Developing Talkers

Developing Talkers and its counterpart Hablemos Juntos were curriculum supplements created by researchers at the Children’s Learning Institute to support young children’s language and literacy skills. The purpose of the Developing Talkers curriculum supplement and training materials was to explain and put into action the evidence-based practices that boost children’s oral language skills and conceptual knowledge. The curriculum used a series of instructional routines that repeated across all units.

Supporting truly differentiated instruction, the Developing Talkers model and strategies include components that align with Multi-Tier System of Support (MTSS) and Response to Intervention (RTI) frameworks.

Daily whole-group instruction at Tier 1 provided all students with evidence-based instructional practices centered around interactive read-alouds that include: 

• Answering open-ended questions to encourage higher-level reasoning
• Teaching academic vocabulary words
• Explicit instruction on the comprehension skills good readers use
• Encouraging children to become authors and illustrators as they draw and write in response to texts

Daily small-group instruction at Tier 2 was provided to five students with limited vocabulary skills, based on screening and progress monitoring assessments. Tier 2 activities include: 

• Additional practice and review of vocabulary words
• More explicit vocabulary instruction to deepen children’s understanding of academic vocabulary
• Assessments that monitor ‘Tier 2 students’ learning to plan review day lessons

Currently there is no free curriculum using the findings of this research. The strategies found in the Developing Talkers study can be found in the training Inspired Read-Alouds that is given by the CLI Solutions Group. If you’d like to learn more about the training, please contact CLI Solutions Group.