Children should be seen AND heard!

This weekend we went to the store and I got the most awesomest costume for Halloween.  I'm going to be Wolverine for Halloween this year!  I have a costume that has real wolverine claws and a mask and my dad was in the United States Wolverine Corps.  Wolverine is my favorite super hero.  I really like super heroes!  I have a Wolverine book and a Batman book.  Do you know I have a red cape with a lightning bolt on it?

If you give this little guy an inch he'll go on and on and on. When he's not rhapsodizing about super heroes, he'll tell you more than you'll ever want to know about sharks - all different kinds of sharks!  I enjoy every minute of his chatter.  He's using age-appropriate grammar and a rich vocabulary.  OK, so some of his details are a little off.  Like how his dad was in the United States MARINE Corps, but you've got to love his enthusiasm and his pride in his dad.

In my opinion, one of the biggest predictors of success in Kindergarten is a child's oral language skills.  So while those chatty kids might drive parents crazy, those are the students who are easiest to teach.  Sure, it takes time for students to learn when it is OK to talk in school and when it is not OK, but they get it.  I also allow them time throughout the day to talk - we share about our days, respond to a story, or  quietly chat with neighbors while working on a project.

It's the quiet kids that always concern me.  The ones who never have anything to say, who never raise their hands.  Are they quiet because they weren't paying attention, they don't know the answer, or did they not comprehend what I said?  The first one is pretty easy to address.  I try to make class time fun and engaging.  If a child is not paying attention, I have a variety of strategies to bring them back to the group.  There can be many reasons why a child doesn't know an answer to a question - hasn't learned the concept yet, wasn't paying attention earlier, it's a fairly new topic, etc. - and it's my job as a teacher to ensure that they learn the answers or find out why they haven't learned it.  If a child doesn't understand what I said and the child is a native English speaker, that concerns me.  When a child says "tiger" for a picture of a tabby cat or "house" for a picture of just a "window," these are red flags.  When a child has nothing to share about her weekend even after all the other children have shared about riding bikes, playing wii, or going to grandma's house, that is worrisome.

This year I have about five or six students who scored low on oral language assessments.  Helping a child catch up to peers in oral language is a lot harder than helping him catch up with alphabetic knowledge.  In the book Building Oral Language Skills in PreK-K, the author Cindy Middendorf cites research that shows, "Not all children who struggle with early reading skills have poor oral language, yet nearly all children who have poor oral language will struggle with early reading skills."  Last year at a literacy conference I heard a speaker mention that 70% of struggling third grade readers have poor oral language.

I've got my work cut out for me this year.