Hear, Speak, Learn: Building oral language competence
One of the most powerful communication tools we possess is the ability to hear and speak. Students who are limited in their language resources may struggle to succeed in our education system. There is a wealth of research that indicates that students who arrive at school with limited oral language competence are up to four times more likely to fail to reach expected levels of achievement in literacy. It is also estimated that currently one in three students in Aotearoa, New Zealand arrive at school without the language competence to thrive in our education system. This workshop will give classroom teachers, school leaders, and Learning Support co-ordinators an opportunity to reflect on and develop a future-focussed plan for identifying students’ oral language learning needs and integrating oral language teaching across the curriculum.
It will also include time to explore:
- Assessment of oral language
- Age-appropriate expectations
- Effective Instruction in oral language
- A range of ‘rich’ oral language tasks that can be adapted for a range of ages and stages
Jane van der Zeyden has worked in the professional learning and development sector of education for a number of years. During that time she has worked at the University of Auckland, Learning Media and currently runs her own consultancy business Tools 4 Teachers which has a team of facilitators delivering literacy, ESOL and oral language PLD across Aotearoa.
She is an experienced primary school teacher and has taught in a wide variety of schools and range of roles including;
- Leadership roles, (Deputy Principal, Literacy Leader, Senior teacher)
- ESOL teacher
- Reading Recovery teacher.
Jane is a member of the Ministry of Education National Advisory Group on English language learners and has worked with the Ministry of Education on a number of initiatives and programmes including the Accelerating Literacy Learning Programme (ALL), development of the ELLP online modules and the Ready to Read Advisory Group.
She is the author of The Essential Oral Language Toolkit which is a text used by many classroom teachers and in the Initial Teacher Education programme of two Australian Universities. Her second book is underway and is due for publication in late 2023.
