The Literacy Skills We’re Not Teaching Enough
Literacy is comprised of four key components: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Reading gets the majority of attention, for sure. Hopefully in your context, writing gets just as much. We all understand how important these reciprocal processes are.
What gets little to no spotlight, though, are the other two parts: speaking and listening. Yes, we know that speaking in full and clear, grammatically correct sentences is a skill we need to help students develop. Modeling this through our own teacher talk and strong read alouds are key drivers in developing this skill. Many teachers include Socratic seminar-style classroom conversations to provide opportunities for students to learn to listen to what others have to say and respond respectfully and thoughtfully to agree, disagree, or add on.
All of these opportunities are excellent.
But often, we’re not teaching these literacy skills quite enough.
There is more we can do.
My own state standards specify that “Students must have numerous opportunities at each grade level to participate in collaborative discussions where they can practice listening and speaking skills and interact with others who may offer differing opinions and perspectives.” I’d be willing to wager a bet that your own state standards have very similar language.
This is a worthy and important goal, for sure.
But then I think about how many students not just in my own school but across the nation struggle to read and write. We’ve all seen the numbers. We’ve all seen it with our own eyes.
Students who struggle to formulate a clear and cohesive sentence, either orally or in writing…or both. We all know kids who struggle to actually answer the (either oral or written) prompt. There are kids in every class who struggle to hold onto what the other person said and respond accordingly. And of course, there are always students who never say much at all, whether in oral conversation or in writing.
What’s getting in their way? Language development.
Reading, writing, speaking, and listening are all language.
“Language skills and literacy achievement are highly correlated; research consistently demonstrates that the more children know about spoken language, the better equipped they are to succeed in reading and writing.”
Kids need MORE practice. These days, with so many kids on devices instead of having family conversations, they come to us with even more underdeveloped speaking and listening skills.
But how can we give them more? We already have too much on our plates!
Well, I’m all about simplifying. Getting more bang for your buck. It’s why I’m a huge proponent of things like combining reading and writing lessons into a single, streamlined lesson whenever possible.
Here’s another way to hit two birds with one stone.
Integrate more opportunity for speaking and listening through book clubs.
Book clubs hit every single box. They provide ample opportunity to develop:
- Listening skills
- Speaking skills
- Collaborative discussion
- Interact with differing opinions
It’s actually much easier than you might think.
Because the powerful teaching lives in the building up to full-blown book clubs. It’s in the baby steps taken before the real deal that build the speaking and listening skills.
Baby step into book clubs
When planning for students to turn and talk during read alouds, put two partnerships together for a bigger conversation with more viewpoints. It’s as simple as having one partnership turn around to face the one behind them. As you move around the group to listen in to their conversations, take note of what you observe.
In this way, one thing you can do is coach them to respond in appropriate ways. This is where sentence frames such as “I agree because…”, “I’d like to add on to that…”, etc. come in. We can teach them how to ensure that everyone is participating, and that one person doesn’t dominate. IAs well, we can teach how to build a conversation versus just taking turns to talk. It’s where you coaching students to use text evidence to support their thinking can really be practiced.
Speaking skills can also be taught whole group. By noting the patterns and hiccups you hear as students talk together, you can address it by teaching a strategy to the whole group on the next conversation. This could mean by providing additional sentence stems. Or it could be by providing a certain number of “talking chips.” It could even be just teaching them how to look each other in the eye as someone is speaking. If you need more ideas for teaching conversation skill strategies, check out Jennifer Serravallo’s Reading Strategies 2.0.
Building these skills is the first step toward teaching students how to have productive book clubs on their own later.
It also provides the added benefit of honing their listening skills–not just to each other, but to the text. All this oral discussion, along with your coaching, is key to helping kids develop their writing skills, too.
The next step
After a lot of practice in a whole group discussion around the same text, the next step would be to move this work to reading groups. Small group instruction is a perfect opportunity to move students toward more independence with text-based conversation. You’re still there to support, but you can peel back guidance and push for more independence as groups are ready for it. Each group might still use the same text, you might vary the text, or even provide students with a controlled choice so they feel a greater sense of ownership.
This is when more traditional book clubs can begin.
All of this scaffolding from whole group to small group before implementing “real” book clubs is important groundwork. We must first lay the foundation by developing the language skills of speaking and listening. Embedding this practice into the whole class and small group teaching you’re already doing means you’ve naturally helped students build the communication skills needed for successful and productive book club conversations. Using the gradual release model in this way will help set students up for successful full book clubs later.
Because it’s not about doing more. It’s about using what you’re already doing in better ways.
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Who is Coach from the Couch?? I’m Michelle, a 25+ year veteran educator, currently a K-5 literacy coach. I continue to learn alongside teachers in classrooms each and every day, and it’s my mission to support as many teachers as I can, because no one can do this work alone–especially with all the back and forth about literacy instruction going on at the moment. Through virtual coaching calls, I’m available to you, too. I absolutely love working with teachers around the country to solve their literacy puzzles! Simply email me at michelle@coachfromthecouch.com or reach out for a coaching call!
Or, consider joining myFacebook community–a safe, supportive environment (really–no blaming or shaming allowed!) where you can ask questions, learn ideas, and share your thoughts among other literacy-loving educators!
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