English Developmental Continuum P–10 – Speaking & Listening
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Ideas communicated: scaffolding learning from 1.25
Indicators of Progress
- Students recall, recount and describe in a logical sequence familiar experiences and events, and their feelings and beliefs.
- Students retell stories they have heard, ordering events using story language and various techniques to recall and invent well-structured stories.
- Students vary what they say in line with their intended purposes, for the goal of describing a situation they have experienced or to retell a story or an activity in which they have engaged.
- Students begin to talk about their feelings, preferences, values for particular stories or games, or why they enjoy viewing a television programme or singing a particular song.
- Students dictate a story or a message to accompany a sequence of actions or a set of pictures or paintings.
- Students comprehend individual words and provide synonyms.
- Students comprehend and refer to individual words (that is, receptive vocabulary) and relevant sentence forms (various grammatical forms, one-event sentences).
- Students answer questions about main details in a presentation.
- Students link events or ideas they hear with similar experiences they have had.
- Students select a set of pictures that best matches a sequence of sentences they hear.
- Students apply accurately spoken instructions and ask for help and clarification if necessary.
- Students listen to and/or watch a story, say how they felt, and begin to examine how it was presented, that is, they begin to select the main aspects of a presentation and link them with the feelings it generates in them.
Teaching Strategies
Before speaking and listening: Getting your knowledge ready
The learning and teaching approach for speaking and listening is illustrated for students responding to the serial story Little Obie and the Flood written by Martin Waddell and published by Walker Books Ltd, London in 1991.
Ask and answer questions to predict the story
Students look at the front cover. They ask possible questions the story might answer and suggest possible answers to these questions. For example:
Comprehend word meaning and provide synonyms
Students:
- suggest why the word cabin is used instead of house or home
- say terrible storm in other ways
- suggest other words for destroying everything.
During speaking and listening: Tuning in to ideas
The learning and teaching approach for speaking and listening is illustrated for students responding to the serial story Little Obie and the Flood written by Martin Waddell and published by Walker Books Ltd, London in 1991.
Organise ideas while listening
Students hear the text read. They practise visualising as they hear each paragraph and then describe the picture they have visualised. Periodically, as they listen, they add to the sequence of events by answering literal questions that cue them to:
- attend to the new ideas mentioned
- visualise the new ideas and identify the questions answered by each new idea
- link the new ideas with what they already know.
One way of directing this review is to ask the students relevant literal-level questions and to have them respond with what they know. Have students answer the following questions:
- Who are the main characters?
- Where do they live? Where are they going now?
- What has happened so far in the story?
- What did Grandad do at the store?
- Where are they?
- When did the rain start?
- Why was Obie concerned about what his grandad said?
Use pausing, intonation patterns and gestures during the initial reading to help the students chunk and organise what they hear. Encourage students to listen for how the story is being told. Ask them:
- What words were said that show the weather was getting bad? (“wind and rain lashed at the canvas”, “the roar of the water”).
- What told you Grandad was worried? (He couldn’t stay at the Stinsons; Obie knew he was really worried; He had never seen the creek so high).
Use short-term memory strategies to keep track when listening
Students practise using short-term memory strategies while listening:
- they recall the events and characters in the story they heard
- they recall, in order, what happened.
Students add to a description of what they heard:
- First we heard who is in the story and where they live.
- Little Obie and Grandad got out of the wagon and went to Bailey’s Ford.
- They picked up Wally on the way.
- They bought food there.
- Grandad saw the bad weather coming.
- It started to rain heavily.
- They got back to the cabin.
Learn new vocabulary
Review existing vocabulary as new vocabulary is learnt.
Students can learn synonyms and antonyms for the new terms.
Use flash cards of pictures of the new vocabulary items as cues for talking. Students are shown a picture and need to talk about the item in one or two sentences.
Use flash cards as a sequence of items and ask students to talk about the sequence in a short story.