Elkonin boxes help kids build phonological awareness by helping them divide words into their individual phonemes.

Oral language provides a foundation for communication of ideas and intelligent conversation, and the development of other language skills. Before students achieve proficiency in reading and writing, oral language is one of the most important means of learning and of acquiring knowledge.
Things to consider when selecting words to teach:
•Teach words that are central to the concept students must learn.
•Teach only words students do not already know.
•Teach students to use context clues, when available.
•Teach only a few words at a time so meaning is retained.
•Relate new words to previously learned words.
•Provide multiple exposures to words.

The work that teachers do varies greatly, but they are connected by their belief the power of talk. During the year these teachers supported oral language in their own way. This projected used an appreciative inquiry model to support and capture the widely divergent strategies, learnings, and support teacher's individual needs while supporting oral language development in the classroom.

Hopefully you can find some oral language activities in this handout that you can use in your classroom. Thank you for working to support the oral language abilities of the students on Saskatchewan’s Hutterite Colonies!

Oral language forms the basis of all reading and writing.
Here are some ideas of how to teach oral language skills in your classroom.

Talk for Writing is an engaging teaching framework developed by Pie Corbett, supported by Julia Strong. It is powerful because it is based on the principles of how children learn. It enables children to imitate the language they need for a particular topic orally, before reading and analysing it, and then writing their own version.

This is a paper on oral language in relation to Reading Recovery.
Information on the record of oral language is contained, as well as the paper to administer it to students to determine what they can control with regards to oral language.

This playful phonological awareness activity to build rhyming skills using colors. Lots of fun for preschoolers and early readers!

Early-childhood learning can help prepare students for better academic engagement. This Spotlight will help you discover how coding exercises can enhance preschooler’s academic skills; learn how to support young students’ language growth; understand the gaps in preschooler’s language development since the pandemic; examine the impact of early education programs on high school performance; investigate challenges facing school readiness; and evaluate Pre-K programs from multiple lenses.

Download the PDF file.

The following document from Sun West School Division provides a number of strategies and activities for teaching oral language development.

Reading 101 is a self-paced professional development course for K-3 teachers, developed by Reading Rockets. The program provides teachers with an in-depth knowledge of reading and writing so they are prepared to guide their students into becoming skilled and enthusiastic readers and writers.
Course Modules include:
- Print Awareness
- Phonological and Phonemic Awareness
- Phonics
- Fluency
- Vocabulary
- Spelling
- Comprehension
- Writing
- Assessment