One Step at a Time: Presentation 6

LISTENING SKILLS

Introduction

Initial Screen

Skills Checklist

Classroom Intervention

Lesson Planning

Teaching Method

Vocabulary Work

Monitoring Progress

Moving On

Links to Literacy

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Listening Skills

INTRODUCTION

Listening Skills

is a programme for developing children’s understanding of spoken language and their phonic skills in preparation for reading and other demands of the early school curriculum.

It is intended for children aged 4 to 5 and is expected to take about a year to complete

If a significant number of children have not done Conversation Skills (i.e. completed the first two checklists) the class should do the second Conversation Skills checklist first, before beginning Listening Skills

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Listening Skills

INTRODUCTION

Listening is a complex skill: it includes hearing, attending, understanding and remembering.

At school, children need to be able to:

understand instructions and questions

discriminate sound and word patterns

listen for longer periods (extended listening) in larger groups and in larger spaces than at home

follow and understand stories

grasp implicit meanings

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Listening Skills

INITIAL SCREEN

The Initial Screen helps staff to

‘tune-in’ to the relevant skills at this level of the programme

identify children’s current development of these skills

determine the amount of support they are likely to need.

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Listening Skills

INITIAL SCREEN

The Initial Screen identifies children as:

Competent: they seem to be acquiring these skills without too much difficulty and are not expected to need special attention

Developing: they seem to be slower in acquiring these skills and are likely to need some assistance and monitoring.

Delayed: they seem to be having difficulty in acquiring these skills and are likely to need more intensive support and monitoring.

These groupings are intended to be flexible and are likely to change in the course of a term or year.

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Listening Skills

INITIAL SCREEN

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Listening Skills

INITIAL SCREEN

While children are settling into their new environment, staff can be observing them informally in a variety of situations, focusing on the behaviours to be assessed.

Working with a colleague if possible, staff complete the initial screen for each child separately

A behaviour should only be credited if a child is using it confidently, competently and consistently. If there is any doubt or disagreement, the behaviour should not be credited.

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Listening Skills

INITIAL SCREEN

The screen has two bands, and children are assessed band by band. If they do not have all the behaviours in Band 1, they do not need to be assessed on Band 2

Children who lack any of the behaviours in Band 1 are identified as Delayed, even if they have some of the behaviours in Band 2

Children who have all the behaviours in Band 1 but lack any of the behaviours in Band 2 are identified as Developing

Children who have all the behaviours in both bands are identified as Competent

The Delayed group may include some children with special needs, but should not be thought of as a special needs group.

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Listening Skills

SKILLS CHECKLISTS

Listening Skills has three checklists:

Understanding Instructions and Questions

Hearing Sounds and Word Patterns

Understanding Meaning

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Listening Skills

SKILLS CHECKLISTS

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Listening Skills

SKILLS CHECKLISTS

Each checklist identifies three or four general skills, sub-divided into separate behaviours or question forms

Skills and behaviours are listed in rough developmental order as a guide to intervention

Children normally work through each checklist in sequence, one skill at a time, but the question forms in Checklist 1 can run in parallel with Following Instructions or Checklist 2

Teaching of different behaviours and question forms will usually overlap

Every child and every behaviour needs to be assessed and monitored separately

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Listening Skills

CLASSROOM INTERVENTION

Listening skills are taught primarily through small-group work, supported by whole-class activities and informal interaction with individual children

The checklists set teaching objectives for all children on a rolling basis, while the initial screens determine the amount of support needed for each child

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Listening Skills

CLASSROOM INTERVENTION: Small-Group Work

Children are assigned to small teaching groups on the basis of the initial screen. If possible, each group should be no more than six children, and should always work with the same adult

Children identified as Delayed should receive at least one small-group teaching session every day

Children identified as Developing should receive two or three small-group teaching sessions a week

Children identified as Competent should receive at least one small-group teaching session a week, for as long as they need it

Each teaching session should be 10 to 15 minutes long

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Listening Skills

CLASSROOM INTERVENTION: Whole-Class Work

Whole-class work is used to teach question forms and nursery rhymes, and to support small-group work

There should be at least one whole-class activity every day focusing on the skills and behaviours currently being worked on

This need not be a separate ‘language lesson;’ it can be incorporated into any familiar classroom activity

Other whole-class activities can also be used to support current learning, at any time, several times a day

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Listening Skills

CLASSROOM INTERVENTION: Informal Interaction

A list of the skills, behaviours or question forms currently being worked on should be displayed prominently, so everyone can use it to guide their interaction with individual children

All staff and other adults should be encouraged to use every available opportunity to practise these skills with children individually

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Listening Skills

LESSON PLANNING

The skills checklists provide learning and teaching objectives for all children

Suggestions for appropriate activities are given in the Notes to each checklist

It is not usually necessary to plan separate activities or prepare special materials

Almost any familiar activity can be used for Checklists 1 and 3, and most materials needed should already be available in the classroom, but Checklist 2 will require special activities and materials

As well as allocating times for small-group or other language work, staff should also identify some activities every day where current learning can be consolidated

Longer-term planning needs to be flexible, allowing time for groups to go back and repeat any work they have found difficult

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Listening Skills

TEACHING METHOD

Parents normally teach their children spoken language (usually without realising they are doing it) by:

Highlighting: drawing attention to a word or behaviour by indicating or emphasising it

Modelling: providing an example for the child to copy

Prompting: encouraging him to respond, directing him towards an appropriate response

Rewarding: rewarding any appropriate response with praise and further encouragement

The teacher should use the same techniques, but use them explicitly and systematically.

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Listening Skills

VOCABULARY WORK

Vocabulary is crucial for children’s progress through school but is too large to teach systematically in any detail.

Vocabulary work is an optional element in Listening Skills and should not be introduced until children and staff are thoroughly familiar with skills teaching

Listening Skills includes a Vocabulary Wordlist of 100 essential words selected from the vocabulary of properties and relations and the vocabulary of feelings and emotion. This Wordlist is intended to be supplemented with essential topic vocabulary

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Listening Skills

VOCABULARY WORK

Staff can start by selecting 3 or 4 words from the Vocabulary Wordlist, and 4 or 6 items of essential topic vocabulary from the current curriculum, to provide 6 to 10 words for explicit teaching as ‘this week’s special words’

These words can be varied week by week, phasing some words out and some new ones in, and returning from time to time to any words that have proved difficult

This will ensure that all children are exposed to the relevant vocabulary, but will not ensure that every child does in fact know them

Some children may need detailed vocabulary work in small groups, using vocabulary checklists to assess and monitor their individual learning

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Listening Skills

MONITORING PROGRESS

Each child is monitored separately using the checklists. As each child acquires a behaviour it gets ticked off on the checklist

A behaviour or question form should only be credited when the child is using it confidently, competently and consistently. If there is any doubt about a behaviour, it should not be credited

Staff need to ensure that each behaviour or question form has been properly consolidated, and should return later to any items that have proved difficult, to confirm that previous learning has been retained

It is always more important that children consolidate basic skills than that they move on to more advanced ones

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Listening Skills

MOVING ON

The class normally keeps working on the same question forms on a rolling basis until everyone has learnt them

Each group normally keeps working on the same skill until everyone has learnt all the relevant behaviours, but it may sometimes be better to move on to another skill and come back again later, or to reorganise teaching groups

Each group can go at its own pace through the checklist but staff should wait until all groups have completed that checklist before proceeding to the next checklist

Special arrangements may have to be made for children or groups who are having particular difficulty

Each checklist is expected to take about a term to complete

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Listening Skills

LINKS TO LITERACY

Listening skills support reading and writing. Children need to:

be able to discriminate sound and word patterns (phonics) and use that skill for reading and spelling

develop their understanding of spoken words and sentences so they can read and write more fluently

understand stories and other narratives, for the development of extended writing

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Listening Skills

LINKS TO LITERACY

At this age children should also be developing:

an awareness and understanding of reading and narrative structure, from listening to stories, talking about them, or ‘reading’ them themselves from picture books

their visual motor-skills, by using writing tools to draw and copy simple shapes, including letters

an awareness and understanding of writing, by being involved in simple writing tasks.

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