Jessica Siegel Oral Language Assessment March 4, 2013

The purpose of this assessment was to observe how language is used in the classroom. I made my observations in a kindergarten classroom with a total 20 students. The student I chose to focus on is a 6 year old boy who shows some signs of possibly having an attention deficit disorder. He is often one of the last students to complete a task and sometimes looks as if he isnt sure what he is supposed to be doing. For the classroom observation I followed the checklist in our textbook, Kidwatching. I found that in kindergarten, there are many opportunities for students to share stories. Every morning at morning meeting, four students share something to the class and then invite their classmates to either ask questions or to share comments. Each day, there is a special helper who helps run the morning meeting. He or she reports the weather to the class and then fills in a weather chart for the days weather forecast. Overall, I have noticed that many students explain how to do or make something by talking out loud guiding themselves through specific tasks. I often hear, Ok, so I put my book away, now I need to find my folder and other phrases like this, where students are using private speech to complete tasks. The Russian researcher, Lev Vygotsky would say that kindergarten students are using private speech because they are egocentric at this age. I have taken note of this as well. When students share stories or talk to other students one on one, they

often are either telling a story about themselves or are relating someone elses words to themselves. I observed some of the students taking great leadership on a day when there was a substitute teacher. They remembered their daily routines and procedures and helped other students as well as the substitute to remember what to do at what time. In a kindergarten classroom, class libraries and activities like readers and writers workshops provide opportunities for receptive language where students can learn to understand language. By kindergarten, students are able to speak in complete and logical sentences. Kindergarteners are very inquisitive and curious. They ask their teacher many questions about different topics and similarly ask their friends and other classmates a lot of questions. Their questions are basic, but they receive the information they seek. This use of expressive language allows students to practice and learn how to use language. For the individual student observation, I used a different checklist that was also from the textbook, Kidwatching. The 6 year old boy that I observed in the classroom shared many stories with other students, to the teacher and to myself. He constantly was thinking about his routines in his head and then vocalizing it. It seemed that it was necessary for him to verbalize his actions in order to stay on task. I could see him thinking, and then saying what he was doing out loud as he did it. He told his friends that he was buying lunch that day,

After making my observations and assessing the oral language of kindergarteners, I will know for the future that 5 and 6 year olds are very social and talkative. It is more difficult to have kindergarteners work independently at their desks. While it can be done for certain assignments, most activities and learning happens when the students interact with one another and are able to communicate with their peers. Ive also noticed that kindergarteners are very egoistic and enjoy proving others wrong. Students typically like to correct their peers and do the best they can to receive positive feedback from the teacher as well as their peers. Having activities involving talking about themselves is a great way to motivate students. Another motivator for kindergarteners is making corrections. Rather than correcting the work of another student in the class, I could have students correct a poorly written paragraph of a fake kindergartener from a fake school or create other similar activities. We can learn so much about students through their oral language. It is imperative that we provide rich language environments for students where they can learn to understand language and learn to use it properly.