Background Information on
Talking, Listening, and Writing

Speaking Time

We know that children’s reading and writing development grows out of oral language competency and also affects it. Because
of this, teachers should be sure that, along with daily reading and writing activities, children have opportunities to engage in meaningful conversations, share their interests, ask questions, recite choral readings (see below), and participate in all sorts of language play—poems, songs, finger plays, and so on.

Conferences

One of the most important things teachers can do for emerging writers is to hold conferences with them as often as possible. A conference can be done informally while walking around the classroom or more formally during a scheduled time. It is most important that the teacher listen to the child’s ideas, answer questions, guide the writer to find ways to generate words, and respond with encouragement. Children need to know that, beyond their performance as writers, they are very important.

Shared Writing (Taking Dictation)

Shared writing can be viewed as an oral/written language experience for one child or for a group of children with the teacher as the scribe. Shared writing usually includes the children’s oral input, with the teacher or another adult writing down their words. It gives children an opportunity to express themselves, and it offers the teacher an opportunity to comment on important facts about the conventions of print. Teachers may talk about letter-sound relationships, capital and small letters, punctuation, spaces between words, beginning at the left, and so on. (The Language-Experience Approach is a form of shared writing.) Note: Save some of the shared writings and revisit them at another time to make simple changes or additions.

Interactive Writing

Interactive writing is an extension of shared writing. The two activities are similar, except that interactive writing involves the teacher and children writing together. The message is composed by the group, including the teacher, and written down word by word. The teacher begins the writing and then offers the marker to a child. The child may write initial sounds of words, high-frequency words, or phonetic spellings of words, for which the teacher and other children exaggerate the sounds to help the writer hear them. Sometimes the teacher fills in the letters the child doesn’t know or can’t hear. For example, if a child writes lik for like, the teacher guides him or her to add the final e. (This procedure can also be used with a teacher and an individual child.)