Oral Language Development Series

For ELL and Emergent Readers
Highlights
  • Develop Oral Language Skills for Literacy Success
  • Research-Based Tools for ELLs & Emergent Readers
  • Guide Students to Higher Levels of Proficiency
  • Teach Simple to Complex Language Structures
  • Includes Teacher's Guide

Series Overview

The Oral Language Development Series is a set of research-based language readers designed with an eye to helping English language learners (ELLs) improve their oral language skills. It comes with a detailed teacher’s guide explaining how the series works. The leveling is organized around language structures, from simple sentences up through more complicated multi-clause sentences. The books can also be used for other literacy purposes. There are 102 books in the set. For additional information about oral language development, including videos, articles and other related content, view our complete list of oral language resources.

Displaying 1 of 16 (16 Products)
Collapse Filter


Why Use the Oral Language Development Series?

When choosing oral language resources for your oral language program, it is important to select language development books that are both research-based and easy to use. Your students' ability to effectively use oral language in the classroom is influenced by the language development resources available, and the oral language development strategies that they are taught. In some cases, oral language interventions may be necessary. The Oral Language Readers were developed to address these kinds of needs, which were identified with the help of the research base on oral language development. The Oral Language Readers provide exposure to alternative ways of constructing sentences, through interaction with text in one-on-one and small group settings.

Interventions for children's language and literacy difficulties start with the assessment process. Designed primarily for English language learners, the Oral Language Development Series contains wordless books for English oral language assessment, which allow you to place your students on a continuum of 7 language structure levels, organized by level of sentence complexity. Oral language assessment in the classroom is assisted with the availability of downloadable PDF forms to use with the series.

The Oral Language Readers were designed to support oral language development through interaction with text, as language is the foundation of learning to read and write. The focus is on developing, refining, and expanding the child's oral language, not on accurate reading. These are not leveled readers, and they should be used differently than guided reading books are used. The Oral Language Readers are sequenced in a research-based order according to the complexity of their language structures. The purpose is for the child to be able to say and manipulate these structures, not necessarily to read them, and to be able to use similar types of structures independently.

The oral language strategies for which the language readers are used are explained in depth in our Oral Language Development Series Teacher's Guide. The use of these books is intended for short-term language support in the classroom for English Language Development groups, oral language groups and re-reading of familiar texts.