"Our children have not seen many of the common manipulatives or play materials before. We find we have to provide them with lots of time to explore and play with concrete materials, and to talk with each other about them before we can use them for more formal instruction."
- a Saskatchewan teacher

Speaking and Listening Opportunities in Creative and Collaborative Work

• Various (particular materials dependent on nature of activity).

1. Provide frequent opportunities for children to work in pairs or small groups to explore concrete materials, share ideas, and create group products. All such activities are opportunities for oral language development. Examples of a few of the many opportunities possible include:
   • working with math manipulatives
   • exploring natural objects and phenomena at the science center or during science activities
   • sorting and classifying objects and photographs related to a unit in health education, science, or social studies
   • creating visual art products or crafts
   • creating stories, dramas, or puppet shows.¹⁴
2. Incorporate these opportunities throughout each week in all subject areas. The chart that follows describes books for teachers that make use of centers and small group structured play activities--ones that provide literacy opportunities, support oral language development, and incorporate critical and creative thinking challenges.

   Serious Players in the Primary Classroom. Wassermann (1990) describes fully developed small group activities in each subject area for children from kindergarten to grade three. They are structured in such a way that the whole class is involved at the same time. They make use of concrete materials and foster perceptual development, oral language development, and a problem-solving approach. The activities include questions for children to discuss in their small groups and questions for teachers to use in debriefing the activity with the entire class. Guided Reading: Good First Teaching for all Children. Fountas and Pinnell (1996) describe a range of language centers in Chapter 5. The book explains classroom organization for use of the centers. It also describes ways to organize for student's independent use of the centers--thus freeing the teacher for small group instruction and/or individual conferences.

3. Support oral language development within these experiences through:
   • providing and modeling a language for co-operation through demonstrations and role play
   • extending vocabulary informally as you circulate among groups
   • adding new vocabulary to classroom labels, signs, Word Wall, etc.
   • debriefing learning at the end of an activity with open-ended statements such as, "Tell me some of the things that you noticed about the materials/objects you worked with today."