What Assessment Data Shows In Terms Of Oral Language Acquisition

I have the most amazing group of learners in my class. They love learning and are 100% engaged and excited about whatever exciting learning experience is in front of them. Already we have created a culture of writing to share our learning and ideas and thirst to want to learn. 

The feel in our class is one of happiness, positive relationships, and trust. The students were quick to form relationships with me and each other. 

The class is extremely inclusive of each other and happy to be at school each day. 

What a great position to start an inquiry into changing my practice to better meet the needs of these beautiful little learners that have incredible potential within and ahead of them. 

My target group consists of 9 Year 1 and 2 students. I sampled these 9 students based on my teacher judgment and assessment data of those students with the lowest levels of oral language and foundation skills. 

With a focus on developing foundation skills in our student's first few years at school, a key element is oral language.

To assess the areas of challenge students had in terms of oral language acquisition I used the Dr Jannie van Hees CombiList (2013). 

Only two out of the nine students showed competence in any of the factors of language development described in the combilist. The other 7 students all only demonstrated these factors sometimes or not at all. 

The greatest areas of the challenge were: 

-Giving elaborate responses to open-ended questions from the teacher.

Open ended questions are met with shoulder-shrugging, "I dunno." or silience. Students look uncomfortable and at times will freeze rather than give a response. It is hard to know if they don't understand, don't have the words, are not used to thinking at a more critical level, or are not confident speaking.

-Sustaining expression of their meaning, ideas, and intentions.

One or two words are shared when expressing their thoughts. The vocabulary is low-level and directly linked to their own direct experiences with very few content-driven vocabulary. Sentence structures short and missing structural words. Ideas are not elaborate and very few details are given.

Video snap snots of students show that some students use one or two-word utterances in play situations with the use of very little concept vocabulary.

Two boys playing with dinosaurs showed them hitting the dinosaurs together shouting "arggggggh, arggggggh, die, die, argggggh, argggggh" with no other vocabulary used.

-Thinking before they speak so as to express at a higher cognitive level.

My hunch is that thinking before they speak ties in with low impulse control, saying the first thing that comes into their head or repeating something someone else has called out. These students also have difficulties with impulse control in the physical sense. They quickly 'do' without stopping and thinking. Would improving the physical improve the verbal aspect of impulse control or vice versa? 

-Continuing their meaning and intentions, and picking up and using teacher examples and models.

The difficulty students have listening to the teacher or each other is obvious through their body language and questing them as a response to what has been shared verbally. Also, 4 of the nine students lack confidence speaking if they feel they may get it wrong and have moments of shutting down. 

-Talking to others, not only the teacher.

I have observed the reluctance of students to speak in group situations during mat time e.g. group discussions. It is common for them to sit back and let the more confident students speak. This, however, isn't the case when they have physical activities to do as they seem engaged in the doing and talking comes more naturally.

All students are reading at Level 1 or Pre Level 1 and Writing at Pre Level 1 of the New Zealand curriculum. and writing at pre 1B.