Oral language and reading skills

Oral language development and reading process are reciprocal in nature. Often students talk about what they read and as they read more, their oral language skills become increasingly stronger.  Typically, students with strong oral language skills tend to be better readers by virtue that they have larger vocabularies and are more familiar with words. We know that when a child is developing in their first language, they go through a process of learning to listen, then speak, then read, then write. As each skill develops so do the others. As a student becomes a more proficient writer, their reading generally becomes more proficient as well. Same with reading and speaking; as students become more proficient readers, their language skills go up and as their language skills go up, typically, so do their reading abilities.

Literacy discussion reflection

The teacher I interviewed is a second grade teacher and has been teaching for more years than she was willing to discuss. Her overall philosophy about teaching reading is that in ECE-2^nd grade, it is a teacher’s job to help students learn to read, and in 3^rd grade on up, it is the teacher’s job to get students to read to learn. Reading, in her mind, is the most important subject that teachers must help their students succeed in. Everything is built upon reading and the skills that are needed to be successful at it. Writing builds on reading skills, word problems in math cannot be done without reading skills, nor can science or social studies content be accessed if students cannot read the directions. I feel like my philosophy is very similar to hers. I believe that reading is a necessary skill that students must learn before being able to truly succeed in any of the other content areas. Students do not realize exactly how much of their lives will rely on reading and it’s my job as their teacher to help them to make that realization. As an ECE teacher, I believe that it’s my job to help students learn to read by increasing their oral language development and pre-reading skills. During our discussion, the second grade teacher made reference to how large of a gap there was in the oral language skills of her best and worst readers.