Anna Lise Kunkel-Jure Professor Rich ELD 307 Oral Assessment The purpose of an oral assessment is to determine whether

the classroom environment, that a child is in, is rich in language and also to determine if that child takes advantage of the environment and talks with their peers. I observed a third grade student named Colin in Mrs. Bowes third grade class. The class is set up in groups of desks that promote group and classroom discussion. Therefore there it is a very rich verbal environment. In order to do this assignment I photo copied figures 5-3 and 5-4 from the Kidwatching text. I took note of when each of the functions mentioned had been used. I also took note of Colins speech and whether what he was saying fell into any of the categories. Colin really seemed to enjoy speaking throughout the day. Mrs. Bowes classroom is very rich in language. By the conversations that can be heard throughout the day you can tell that there is respect not only between the students but also between the teacher and her students. Throughout the day students are encouraged to talk a lot. They share stories with each other, especially now that their writing unit is personal narrative, where they express experiences that they have gone through and prod each other to share more details by asking questions. Mrs. Bowes always finds ways to have class discussions by having the students answer questions. Through the class discussions they share events that they have experienced together as a class (remember how cute the ducklings were) and they report information that could also be from those events (the ducks were grey, black, and some were yellow. Some of them had puffs of feathers that looked like afros, etc). After seeing the ducks

they reported sensory information based on what they experienced while they were at the pond, their beaks were soft when we fed them. As a group they also planned what to put on the poster that they were going to take to Walk Your Students to School Day and they colored and shared the markers. During math they helped each other out by explaining how to solve the problems, the students who were done first especially went around and explained how to do the problems to their classmates. There is a lot of talking happening during the school day for these students. Colin seemed to take advantage of the fact that talking was promoted in the classroom. He especially liked telling stories and explaining how to do something. When they went to see the ducklings there was a dead rat and someone asked how the rat had died, so Colin came up with a elaborate story explaining how that could have happened. On top of that he retold the experience of visiting the ducklings and added to what his classmates were saying, not all of them had afros, a lot of them looked like they were bald. Later he was really excited to share his personal narrative with his classmates, he was so excited that he would not stop talking about his experience on a cruise. My favorite part of the cruise was when we went snorkeling, maybe I should write about that, but you know the next day we had this huge buffet and then we went hiking, etc. He also took leadership constantly, which is impressive considering he is one of the youngest in the class; he expressed leadership by asking Edison questions to get him to add more detail to his narrative. He also demonstrated leadership by explaining how to do different activities to his classmates like how to do a word search, how to find stuff on a map, and how to do the math problems. During art he was planning what to do in art by verbalizing what he would draw next. Colin uses language constantly throughout the day.

The information provides several implications for instruction. It would be important to continue to encourage him to talk in class by continuing to ask questions and allowing him to tell stories. One thing I noticed was that the class does not really allow for imaginative worlds and therefore Colin never had anything oral with regard to that section. It could be beneficial to promote that type of language in order to build their imagination, which in turn would help improve their creative writing. I would do this by asking questions about hypothetical situations that would help them use their imaginations to come up with responses. There was also no indication that he enjoyed language for its aesthetic value so I would incorporate poetry more into the classroom, maybe by using alliteration, comparison phrases, and stuff like that into my language so that the focus is not necessarily that poetic phrasing is only used in poetry. I feel like after a poetry unit this area of his language will develop more, to promote that I would have him write a poem. Other than these few suggestions the classroom environment promotes language and if it continues in this way I think Colin will be even more expressive by the end of the year.