• providing multiple opportunities for students to create meaning through language in a
range of contexts (eg student–teacher, teacher–student, student–student)
• encouraging students to take the lead in conversations
• giving students time to respond
• providing scaffolding to facilitate accurate responding. This is particularly useful when
students are not confident in their responses. Scaffolding may include sentence starters,
first sound cues, giving descriptive information, providing a choice of answers, mouthing
the answer, giving gestural cues
• providing feedback by recasting and expanding.
Recasting
Recasting is an effective feedback strategy for producing long-term gains in oral language
development. It is particularly useful for addressing expressive syntax difficulties.
When a student pronounces a word incorrectly, makes a grammatical error or uses an
incorrect word, the teacher provides a succession of immediate error-free models so the
student can hear how the word or sentence should sound. The teacher may also elaborate
on what the student says by adding information.
44
Support Materials for Students with Special Education Needs
English K–6
Speaking and listening
IMPLEMENTATION
Example: recasting for a
pronunciation
error
Student:
I drew a
dod
(pointing to a drawing).
Teacher:
Wow, you drew a big
dog
.
Teacher:
A
dog
with, let’s see, 4 legs.
Teacher:
Is that your
dog
?
Example: recasting for a
grammatical
error
Student:
He
caughted
the ball.
Teacher:
He
caught
the ball. You’re right.
Teacher:
He
caught
the ball then the girl
caught
the ball.
Teacher:
I wonder what will happen next.
The word ‘caught’ is repeated correctly on three occasions and the teacher repeats and
elaborates on the student’s original sentence.
Example: recasting for a
vocabulary
error
Student:
Nana has no eye hairs (pointing to her nana’s eyebrows).
Teacher:
Nana has no
eyebrows
.
Teacher:
Her
eyebrows
are gone.
Teacher:
Are my
eyebrows
missing too? (waits for response)
Teacher:
Where are your
eyebrows
?
The word ‘eyebrows’ is repeated correctly on four occasions. The teacher provides
examples of other ways to express the same message.
