one-part questions like "What is your favorite animal?" If a student doesn't answer in a complete sentence, model a complete sentence and ask the student to repeat your model. Once your students are successfully answering these simple questions in complete sentences, move to two-part questions that require more complex answers: "What is your favorite animal? Why?"

Compile a class booklet of students' phrases.

Give your students a sentence to finish, such as "When my dog got lost I looked..." Have each student contribute a prepositional phrase to complete the sentence (e.g., at the grocery store, in the park, under the bed). Then have your students create a class booklet by writing and illustrating their phrases. When all the phrase pages are assembled into a booklet, students can practice reading the very long sentence with all the places they looked for the dog. Encourage them to come up with a conclusion to the story.

Some students may have difficulty with abstract concepts such as before, after, or following, and with sequences such as days of the week or months of the year. To help students learn and retain these concepts, you may need to present and review them many times and in multiple ways. For example:

You might ask students to identify which holiday comes in each month and then review holidays for other months in sequence: "Groundhog Day is in February. What holiday is in March? In April?"

Have students identify the month before or after a given month. "May is before June and after April." "May is between April and June."

Question to boost comprehension.

Asking questions before and after a reading assignment not only helps sharpen oral language skills, it also helps students think about what they're reading and absorb information from the words. You might try the following strategies to facilitate reading comprehension:

If there's an introduction to the story or passage, ask students to read it and answer purpose-setting questions: "Where does the story begin? "What kind of story or article is this? Why do you think so?"

Ask students to predict outcomes: "What will happen? How do you know?"

After the reading, ask students to reveal whether their predictions were correct and identify where the ending or conclusion begins.

Have students summarize the passage: "Who were the characters?" "What was the plot?" "What was the outcome?" "What was the main idea?" "What were the supporting details?"

Teach for oral reading fluency.

Oral reading fluency refers to how rapidly, smoothly, effortlessly, and automatically students read text. The goal is accurate and fluid reading with adequate speed, appropriate phrasing, and correct intonation. Here are a few activities that aid fluency:

Sentence completion: Read a phrase and signal for a student to complete the sentence. Then read another phrase and signal another student to complete the next sentence. This activity provides good modeling of rhythm and inflection and builds reading group skills.

Round-robin repeated reading: Each student reads a sentence, paragraph, or page, and then the next student gets a turn. Prompt each student to read with rhythm and fluency.

Partner reading: Paired readers choose a quiet, cozy spot to practice reading to one another. This activity provides additional practice after reading in small groups.

Monitored reading: Ask an aide or parent volunteer to listen to a student's oral reading and watch for good phrasing and rhythm.

Repeated reading: Parents may assist with repeated reading at home by asking students to read orally the same 150- to 200-word passage repeatedly over several days. Students do not have to spend more than 10 minutes rereading each night.

Never assume students understood your instructional talk.

You use oral language every day to teach-but some students may not be getting your message. In this chart from Berninger & Wolf's book, Beverly Wolf shares some examples of how students in her classroom misinterpreted sentences delivered orally:

Be aware of the potential disconnect between what you say and what your students hear. Go over your message and present it in multiple ways to be sure all students understand.

***

Oral language is one of the foundational building blocks of learning. Try the suggestions in today's post with your students, and give them the boost they need for future academic and social success.
Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, OWL LD, and Dyscalculia
By Virginia W. Berninger, Ph.D., & Beverly J. Wolf, M.Ed.

Learn how to provide effective instruction for students with learning disabilities while meeting the needs of all students! The first teacher training text to cover all four learning disabilities that require differentiated instruction, this book prepares educators to deliver explicit and engaging instruction customized to the needs of their students. Critical insights from diverse fields blend with lessons learned from actual teaching experience.

MORE RESOURCES ON LANGUAGE SKILLS

Multisensory Teaching of Basic Language Skills, Fourth Edition
Edited by Judith R. Birsh, Ed.D., CALT-QI, & Suzanne Carreker, Ph.D., CALT-QI

The most comprehensive text available on multisensory teaching, this book prepares today's educators to use specific evidence-based approaches that improve struggling students' language skills and academic outcomes in elementary through high school.
LEARN MORE
45 Strategies That Support Young Dual Language Learners
By Shauna L. Tominey, Ph.D., & Elisabeth C. O'Bryon, Ph.D., NCSP

Discover 45 of today's best strategies for teaching young dual language learners and supporting their families. Includes practical guidance on how to apply each strategy in real-world classrooms!

Quick Interactive Language Screener™ (QUILS™)
A Measure of Vocabulary, Syntax, and Language Acquisition Skills in Young Children
By Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Ph.D., Jill de Villiers, Ph.D., Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek, Ph.D., Aquiles Iglesias, Ph.D., and Mary Sweig Wilson, Ph.D.

Early identification is the first step to helping children with language delays improve their skills. Find the children who might need help with QUILS, a one-of-a-kind tool that helps you evaluate whether children are making language progress appropriate for their age group.

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14 Ways to Improve Your Students' Oral Language Skills - Brookes Blog

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UPDATED: 3/23/22 Oral language is one of the most important skills your students can master-both for social and academic success. Learners use this skill throughout the day to process and deliver instructions, make requests, ask questions, receive new information, and interact with peers. As a teacher, there's a lot you can do during your everyday [...]

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"Words in a sentence are assigned syntactic roles and grouped into syntactic phrases. A rule of grammar is that a verb (V) can be combined with its direct object to form a verb phrase (VP). The combination of the noun phrase (NP) and the verb phrase comprises the sentence (S), which can be represented by the syntactic model"
~David A. Sousa

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Check out these engaging back to school ideas to teach your students about sentences and their parts. This color-coded resource is perfect for K-1 literacy centers.

Sentence Building Activity

Writing a complete sentence can be a tricky task in kindergarten and first grade! This build a sentence activity is a great resource to add to your literacy centers. It provides students with support in developing complete sentences, making this activity one of my essential back to school ideas.

The sentence building mats and cards help students construct a sentence and copy it onto their recording sheet. It can be as simple as that or you can extend the learning even further by having students really focus on the who, what, and where. Having students identify the nouns and the verb within the sentence is a great way to add extra practice.

With four different recording sheets, you can easily differentiate within your classroom.

Students will have fun creating sentences that make sense and silly ones, too!

With over 200 word cards, you might decide to print in black ink on colored paper. That option is available for you!

Since this one is a little less color-coded, this is also a nice option for students to read and really think about the who, what, and where.

Click here for this resource for back to school ideas:

Check out some other ideas for literacy centers:
📌 CLICK HERE TO SAVE THIS IMAGE FOR LATER!

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Sentence Building Activity | Literacy Center for K-1

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Engaging sentence building activity to teach your students about sentences and their parts. This color-coded resource is perfect for K-1 literacy centers.

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Silly Sentences - Writing Center [Video] [Video] | Kindergarten writing, Preschool learning activities, Sentence activities

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Dec 28, 2019 - This literacy center helps students learn sentence structure and form some amazing sentences. It exposes them to sentences filled with nouns, adjectives and verbs and allows them to see how to formulate a quality sentence.

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Example of teacher showing how to build a sentence to 1st Grade students.

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Sentence Building | English Grammar for 1st Grade | Kids Academy

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"In oral language, the discourse level includes the specific situation or context in which language is used and shared. It includes the "musical" level of language, usually consisting of sentences or phrases. Within these phrases, speakers produce and listeners hear elements of prosody such as expression, intonation contours, and tone of voice, all of which communicate ideas and emotions."
~ Bear et al. (2016)

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An Explicit Fluency Lesson with a Prosody Element Focus - Smoothness. By The Simple Teachers

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"A second level of structures that children must negotiate in the unit called words. It takes exposure, explanation, and practice, as well as alphabet knowledge, to match words in speech to written words which is why early childhood teachers should point to words as they read from charts or big books."
~ Bear et al. (2016)

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"Sounds and letters make up the third level of analysis. In learning to read, children must segment the speech sounds or phonemes within words and match them to the letters in print. Letters of the alphabet and individual speech sounds must be understood as discrete units that match in systematic ways in order to master reading and spelling English. This understanding is called the alphabetic principle."
~ Bear et al. (2016)

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YouTube Video: How to Teach Phonemic Awareness

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YouTube Video: How to Teach Phonemic Awareness

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First Grade Phonemic Awareness Lesson from my Phonemic Awareness Bundle.

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Last updated on July 13, 2021

These teacher task cards are the perfect phonemic awareness activities, right at your fingertips whenever you need them! There are cards for every skill and they are also differentiated for different levels!
This post contains affiliate links. By purchasing through this link, we get a small commission. Rest assured - we only share links to products that we know and love!
Phonemic awareness activities for kindergarten, first grade, and intervention! These teacher task cards will help you make the most of every classroom moment. Use them during small groups, whole group, one-on-one, in tutoring, or during class transitions to make sure that your students are building phonemic awareness every day!

Phonemic Awareness Teacher Task Cards

WHY PHONEMIC AWARENESS?

I remember my "Teaching Reading" professor in graduate school. She was passionate about phonemic awareness, and there were two things she drilled into our heads.

1. Phonemic awareness can be done in the dark.

2. Phonemic awareness is one of the best predictors of learning to read. (This makes it SUPER important!)

I'm also pretty sure she asked us to name these two facts at the beginning, middle, and end of every class session. In fact, she even made us order copies of reports from the National Reading Panel for "pleasure reading." But guess what? It's now seven years later, and I haven't forgotten about the importance of phonemic awareness.

As I teach reading intervention, I hear her voice in my head. (Note: I didn't say that I hear random voices in my head; I just remember her. ;) ) I'm constantly reminded of one thing: I need to give my students ample opportunities to learn and practice phonemic awareness skills on a daily basis. With only 20-30 minutes per session, I have to make the most of every minute. I could remember all of the skills in my head and keep track of who has already learned what, or I could create a program to keep me on track. Thus, Phonemic Awareness Teacher Task Cards were born!

These task cards are for the teacher only. Why? Because phonemic awareness can be done in the dark! Letters are not required in building phonemic awareness skills. (Save the letters for phonics.) Your students build phonemic awareness skills by listening and speaking. So for once, don't even worry about making copies for your students. These cards are just for you!

THE PHONEMIC AWARENESS ACTIVITIES

I took all of the phonemic awareness skills and created activities for them. They range from begining to advanced so that they can be used with kindergarteners, first graders, second graders, and any students struggling to read and write (spell).

Because phonemic awareness instruction should be systematic and explicit, I "scripted" each skill introduction and each set of student directions. That's right. All you have to do is read it aloud to your students! You'll also model a "sample" activity so that your students know just what to do (also scripted).

Ready for more? Turn the page (or card). You have multiple pages with 5-20 ways to practice that skill!

Skills range from "What's the first sound you hear in ___?" to phoneme deletion and manipulation. Don't worry. It's scaffolded all throughout so that your students will work up to the hard stuff!

SETTING IT UP - ONE AND DONE

Remember how only the teacher needs a set of these task cards? The setup is quick- do it once, and use it for years! If you have a paraprofessional, assistant, or parent volunteers, you can make them each a set too. They can also practice in small groups or one-on-one. I used colored cardstock and binder rings to keep all my task cards together. (Let's be real; it's also to make them pretty. 😉 ). [Note: These are affiliate links for your convenience.] I had many of you ask if I put the colored paper in a specific order, and the answer is no. I just randomly threw it in my printer. Since they print four to a page, the same skills will be the same color.

SKILL LEVELS

Last week, I decided to put all of the skills on one giant binder ring and use sticky tabs to track which groups are on which skills. However, if you want to divide the task cards by level, you can use the table of contents below to do so! [Note: This table of contents is clickable in the PDF, but it won't be here.]

Beginner: Beginning Sound Discrimination through Alliterations

Intermediate: Onset and Rime through Segmenting Phonemes

Advanced: Deleting With Compound Words through Ending Phoneme Substitution

I hope these phonemic awareness teacher task cards make as much of a difference in your classroom has they have in ours! May you hear voices in your head reminding you how important phonemic awareness is to your students. And also always remember that it can be done in the dark. 😉

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Phonemic Awareness Teacher Task Cards: Keep Me On Track

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Last updated on July 13, 2021 These teacher task cards are the perfect phonemic awareness activities, right at your fingertips whenever you need them! There are cards for every skill and they are also differentiated for different levels! This post contains affiliate links. By purchasing through this link, we get a small commission.

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Small Group Phonemic Awareness Activities - Fun in First

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You may remember this post from last year where I shared this freebie with you: Click on the picture above to download again for FREE Many of you wondered what activities I placed in the folders behind each section. Well, here is my first unit for this notebook.

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YouTube Video: Why Learning Oral Language is so Important

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YouTube Video: Why Learning Oral Language is so Important

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Oral language: The foundations of reading and reading intervention

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Early Literacy: The Importance of Oral Language

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Oral Language, Concepts, and Vocabulary:

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Oral Language, Concepts, and Vocabulary:

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"To help children develop the deep and wide vocabulary they will need to succeed in their future academic studies, vocabulary and language learning must become an integral part of all aspects of the early childhood classroom. There are many strategies to build a language-rich environment that will support student's vocabularies, advancing oral language, and concept development"
~ Bear et al. (2016)