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

1
 Listening Skills

INTRODUCTION

Listening Skills

isa 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.

Itis intended for children aged 4 to 5 and is expected to take about a

year to complete

Ifa 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

2
 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

3
 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.

4
 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.

5
 Listening Skills

INITIAL SCREEN

6
 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.

7
 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.

8
 Listening Skills

SKILLS CHECKLISTS

Listening Skills has three checklists:

 Understanding Instructions and Questions

 Hearing Sounds and Word Patterns

 Understanding Meaning

9
 Listening Skills

SKILLS CHECKLISTS

10
 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
11
 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

12
 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

13
 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

14
 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

15
 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
16
 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.
17
 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

18
 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

19
 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
20
 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
21
 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

22
 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
theirvisual 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.

23