Using Voicethread to Improve Oral Communication Skills in Kindergarten Students
The action research I chose to do was based on beliefs surrounding the importance of developing oral communication skills in kindergarten students. Qatar academy has 5 kindergarten classes with 19 students in each class. A large percentage of the students have a mother tongue other than english. Due to the fact that they are learning in a second language, oral communication in English is challenging and threatening for some of these students and is an area of the curriculum that needs careful attention.
The development of oral communication skills is critical to the education of any student, the thorough development of these skills has shown to greatly increase the academic success of a student. ( National Communication Association) The importance of having good oral communication skills cannot be over emphasized as we live in a world where we spend significant periods of time communicating with others whether it be face to face or through using various forms of technology. Schools provide an opportunity for students to be exposed to the study of communication. The National Communication Association developed criteria for oral communication guidelines that schools could use. The guidelines were based on the standards that (i) oral communication - along with other forms of communication - are central to all learning and useful in all areas of life. (ii) That developing oral communication skills is a process and should be supervised from the earliest stages of education in the same way that reading and writing are. (iii)Oral communication is a complex process and should be structured from several different perspectives in each grade. Oral communication skills at a kindergarten level might involve developing an ability to speak clearly and distinctly, orally sharing information and experiences and developing an ability to listen to others.
With all the above in mind I worked with two kindergarten teachers to develop an activity that would promote the development of oral communication skills in these young learners. We wanted the students to firstly, feel comfortable communicating about their learning, secondly, to communicate in a clear manner with appropriate volume and finally to be able to reflect on their communication by listening to their recordings and improve on them due to this reflection.
We chose to use Voicethread, a 21st century tool to achieve these goals. Voicethread was chosen for several reasons. It allows an image to be uploaded and then commented on. It is an excellent collaboration and communication tool in that it allows anyone to comment on an image or to reflect on or add to the comments others have already made. (KNILT) In this particular case it would allow for one student to comment on another’s communication skills if they so desired. Similarly the teacher or child’s parents could comment on the student’s work or voice recording. Vitally important to this process is that Voicethread provides the opportunity for the students to replay their recording and therefore listen to themselves.
The overarching question in this action research project was ‘ Did the use of Voicethread improve the oral communication skills in kindergarten students?’ For this particular research, and taking into account the appropriate skills to work on at kindergarten level the research specifically questioned whether Voicethread had aided:
(i) communicating clearly, with appropriate volume
(ii) listening skills - were the students able to listen to their own recording and the comments of others in order to identify areas for improvement.
The kindergarten students were working on a unit of inquiry about houses and homes. We uploaded pictures they had drawn of their own houses into Voicethread and then asked each of them to describe their house. They then listened to their own recording and made observations about the clarity and volume of their voices. After the observations were completed we uploaded a second picture of the students’ families and asked each child to do a second recording, trying to keep in mind what they had said about their first recording. We then played each child’s recordings for the class and got feedback. The student’s did a final recording on a third picture.
Once all the recording had been done I interviewed ten students and the two teachers that had been involved. Of the ten students, two said that Voicethread had not helped them to comment more clearly, that they had just spoken as they always do. Seven students said that they were speaking too quietly or unclearly the first time they spoke and that they tried to speak more clearly on the second recording. One student commented that he had shouted during the first recording but spoke more calmly during the second recording. ( http://voicethread.com/#e880927 )
Both classroom teachers had found using Voicethread very beneficial for the students. One commented that she had had several conversations with students about the fact that they were not speaking clearly or loudly enough during previous, similar activities. She found that when they actually heard their own voices, they understood what she had been saying and tried to improve their communication. She also felt that using Voicethread was an excellent way to encourage the second language learners to speak. They were not standing in front of a large audience and therefore felt less intimidated. They were also allowed to restart as many times as they wanted to and so did not feel a huge pressure to get it right the first time. The second teacher made similar comments but added that she would have liked to have recorded the reflections that the students made about each others recordings but found that she ran out of time.
For myself reflecting on this process I definitely believe that using voice recording technologies helps to improve the oral communication skills in students. I believe that this is largely due to the fact that they can hear themselves and simultaneously see the reaction of those around them as to whether they were understood or not. The area in which I believe this process was lacking, and in my current job as a technology integration facilitator, that I see arising all the time, is that the 21 century tools are not necessarily being used to their full potential. As a result the student learning that could be occurring is not. There are many tools that can be used to do voice recording. Voicethread is significant in that it allows for easy collaboration and reflection. In this project it was simply used as a voice recording tool. The main reason for this seems to be time constraints. When doing this again, I would like to see the students recording their comments for other students on the Voicethread. This would provide the initial student with feedback that he or she can listen to again and give the student who is responding further opportunity to develop his or her communication skills. I would also encourage parents/ teachers or other members of the community to go onto the Voicethread and comment on the students drawings or their voice recording. This would provide the initial student practice in using listening skills as well as providing an audience for his or her work.
References:
Morreale, S; Cooper, P; Perry C Guidelines for Developing Oral Communication Curricula for Kindergarten to Twelth Grade Students ( August 2000) Retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov:80/ERICDocs/data
Using Voicethread as a Tool for Language Learning, retrieved from the Knowledge Network for Innovations in Learning and Teaching wiki http://tccl.rit.albany.edu/knilt/index.php/Main_Page
