Find out how a student’s literacy development is strongly connected to their spoken and written communication skills. Discover helpful strategies for teaching communication skills in the classroom—along with five free writing activities.
What Are Communication Skills and Why Are They Important for Early Literacy Development?
Communication skills are defined here as the ability to:
👂 Listen
🗣️ Speak
📖 Read
✍️ And write effectively.
Strong communication skills enable us to receive information through reading and listening, and share information with others through writing and speaking.
What role does communication play in a student’s ability to read?
A strong connection exists between reading comprehension and the other domains of language. Early oral language skills are connected to a student’s reading comprehension development later on. Speaking, listening, and writing skills not only work in tandem with reading development but also heavily influence and support it.
The opposite is also true. As students learn to read, their oral language skills and writing skills tend to improve as well.
For these reasons, designing instruction to encompass and connect the reading, writing, listening, and speaking domains leads to strong overall language proficiency.
How to Develop Verbal and Written Communication Skills in the Classroom
A language-rich environment helps students build their verbal communication skills.
Giving students lots of chances to listen carefully and talk with a purpose helps them build strong oral language skills. As these skills develop, students build bigger vocabularies, learn more about the world, and start to understand more complex language structures. All of this supports reading comprehension and writing skills.
A good conversation includes listening to understand and speaking to respond. To encourage this, make room throughout the school day for plenty of high-quality conversation. Read-alouds are good opportunities for interactive discussion before, during, and after reading.
- Teachers can share these narrated tales with families to encourage read-aloud experiences at home.
- Read Violeta (available in Spanish) aloud with your class to help build communication skills. This is especially vital for multilingual learner development, according to WIDA standards.
- More: Violeta class activities
- Find videos and more resources for learning with Violeta.
Have your students talk with a partner, in small groups, or with the whole class. Teachers can give a prompt that ties to something the class is learning about. As students practice speaking and listening, they’ll strengthen their oral communication skills. This, in turn, builds their written communication skills.
Written communication involves the reading and writing domains. We:
- Read to gather information
- Write to share information
Reading and writing skills are closely connected. Students should write about what they are reading and read to inform their writing.
Teachers should give students daily opportunities to write for different purposes and audiences. Journaling exercises are excellent writing practice for students of all ages. Through journaling, students learn to reflect and share their viewpoints—skills that are crucial in written and verbal communication.
Modeling good communication skills is also important. Communication skills are central to skilled teaching—whether getting to know a class at the beginning of a school year, or when holding parent-teacher conferences.
As educators in your school teach academic skills like reading, math, science, and more, encourage them to also model and teach communication skills.
The bottom line is this: to help students learn about anything, we should guide them to read about it, write about it, and engage in conversation about it.
5 Communication Skills Activities for Elementary Students
To build students’ communication skills, share these free resources with teachers or families in your districts as classroom or home learning resources. Each one is available to download in English and Spanish.
1. Sentence starters (Spanish: Inicio de oraciones): With this sentence starter writing activity, students can practice writing simple sentences to share their ideas.
2. Word tree (Spanish: Árbol de palabras): Keep track of vocabulary words in class with this printable word tree worksheet, then encourage students to use those new words in conversation.
3. Sentence builder activity (Spanish: Constructores de oraciones): With this downloadable activity, students can practice structuring and writing a sentence.
4. Journal page (Spanish: Página de diario): Pair this printable journal page with this list of prompts to encourage reflection while students practice their communication and writing skills.
5. The Three Little Pigs (Spanish: Los tres cochinitos): Read this book with students and then extend the learning with communication-building activities designed for use in the classroom and at home (Spanish).
Explore Science of Reading Resources for Educators
Read Waterford’s Science of Reading article series to learn about research-based instructional strategies for creating classroom lesson plans. Get started with:
- How to Build Phonological Awareness Skills
- Phonics and Decoding for Elementary Students
- Understanding and Teaching Reading Fluency
Find on-demand video series led by early education experts through Waterford’s Science of Reading Webinar Library, featuring topics chosen with educators in mind like:
- An Overview of the Science of Reading: From Research to Instruction
- Phonological Awareness: The Structure of Spoken Language
- Professional Learning: Teaching the Science of Reading
And more!
Download ‘Get Practical With the Science of Reading’
Find out more about the latest in the Science of Reading. Download this free ebook to explore the latest research on the science of reading, methods to teach phonics and decoding skills, and more.
