Using Children’s Literature for Oracy Development in the Primary School

This chapter presents uses of children’s literature for oracy development, with a focus on the first years of the primary school. I describe the oral tradition of childhood, which includes nursery rhymes, singing games and action games, and examine the theory and principles behind the uses of this material with young language learners. I discuss oral storytelling and introduce the features of orality and the oral literary tradition, as highly supportive of oracy in language learning. Next, the versatility of the picturebook format is examined, and the role of the teacher in sharing a picturebook with young learners. I argue that creative teacher talk, which varies in pitch, tempo, volume, rhythm, intonation and emphasis in response to the needs of the children, best supports active learning during picturebook read-alouds. The teacher’s role in oracy development with children’s literature is manifold, including scaffolding with gestures, facial expressions and eye contact, while clarifying vocabulary and highlighting through reiterations the formulaic sequences found in the stories and rhymes, extending the classroom discourse by modelling related language, providing more examples in different contexts already familiar to the children, and additionally recasting and further developing children’s utterances. A section on classroom practices illustrates opportunities for learner interaction using selected nursery rhymes, songs and games, oral storytelling with the cumulative tale The Gingerbread Man and picturebooks on family relationships, including three by author/illustrator Anthony Browne. Throughout the chapter it is shown how this material can create low anxiety situations for oracy and support the development of advantageous traits for language learning: imagination, empathy, tolerance of ambiguity, self-confidence, risk-taking, and adventuresomeness.