Episode 178: Daily One-On-One Talk Builds Strong Readers

Kindergarten is supposed to sound like a lively room full of ideas, jokes, and questions. But many early childhood educators are seeing something different: fewer opportunities for young learners to actually practice oral language, even while expectations for early reading keep rising. I dig into why that shift matters so much because vocabulary, syntax, and confident speaking are the building blocks that support literacy, reading proficiency, and long-term reading comprehension.

I talk through what’s crowding conversation out of the school day, including the growing emphasis on decoding and written tasks, reduced time for science and social studies, and less unstructured play. Those losses add up, since play and content-rich subjects naturally prompt children to negotiate, explain, and ask “what,” “how,” and “why.” I also connect the dots to home life, where many kids arrive with more screen-based communication and fewer face-to-face interactions, which can affect language development, attention, and comfort when starting conversations.

Then I share practical strategies you can use right away: reading aloud to spark talk, making time for both incidental and intentional conversations, encouraging language during play, and using science and social studies moments to fuel open-ended questions. I also explore “serve and return” and the idea of building five conversational turns, and why personal narratives and pretend play help children practice decontextualized language and higher-order thinking, such as creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving.

If you want a simple way to support stronger readers, start with more real conversation. Subscribe for new episodes every Tuesday, share this with a parent or educator who needs it, and leave a rating or review so more families can find the show.

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Transcript

Welcome And Why This Matters

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Welcome to another episode of K-12 Public Education Insights, Empowering Parents of Color Podcast. The podcast that converges at the intersection of educational research and parental actions. It's about making the trends, topics, and theories in public education understandable so that you can implement them into practical, actionable strategies that work for your children. My name is Dr. Kim J. Fields, former corporate manager, turned education researcher, and advocate, and I'm the host of this podcast. I got into this space after dealing with some frustrating interactions with school educators and administrators, as well as experiencing the microaggressions that I faced as an African-American mom raising my two kids who were in the public school system. I really wanted to understand how teachers were trained and what the research provided about the challenges of the public education system. Once I gained the information and the insights that I needed, I was then equipped to be able to successfully support my children in their educational progress. This battle-tested experience is what I provide as action steps for you to take. It's like enjoying a bowl of educational research with a sprinkling of motherwit wisdom on top. If you're looking to find out more about the current information and issues in education that could affect you or your children, and the action steps you can take to give your children the advantages they need, then you're in the right place. Thanks for tuning in today. I know that staying informed about K-12 public education trends and topics is important to you, so keep listening. Give me 30 minutes or less, and I'll provide insights on the latest trends, issues, and topics pertaining to this constantly evolving K-12 public education environment. Does your kindergartner talk a little or a lot? Usually, a classroom full of kindergartners is full of excited conversation, but this is not always the case. I was surprised to read about this given the constant chatter of my kids when they were in kindergarten. What many early childhood educators are experiencing now is young learners who have not fully developed their language usage skills. In this episode, I discuss why every day one-on-one conversations with kindergartners is so critical, whether those talks are at school or at home. I also discussed four strategies that enhance the development of oral language skills in young learners, including higher order thinking talks. Let's gain some insight on this. It's quite common for kindergarten teachers to spend a great portion of their day trying to get their young learners to stop talking. It's not because the teachers intentionally encourage students to talk, which amounts to a few instances where teachers do deliberately encourage extended conversations among their students. This creates rooms that hum with excited discussions. Some children just naturally have the gift of gab, but in many kindergarten classrooms across this country, young learners are having fewer opportunities in school to practice oral language, which is a key component to developing strong, comprehensive literacy proficiency. One of the reasons for this is that kindergarten has become increasingly focused on teaching children to read. This can unintentionally crowd out time for conversations between students. The singular focus on teaching students to read in kindergarten can be a primary cause of why there are too few conversations in the kindergarten classroom. Focusing on decoding and understanding written texts is one thing, but children develop vocabulary and syntax, which are both the building blocks of comprehension through conversation. Lessons in science and social studies create opportunities for these conversations, but research shows that schools are spending less time in both subject areas, especially in the early grades. Additionally, play time has decreased in kindergarten. Kindergartners today spend less time in unstructured play, which is another key setting for language development during play, because children build their oral language in play as they negotiate, collaborate, and solve problems. Practicing verbal skills during kindergarten can pay off in later grades, according to the experts. Words are children's toolbox for understanding and communicating about the world. If a child starts school thousands of words behind, or even hundreds of words behind, that gap in understanding and communicating can be difficult to overcome. A 2018 study by MIT cognitive scientists found that back and forth conversations between young children between the ages of four to six and adults led to more measurable changes in brain physiology associated with language skills. These interactions should occur at home as well as in school with the child's teacher, and preferably these interactions should occur daily. The fact of the matter is that hearing and practicing language leads to stronger literacy skills. The space created during the school day for early learners to practice talking is really about focusing on usage of the language. Hearing language is one thing, but actually using it and having fun with it is something different. A preschool, kindergarten, or first grade classroom seems like the perfect environment to practice oral language skills, you would think. But several obstacles can stand in the way. For one thing, many of today's students are arriving at school with more experience communicating via screens and less experience interacting with actual people like friends and family members. The consequences of this can include delayed language development and being less comfortable initiating conversations. And teachers who seem to be constantly strapped for time by ensuring students stay on task may deliberately avoid prolonged conversations with their young learners. Here are four strategies that advance the development of oral language skills in young learners. One, read books aloud because this can generate conversations and build oral language and related literacy skills. When children listen to stories, they hear how words sound, learn new vocabulary, and gain exposure to language structures. Two, allow time for both incidental and intentional conversations that benefit young learners either through read alouds or by conversations between adults and children like teachers and students or parents and their children. Three, foster conversation at playtime, especially playtime in the classroom. Children playing in pairs or small groups, plan, create, navigate, and problem solve, all of which require oral language skills. And four, teachers should use science and social studies content to spark conversation. This allows students an opportunity to generate and respond to questions about what, how, and why. It also involves asking open-ended questions, modeling descriptive words, and using child-friendly descriptions for science vocabulary, all of which are key components of science talk lessons that support students' language development. Want a surefire way to improve your child's reading proficiency? Have more one-on-one conversations with him or her. Unlike reading, which is a secondary skill, oral language is a biological primary skill of humans. The back and forth types of conversations are critical for oral language development. The technique of serve and return is about building on what students say in the classroom and then providing them with an opportunity to be an active participant in the conversation. In the classroom, this means that the early childhood educator tries to have five conversational turns with the student. For example, the teacher says something, the student says something, the teacher replies, then the student responds. Each of these conversations take about a minute of actual instruction time, yet they accomplish a lot. Research has shown that students who have lower language skills or who are English language learners or who are just shy benefit the most from these one-on-one five-turn conversations. It's a great way to boost oral language skills in an informal way. Every day, one-on-one conversations with your children can include stories of personal experiences from your past, future, or recurring events. These types of conversations help parents and children connect with one another and engage in higher order thinking talk. There's plenty of research that supports the implications that language interactions children have early in their home environment can create benefits or detriments in their later academic outcomes. In order to succeed in school, children need to know how to use language to link ideas together and to support complex thought. This means that they must be able to use their language for higher order thinking. Higher order thinking has been recognized as a crucial skill for academic and employment success in the 21st century. Conversations with family members can help prepare children for the kinds of higher order thinking skills they are expected to use in school. The higher order thinking skills utilized in these conversations include creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving that includes pretend talk. Narrative and pretend talks are those talks that are not grounded in the present or immediate context. Personal narratives involve describing internal representations of events like memories of the past, plans for the future, or generalized routines rather than the current or present context, and this helps in the development of children's memories. Pretend treats the current environment in a non-literal way. For example, by pretending the banana is a phone. To clarify, decontextualized talk is the type of conversation when the parent or caregiver discusses personal experiences in the past or future. Or they treat the environment in a non-literal way through pretend play. It requires the person to create meaning through the language itself rather than rely on nonverbal cues and the present environment to convey meaning. By contrast, most of the talk that children hear early in development is contextualized talk. That is, talk that's focused on people, objects, or events in the present environment. Research has demonstrated that early exposure to and participation in decontextualized talk matters for children's later cognitive and language development outcomes. Decontextualized talk matters for children's later academic outcomes because it provides the opportunity for them to engage in higher order thinking skills such as inference and comparison. Engaging stories, whether about a person's personal experiences or make-believe, require the storyteller to coherently link story elements to a cause and effect framework. They basically require the parent or family member or even caregiver to use higher order thinking to describe relationships between the representations in the story. Some qualities of language may make it easier for parents and children to use higher order thinking, especially when children are very young. These qualities include being story inspired and being decontextualized. Narrative storytelling is a kind of talk that displays these qualities. Therefore, narrative talk is beneficial for children's later academic outcomes, including school readiness skills. In other words, telling personal stories can build children's academic skills. In the end, personal narratives in which parents and children communicate with one another invoke higher order thinking in talk proportionately more than in the related talk context of pretend play and more than in non-narrative, non-pretend everyday talk. By highlighting personal narrative talk in childhood, parents might potentially foster the development of higher order thinking skills that are so crucial for later academic success, making the language they will need for later expression and interpretation of academic content taught in school available to them early and from those who care for and about them. So, what can you do with the information I just shared? Here are the action steps you can take regarding the need for kindergartners to develop higher order thinking skills and better usage of language literacy skills. How parents interact with their children and what they are exposed to can have a big impact on a child's language development. Language development occurs through interaction with adults. Research has shown that children who spend more time on screens have decreased parent-child interactions, which may hinder or delay their language development. Children need to engage in face-to-face communication with family members or caregivers in order to enhance their language development and learning. As you may already be aware, digital media use or screen exposure through various devices can affect children's vocabulary, executive functioning skills, play quality, language acquisition, concentration, and comprehension, especially for children under the age of five. Talking to your kids through personal narratives or pretend storytelling is so beneficial because it develops language literacy skills as well as other academic skills necessary for success in school. It's not just about giving them instructions and directions, it's about sharing your life experiences and memories to help cement the bonds between you and your children. Take the time to incorporate these ideas daily. It will be well worth it. Here are this episode's takeaways. In many kindergarten classrooms across this country, young learners are having fewer opportunities in school to practice oral language, which is a key component to developing strong, comprehensive literacy proficiency. One of the reasons for this is that kindergarten has become increasingly focused on teaching children to read. This can unintentionally crowd out time for conversations between students. The singular focus on teaching students to read in kindergarten can be a primary cause of why there are fewer conversations in the kindergarten classroom. The fact of the matter is that hearing and practicing language leads to stronger literacy skills. The space created during the day for early learners to practice talking is really about focusing on usage of language. Hearing language is one thing, but actually using it and having fun with it is something different. If you want a surefire way to improve your child's reading proficiency, have more one-on-one conversations with him or her. Unlike reading, which is a secondary skill, oral language is a biological primary skill of humans. The back and forth types of conversations are critical for oral language development. By highlighting personal narrative and pretend talk in Childhood parents might potentially foster the development of higher order thinking skills that are so crucial for later academic success, making the language they will need for later expression and interpretation of academic content taught in school available to them early and from those who care for and about them. So, what are your thoughts about kindergarteners needing more time to have informal conversations in the classroom? Let me know what you've been thinking about storytelling and pretend talk with your children by leaving me a text comment on my podcast website, k12educationinsights.buzzsprout.com. Here's how you can leave a text comment. Go to the episode description page and click on the Send Me a Text Message link. Again, it's K12Education Insights.buzzprout.com. If you enjoyed this episode, why not listen to another episode from my catalog? It could take as little as 15 minutes of your day. And remember, new episodes come out every Tuesday. Thanks for listening today. Be sure to come back for more insights on K-12 educational topics that impact you and your children. And remember to share my podcast with anyone that you think would find it valuable. That includes your friends, family, and your community. Until next time, learn something new every day.