As a dual track, French and English, school. Our teachers and staff often focus on oral language skills. We often assess students’ expressive and receptive language skills formally and informally. We became curious about making connections between our oral language routines and our reading routines. During our winter staff meetings, we asked teachers and staff to share successful practices, areas of growth or attention, goals, supports needed for success, and connections to our reading comprehension focus.

Successful routines and practices include:

• Conversation circles
• Think Pair Share
• Positive reinforcement
• Morning circles and check-ins
• Show & Tell
• Read alouds
• Story Workshops
• Class discussions (shared themes and topics)

Areas of growth (routines or practices we want to be better at):

• Providing support for reluctant speakers
  • Are there other ways to participate in oral language activities
• Building confidence in ELL learners
• Specific strategies for building oral language skills in English and French for ELL learners.

Goals for our Wolfpack include:

• Authentic conversations in French (EFI/LFI)
• Taking more risks in their academic and social conversations and discussions.
• Including more singing in oral language routines.
• Participation among non-preferred peers (having conversations or discussions with a variety of peers)

Supports needed for success include:

• Strong connection between home and school
• Collaboration time
• Joyful experiences that build oral language skills

We believe that we can make meaningful connections between reading comprehension and oral language skills by learning about and collaborating on the goals outlined in these conversations. By guiding students to have conversations about their reading, specifically using targeted strategies, we believe we can grow in both areas of literacy.