How Important is the Strand of Oral Communication? It's Not Even Up for Debate

                  The final strand that we focused on in our Language and Literacy class was Oral Communication. The Ontario Curriculum states that within the four strands of the curriculum, the strands are closely interrelated and that the knowledge and skills described in the four strands co-exist. I consider this to really explain the nature behind the strand of oral communication, because the skills within oral communication are fundamental to literacy but also thinking and learning. Through communication with other students, learners can facilitate more understanding about certain topics. Oral Communication is fundamental for students to show their skills in regards to the Achievement Chart, especially when it comes to Knowledge and Understanding, Communication and Application. The Ontario Curriculum Documents also argue that although students often tend to develop oral language skills before they read and write, the development of reading and writing skills is directly connected to how effective students are when it comes to oral communication.

                Just like reading, writing and media literacy, students develop oral communication skills by having teachers who provide them with numerous opportunities to develop their skills. Oral communication is not just about communication between two students, it allows them to facilitate and partake in classroom conversations, perform skits and plays and allows them to realize that what they say and how they say it has just as much influence on the message they are trying to send. One of the best ways to facilitate he creation of good oral communication skills is through in-class debates. Debates allow students to not only work on their oral communication skills, but requires them to gather information and form arguments based on factual evidence which highlights their ability in regards to their reading and writing skills.

Some students using oral communication during a reading exercise. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/2gDndbB 

               Although the main ideas behind debates in the classroom appear to have the ability to be a great way to work on oral communication and other language skills in class, they do have their drawbacks. In her blog post entitled “Weaving Debate into the Writing Process”, Ashley Prophet highlights the key issues educators and students have with debates in the classroom. Through quick surveys, she found that teachers who do not consider debates as a positive in the classroom was mostly because they felt students get too rowdy, are often unprepared and they do not know how to incorporate debates into the curriculum.  She combats these notions by “rethinking” classroom debates, and it revolves around much more preparation then is normally done.  She insists that structuring the while activity into 5 separate stages can result in students not only working on their oral communication at the end of it all, but work on their reading and writing skills throughout the process. The first stage is what she calls “Pre-writing” which allows students to organize their side of a debate in a visual way like discussion webs or mind maps. The next two stages, entitled  “drafting” and “revising” incorporate more writing and peer-editing strategies that allow students to formulate their main arguments but also lets them start to think about what the other side will be arguing about. Stage 4 is the actual debate, but it is only done after the last two stages have been cleared by the instructor. The final stage is the “publishing” stage, which incorporates consolidation of the exercise and asks students to create a product at the end that highlights the main findings and results. This process highlights the fact that the overall main aspect of debates is not the debate itself, but how the students are able to use their other skills of language and literacy to formulate their side of the argument.

"Weaving Debate into the Writing Process", By Ashley Prophet

The main purpose of the strand of oral communication is to have students develop the skills and strategies to become effective communicators, but also effective listeners. The strand of oral communication does not stand alone, just like the others, it is best done in conjunction with the other strands. Teachers who focus on oral communication through out their units allow students to ask and answer more complicated questions and are  able to stimulate students engagement in their own learning. 

To Write or Not to Write, That Should Never Be The Question

             I believe one of the most freeing and uplifting activities a person can do is sit down and write. Using writing as a form of stress relief, or a way to organize your thoughts, allows individuals to ease their minds and reflect, even if that is not the specific intention of the writing activity. As a future educator, I value writing greatly compared to the other strands of language and literacy. I believe that writing can and should be involved across all curriculum, because I see writing as a tool for many things.

Flickr User aysedmirhas. (May 25, 2015).“Writing”. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/2fnUYKE

           I enjoy free writing exercises, and I think it a great way to get students to look at writing assignments not a chore. It also allows them to work on their sentence structure without having to prove any point other than what is on their mind. Creative writing, specifically writing involved in the arts is another great strategy to not only get students excited about writing, but also allows educators to plan lessons that are fun for students while achieving the main curriculum expectations. Lessons such as script or play writing allows students to use their creativity and write how they want to write, but they also must take into consideration the audience they are writing for as well as they must prof read, revise and identify strengths and weaknesses of their writing because it will read aloud by someone else. Brock’s Pinterest Account has a board specifically devoted to Arts and Drama where you can find numerous ideas on how to incorporate the dramatic arts into your writing based lesson pans. I specifically liked the post about how to build your own puppet stage on a classroom budget. Students could write short play scripts and be able to build their own puppets to act out their story. The link to the IRC’s Pinterest account can be found below :) 

Brock University IRC Pinterest Account

              Teaching writing is not limited to only pen and paper or typing in a Word Document, educators have an abundance of media and tech based software, apps and websites that they can use to make writing fun for their students. A great idea I came across was using twitter as a class to write a short story. Although the fact that each tweet can only be a total of 140 characters may seem like trivial when it comes to writing, I believe that the limit can be used to teach students a number of things in regards to how they structure their writing. An exercise like this teaches students how to focus on making their writing concise, too often students focus on trying to write in a way that makes them “sound” smart, but instead it makes their writing sound wordy and confusing.

                

              Writing is a main foundation when it comes to language arts in the education, and it is obviously a key item when it comes to teaching students how to be literate in the 21^st century. Students have more ways to write on their own compared to any other time, educators must take this fact and not only use it to create more engaging lessons, but also stress that students writing is an extension of who they are. This post has mostly focused on creative writing, that is because I believe that free writing and writing exercises that focus on having students write about what they want is crucial for their future as writers.

Thank you for reading!