Christine Edwards-Groves  -  PETAA Paper 195

As Christine Edwards-Groves reminds us children want to talk. Well-structured talk builds learners’ thinking and forms the foundation for all literacy practices. Learners need to be challenged to express their ideas, clarify reasons for their thinking or critique, share their opinions, actively listen to each other and provide rationales for their perspectives and argue for their beliefs. This article is about the importance of fostering ‘talk moves’ in the classroom that deepen learners’ understanding and draws on recent research.

Key words: Talking and listening  Classroom dialogic talk  Talk moves

Laura Beth Kelly, Meridth K. Ogden and Lindsey Moses

As part of a collaborative study, a first-grade teacher and two university-based researchers, set a goal to facilitate meaningful, student-led discussions about literature. In this article the authors share several strategies they found successful in enhancing the speaking and listening skills of a class of 28 first graders who came from diverse linguistic, economic, and social backgrounds.

Key words: Speaking and listening Talk  Diversity  Literature  Student agency

Touchstones: 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10

Michèle de Courcy, Karen Dooley, Robert Jackson, Jenny Miller and Kathy Rushton  - PETAA Paper 183

More than a quarter of learners in Australian schools are learning English as an additional language or dialect (EAL/D). They include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, and migrants, refugees and international students born overseas. This paper highlights recent trends in the theory and practice of EAL/D teaching and learning. It offers a range of suggestions for supporting EAL/D learners in the classroom especially the importance of talking and listening in both their first language and Standard Australian English and the value of using learners’ bilingualism in developing language awareness for all classroom members.

Key words: Oral language development for EAL/D learners  Bilingualism  Language awareness

Tamara Bromley ALEA Vol 24 Number 1 February 2019

Telling stories is something we do every day – it’s a part of being human. In this article, Tamara Bromley, an early childhood and lead teacher in Western Australia, shares how she used her own storytelling to engage her learners and create a sense of belonging in her classroom. As learners became more confident they contributed to her imaginative stories and retellings and began to contribute their own, enriching their vocabularies. Other strategies including text innovation and modelled writing were also embedded within the storytelling. The children’s oral language and literacy development showed marked development.
 
Keywords: storytelling; scaffolding children’s storytelling; oral language and literacy development