Communicate Your Way: Celebrating Speech Pathology

Communicate Your Way, the theme for recent Speech Pathology Australia Week, provided the perfect chance to reflect on the impact we as Speech Pathologists have on the children and families we support – but also to consider how everyone communicates differently.

Whether it’s spoken, signed, digital, or written; communication bridges gaps, fosters meaning and understanding, and strengthens relationships. It’s about making connections and expressing ourselves in unique ways.

Speech Pathology Week also gives us an opportunity to highlight the importance of early oral language development and literacy skills. 

These are foundational skills that children develop during their early childhood years and can be broken down into these easy-to-understand building blocks:

Oral Language 

• Listening and speaking
• Vocabulary, grammar, storytelling 
• Phonological awareness (e.g., identifying and manipulating sounds in words which may include rhyming, blending, and segmenting). 

 Literacy  

• Emergent reading (e.g., pretending to read books by turning pages and making up stories based on the pictures)  
• Emergent writing (e.g., making up letter like shapes) 
• Know books have specific parts (e.g., front cover, back cover, title, author, pages)  
• Know words and sentences are made up of letters and these letters have specific sounds  
• Know print carries meaning and directionality (e.g., we read from left to right and top to bottom). 

“The research consistently demonstrates a strong correlation between oral language skills (speaking and listening) and literacy skills (reading and writing).”

From both the research and experience we know that literacy is based on good oral language skills, and that by supporting the development of a child's oral language skills, we are helping them to become successful readers and writers.  We are also helping them to find joy in books!

Books offer a magical opportunity to expose and connect children to stories, ideas and words that that they might not experience otherwise. But as self-confessed Speech Pathology enthusiasts, we’re always looking for ways to get the absolute most out of those golden moments when reading with a child. 

Enter... ‘Shared Book Reading’. 

Shared book reading refers to the concept of reading WITH a child not just to them. It’s about turning book reading into a conversation and letting the child take the lead.

We know that using evidence-based strategies during book reading – using a balance of both comments and questions, slowing down, taking pauses and re-reading books on multiple different occasions – creates a language-rich environment. This helps children better understand the stories and stay engaged for longer. This may mean that you don’t get to read the story from start to end, word for word... but that is ok!

Some of our top picks (in no particular order) for promoting language and literacy development would have to include:

• The Very Cranky Bear by Nick Bland
• Piranhas Don't Eat Bananas by Aaron Blabey
• The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Phister
• A Day with No Words by Tiffany Hammond
• The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
• The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson
• Somebody’s Land by Adam Goodes and Ellie Laing
• Hairy Maclary by Lynley Dodd
• Press Here by Hervé Tullet
• Where is the Green Sheep? by Mem Fox

Here at Noah’s Ark, we also offer an online group program called Lets Chat© which highlights the importance of shared book reading. The training has a dual purpose of supporting educators to become champions in building children’s early oral language and literacy skills, as well as how to boost parents’ and caregivers’ knowledge. 

The program consists of 4 x 90 minute live online sessions that can be delivered flexibly to suit the needs of the participants. It is available through School Readiness Funding (for those in Victoria) or can be self-funded. It aims to provide educators practical strategies that can be easily implemented into the busy kindergarten environment.

Over the last few years of providing this program, it has been a privilege to work with educators and brainstorm ideas to support young children’s early oral literacy.

A wonderful opportunity to be part of supporting children to reach their potential.

Enrolments are now open for our October course, please find additional information on the course details page.