Its Good to Talk Listening and Learning Aims

It’s Good to Talk: Listening and Learning

Aims of the Session: Exploring how teachers can develop children’s listening skills: n Using games to promote listening; n Teaching active listening n Supporting listening in group talk.

Network Day Task n Discuss the transcript/s from your lessons, looking particularly at: ¨ Different categories of questions ¨ Examples of misunderstanding ¨ Extracts of talk going well ¨ Different questioning styles ¨ How well you listen to children’s responses

Listening We all do a lot of listening! n Of all the time we spend communicating… n 45% is listening n 30% is speaking n 16% reading n 9% writing. You can’t speak a language until you have listened to it!

Listening Classrooms? n ‘Children should be seen and not heard’; n ‘Stop talking’ n ‘Please listen’ n ‘Are you listening? ’ Listening is very often linked with behaviour, obedience and compliance, not with an active sense of developing spoken interaction and learning through talk.

Active Listening Ø Active listening is listening for learning, Ø Passive listening is linked to behaviour and is more about the absence of talk , than being a good listener. Ø Active listening is responsive: it is part of building and sustaining talk for learning. Ø Passive listening is unreactive: it does not contribute to the development of discussion or thinking. Listening is more active than hearing: we all hear lots of things we don’t recall

Why don’t children listen? n Poor concentration and attention span n Limited experiences of being listened to n Limited structured opportunities to develop listening skills n Focused on self (and talk) rather than others n Dislike of sitting still – desire to fidget n Poor social interaction skills Listening is a skill which needs to be explicitly taught, and listening opportunities explicitly planned into teaching.

Listening Foundations We should work on: n Becoming aware of sounds: what sounds do we hear in different places and different situations (eg the playground; a hospital) n Recognising and identifying sounds: being able to match sounds to sources n Discriminating between sounds: being able to distinguish between similar sounds (eg different engine noises: car/plane) and being able to group together similar sounds (eg things that buzz)

Listening Games http: //www. btbetterworld. com/pg/developing_skills/free_resources/Communic ation_Cookbook_-_Listening_Walk/home. ikml Try Bailey Bear’s Listening Walk http: //www. lancsngfl. ac. uk/curriculum/literacyresources/index. php? category_i d=22&s=!B 121 cf 29 d 70 ec 8 a 3 d 54 a 33343010 cc 2 n Look at Listening Games

What makes a good listener? n Paying attention n Showing you are listening, with your body as well as your ears n Providing feedback (smiles, nods, mm) n Asking questions to check understanding n Giving the speaker time to speak (ie no interrupting) n Replying to what they have said rather than what you want to say.

Storytelling to support listening Storytelling: n encourages sustained active listening n develops concentration and attentiveness n invites listeners to convert words into images n develops awareness of oral patterns such as rhyme, rhythm and repetition n models the articulate use of oral language.

Storytelling n “Teachers are often surprised at the length of time that very young pupils and teenagers can be held in a state of attentive listening by a good storyteller. That state is sometimes called 'being spellbound‘. ” http: //www. thestoryspinner. co. uk/index. htm

Listening and Responding Using the Learning Objectives for Listening and Responding: n choose a year group n think of teaching activities which would help to explicitly develop those listening skills. n write these down clearly so that we can collate them for the website.

Next Network Session Pre-session task: n Create your own activities to develop listening skills, or try some of the ones on the website n Evaluate how well they work and adapt them if necessary. n Bring a clear outline and explanation of the two most successful activities to the next Network Session

http: //education. exeter. ac. uk/pages. php? id=543

n The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when someone asked me what I thought, and then attended to my answer. - Henry David Thoreau

P 4 C: Year 2 -3 children Teacher: Why did the mother think that her baby was best? Child: Because it was beautiful. She thought it was beautiful. Child: She thought it was beautiful because she was the mother. Teacher: What does it mean to be beautiful? Child: It means someone thinks you are lovely. Child: You are perfect. . . Child: Good to look at. Teacher: Can you be beautiful even if no-one thinks you are lovely? Child: No. You can’t be beautiful if no-one thinks you are beautiful. Child: You can be beautiful inside, you can feel beautiful. . .