Word's Have Power, Let's Talk

Oral language
- Heightened levels of complexity
       - Thinking and meaning
       - Concept knowledge
       - Vocabulary
       - Language structures
- Reading and writing

Quantities of quality texts
- Spoken and written
- Reading to children and gifting vocabulary. Children will be in the context of the text that is being read.
- Children who have books in their lives will have more context that is valuable which means more vocabulary, ideas, etc. than those without
- What kinds of talk accompanied quality texts are we supplying for our learners?
- Using real words and language in the context they can understand (quick understand) instead of puddling around simple “dumbed down” text
- Need to move children from simple texts

If we gift children in meaningful ways (recycling info a few more times), they have an amazing capability to learn

Learning language
- Receiver of language
       - Engaged in contexts
       - Potentially available to me
- User of language
- Disproportionately language that is uptake for children
       - How much time am I getting language from children and how much time am I gifting children?
- Quantity and quality under optimising learning conditions
- Just because you are an emerging reader doesn’t mean you can’t learn new words
- Packing down words - can children actually talk about words they are breaking down
- What language can be threaded through experiences? E.g. sports, maths, contexts
       - Get them to have multiple encounters at school and at home

Flourishing Learning Potential
- Attention to and noticing
- Effortful and purposeful engagement and interaction
- All participating
- Triggering the ‘known’ to connect to the ‘new’
- ‘Stretching’ the learner’s current language repertoire
- Multiple encounters
- Context relevant
- Facilitated through engaging mediating tools - persons, tasks, activities, sources

Flourishing MY LEARNING and LANGUAGE
- Focus and notice
- Put in the effort
- Take part fully
- Push myself to the edge
- Dig deep for what - already know
- Learn from others - notice and focus
- I share - others gain from me
- Think and talk; think and read
- Wondering and asking opens up possibilities to know

Say more, tell with detail
- Use words and ideas that gift your learners knowledge and words (you)
       - Instead of saying this, what about this?
       - A bird flew inside our house this morning (4 ideas)
       - A bird flew inside the house this morning. Remember we had a window wide open downstairs.         - It flew in through that window. It was super scared ‘cos it felt trapped (8 ideas)
       - Words give meaning
       - Your detail has given the reader/audience more detail
       - Because you added more detail, I know what you mean
       - Tighter talking and more oriented to what we call “book language” (children write how they talk)
       - Offering sophisticated vocab, and more complex and new ideas to my learners
       - Encourage them to use new words e.g. that means the same as ____. Someone tell me a new sentence that has that word in.
       - “Unlazy” their brains
       - Last night was so hot, wasn’t it?
       - Last night was so hot, wasn’t it? I wonder what you did to keep cool? In our household  we opened all the windows and doors to let in any cool night air… but guess what? We then noticed mosquitoes were coming in too. So doors shut and a cool shower was our solution
- Use words and ideas so your audience really knows what you mean (learners)
- Use words and ideas that gift your child’s knowledge and words (families)
- We are all learners - it’s not talking between you and me, it’s between you and us
- Controlling your sharing zones - ‘you’ and ‘us’ instead of “I’ (socialisation)

Why is it important to read aloud?

The powerful thing about vocab is the words they are accompanied with