EDUC4671 English 4

Oral Language Profile

Oral Language Activity #1

First Steps Phase of Development: Exploratory Phase

Focus Indicator: Experiments with vocabulary drawn from a variety of
sources.

Source: My Own Creation

Reference: My Own Creation

Lesson Warm Up: Children participate in a speech sort. Working in groups,

children read excerpts from various text types (entertaining, persuasive,
informative etc.) Student 7 must take turns matching the excerpt to the
correct text type. The purpose of this warm up is to familiarise Student 7 with
vocabulary drawn from the English curriculum.

Lesson Body: Children sit in a circle. The educator chooses one child at a
time to go and choose an item from the ‘Bits Box’ which is placed in an area
of the classroom where the other children are unable to see the items being
pulled out. The child pulls out an item without looking in the box and
examines it closely before placing it in a bag. The child then returns to the
circle with the bag where they roll a custom-made die. The numbers two,
three and four each appear on the die faces twice. The number rolled
correlates to the number of descriptive words (adjectives) that the child must
come up with in regard to the item in the bag. The other children must then
attempt to guess what the item is. The aim of this activity is to ascertain the
Student 7’s level of capabilities in describing familiar items in order to form a
strong foundation for extending their skills.

Assessment: The educator makes anecdotal notes of Student 7’s

contributions to the speech sort and their use of adjectives in the lesson
body.

Oral Language Activity #2

First Steps Phase of Development: Exploratory Phase

Source: First Steps Speaking and Listening Map of Development

Reference: Brace, J., Brockhoff, V., Sparkes, N. & Tuckey, J. (2006).
Speaking and listening map of development. Melbourne, VIC: Rigby
Harcourt Education.

Lesson Warm Up: The educator reads through children’s spelling words.
The educator demonstrates how words from the spelling list can be included
in a dramatic role play. Children get into pairs or groups of three and are
given two or three words. The group has a few minutes to devise how they
will incorporate the words they have been given into a short role play story.
Each group then performs their role play making sure to include the words
 EDUC4671 English 4
Oral Language Profile
that they were given. The aim of this warm up activity is to expose Student 7
to new and familiar vocabulary from their spelling lists.

Lesson Body: Children work in pairs to conduct a character interview. The

pair chooses one character from the text being studied to formulate
questions for. The questions are formulated by the pair together. One child
is the interviewer and the other is the character. At the conclusion of the
interview questions, the other class members will have the opportunity to
ask the character any further questions. The purpose of this lesson activity
is to assist Student 7 in using familiar and new vocabulary in the context of
character questioning.

Assessment: The educator will use an assessment rubric to measure

Student 7’s level of achievement during the character interview activity. The
rubric will be accompanied by general comments derived from the
educator’s observation of Student 7.

Oral Language Activity #3

First Steps Phase of Development: Exploratory Phase

Source: The Oral Language Book

Reference: Cameron, S. & Dempsey, L. (2016). The oral language book.
Auckland, NZ: S&L Publishing.

Lesson Warm Up: The class is seated facing the whiteboard. A chair is
placed facing the class as a ‘hot seat’. Children take turns sitting in the ‘hot
seat.’ Once a child is seated the educator writes a familiar word on the
board. The other children in the class must use vocabulary to help the child
in the hot seat to guess the word without actually saying it. The game can
progress until a number of children have had a turn in the hot seat. The aim
of this warm up is to encourage Student 7 to utilise familiar vocabulary in the
context of a game.

Lesson Body: The educator retells a familiar text (The Story of Town
Mouse and Country Mouse). Children are placed in pairs and must
dramatically retell the story making sure to include three new words to
enhance the presentation. Children will have some time to work with their
partner to come up with ideas for incorporating three new words of their
choice from the class word wall into their presentation. The purpose of this
task is to equip Student 7 with the skills to incorporate new and learned
vocabulary into familiar text retells.

Assessment: The educator will complete an observation checklist recording

the appropriateness of Student 7’s vocabulary inclusion in their partner role
play.