Why is oral language critical to young children's development? 

Research would indicate that children who have a well developed vocabulary and oral language skills tend to:

1.  Understand complex language structures.

2.  Develop enhanced vocabulary to refer to while reading and understand how to differentiate between multiple meanings.

3.  Establish rules for speaking for a variety of purposes. 

4.  Have a strong foundation for learning to read (predict sentence structures and connect to   words that make sense from prior knowledge).

5.  Oral language builds a strong foundation for reading comprehension. 

Story stones provide children with an opportunity to engage in hands on literacy learning, through play and exploration, while also connecting the reading, writing, listening, and speaking strands together.  For younger children who are  gaining 2500 words per/year (Roskos, Tabors & Lenhart), retelling stories in their own words is a powerful way to encourage new language and sentences structures to be practiced and explored.  As children gain a better understanding of story structures (characters, setting, problem, solution, and ending) creating storytelling  invitations encourages children to explore their  own imaginations and to create stories.  If introducing this concept to children, encourage them to  practice telling their stories orally several times before you extend it to writing.  During the writing process have students use storyboards with pictures or pictures and text.  As a celebration of their learning, in older grades,  you might invite students to invite  family members for a story time in the classroom, building storytelling videos or sharing their stories with care partners. 

Possible theme kits to create or books to retell:

1.  The Mitten by Jan Brett (story retelling)

2.  Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson (story retelling kit)

3.  Honouring the Buffalo : A Plains Cree Legend by Ray Lavallee (story retelling kit)

4.  Farm Creative Storytelling Kit

5.  Castel/Kingdom Creative Storytelling Kit

6.  Winter Animals & Forest Creative Storytelling Kit

Please feel free to leave your comments and ideas so that we can collaborate!!!

REFERENCES:

Flynn, E. E. (2016). Language-Rich Early Childhood Classroom: Simple but Powerful Beginnings. The Reading Teacher, 70(2), 159-166.

Jamison, L. (2011). Read, write, play, learn: Literacy instruction in today's kindergarten. Newark, DE: International Reading Association. 

Roskos, Tabors & Lenhart (2004).  Oral Language and Early Literacy in Preschool: Talking, Reading, and Writing.  International Reading Association.

The Early Catastrophe: The 30 Million Word Gap by Age 3. (n.d.). Retrieved November 28, 2016