Student Learning

English Developmental Continuum P–10 – Speaking & Listening

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Communicating orally (Ability to learn oral language): scaffolding learning from 2.0

 

Indicators of Progress

  • Students know how to infer a speaker’s intention for speaking in specific situations.
  • Students decide the topic of a conversation and how to link what they know with it.
  • Students ask clarifying questions to facilitate their understanding of a communication.
  • Students listen to others’ responses and respond appropriately to what has been said, and know how to judge what others might need to know when they are discussing a topic.
  • Students arrange in order the ideas they want to communicate about familiar sequences. They know how to refer to the context first before they refer to specific events, and how to prioritise the main ideas.
  • Students use short-term retention strategies when listening.
  • Students identify the meanings of unfamiliar terms about comparatively familiar topics.

 

Teaching Strategies

After speaking and listening: Consolidate and review

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.

Reflect values of speaking and listening

Students are encouraged to reflect on how sharing their ideas with others and listening to what others think help them in various ways. Students collate a list of values for speaking and listening.

Speaking and listening helped me:

  • to know more about others
  • to make other people feel good
  • to make other people laugh
  • to make other people feel happy
  • to learn new things
  • to feel sad or scared
  • to share enjoyable experiences
  • to know how my friends feel
  • to help people know what to do.

This list can be used to help students understand how speaking and listening effectively help them solve problems and resolve issues.

Discuss intention of speakers

Students explain why their teacher told them the story of Little Obie and the Flood. You told me the story about Little Obie to:

  • help me see what it was like living on a farm 200 years ago
  • help me know how people lived differently 200 years ago
  • help me know the dangers people experienced 200 years ago
  • help me think of other people.

Discuss new ideas learned

The students show what they know about the story by re-telling what they heard/remember about the story.

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