English Developmental Continuum P–10 – Speaking & Listening
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Conventions of language: scaffolding learning from 2.0
Indicators of Progress
- Students show subject–verb agreement (they are less likely to say, The dogs was swimming) and noun–pronoun agreement across two sentences.
- Students use the easier conjunctions and prepositions such as before to link two events when access to real-world corroboration is not available.
- Students use verb tense to indicate how two events are related, for example, She knocked on the door while he was playing with his train, rather than, She knocked on the door and he played with his train.
- Students can differentiate between prepositions expressing time or place.
- Students can distinguish between the adverbs for mass nouns such as milk or water and count nouns such as dolls or toys.
Teaching Strategies
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.
Sequence events using time and order words
Students observe pairs of actions and talk about the actions using before, after, when, while, first, last and then. For example:
- Before Wally climbed onto the wagon, he waved.
- Grandad pulled on the reins while Obie crawled to the back of the wagon.