3 Important Tools To Improve Speaking Skills Of Early Year Students

"Why do you enjoy talking so much in a class?” asked a teacher to a student.

“It is because everybody listens to you and you feel important “replies the 3-year-old student.

This happens when you possess great Oracy skills.

Oracy is the ability to speak well.

Speaking is considered a huge priority by Amy Gaunt, who is a 3-year school teacher. She thinks it is one of the biggest signs of success in the future. It's important in terms of their employability and wellbeing in their future. She also thinks that children who fail to express themselves or are unable to communicate their feelings, cannot turn into successful members of society.

So, if you are a teacher and want to learn the techniques to teach oral skills to children, you can pursue the Early Years Care and Education Program and acquire the skills that are required to improve the oracy skills of children.

Early education teachers give this opportunity to learners to acquire their speaking language skills as it is one of the first communication tools used by children to interact with others, connect with people, and most importantly gain knowledge. Racy skills are related to the development of oral language such as tonal variation of voice and clarity of pronunciation, turn-taking, storytelling, appropriate vocabulary choice, and so on.

Let us find out three powerful tools that are useful to early learners to develop oracy skills:

1. The Environment
The way children connect with their environment may make it easy for them to develop rich language.

Circle time: Arrange a separate area with a carpet or a circle painted on the floor that looks alluring. That area can be used by the children to sit every day at the beginning of the class or whenever the teacher finds it is required or relevant, to share their experiences and feelings and involving in activities like singing and playing.

Books: Allow children to read storybooks every week, and keep the books in a place that is easily accessible by the learners. You can keep cushions or lay a carpet where the learners can sit and read the books loudly to themselves or each other. While reading the books, the children can imitate the teacher telling the story. When they repeat the parts of the story they like more, it will be a practice of not only the language but also the intonation, pronunciation, and even body language.

2. Time
Teachers are aware of the fact that their lessons need to have a special rhythm. Children are usually full of energy when they enter a class and look to play with their peers and are eager to know what they’ll discover and learn. You can begin the class with a welcome activity where they can play some playful activities for a few minutes, such as building games on the carpet or some hand-clapping games like pat-a-cake, and then enter the circle.

Set your class in a manner that contains 70 percent oral work and 30 percent pre-writing tasks such as coloring, tracing, or completing puzzles. Engage the amount of time they get for oral work in telling and retelling stories, note the feelings and emotions connected to actions and reactions throughout the entire time in the class.

3. Feedback
Effective feedback must be given from time to time as it encourages learners to learn quickly and foster critical thinkers and resilient learners. Various kinds of feedback work well with early learners.

Feedback from the teacher: Make time to provide each learner with positive and descriptive feedback if possible, but at least once a week. The teacher needs to give time to the learners, interact with them asking them about their decisions or about the activities or tasks that the child finds interesting and fun. This kind of information makes teaching more effective.

Feedback from peers: Peer feedback also uses the same technique. For example, when few children in the class have just finished role-playing Goldilocks and the Three Bears, the other children in the audience were asked by the teachers to give feedback using the two stars and a wish technique. This kind of peer-to-peer feedback can be very constructive and helpful.

According to psychologist Alison Gopnik, most of the things we learn from language are indirect and we tend to draw a conclusion from the person’s intonation, gestures, choice of words, or syntax in fine ways. Early education teachers are the ones who can provide young learners the oracy skills that they require to communicate effectively, using all of the nuances of language.

Thus, if you are looking to teach young learners, you can enrol in an Early Years Care and Education Program and learn the various methodologies and techniques to handle young children in a class and also learn the ways to develop their oracy skills. You can pursue a Virtual Online Teaching Course also to train yourself in teaching young learners from the comfort of your home.