Speaking, Listening and Learning

Speaking and Listening session

1.5 things I’ll try to remember when in the classroom from these sessions

a.There are numerous techniques of implementing speaking and listening strategies that can be fun and
educational.
b.It is important to get all the children involved, working in different groups and interacting with one another.
c.Important to encourage discussions with each other and feedback to each other.
d.Drama is a very powerful tool for speaking and listening activities.

2.How I felt myself doing the speaking and listening

Whilst listening to the Alice in Wonderland recording my task was to write whatever I saw fit. This left me feeling tense, as I wasn’t sure what I could include and therefore spent the whole exercise furiously writing everything I could. I didn’t enjoy the recording, as I was preoccupied with writing as much as possible. If I had to retell the story I would struggle, as my notes are not sentences but just bits of the narrative I have managed to scribble down. I thought I would enjoy the freedom of writing whatever I wanted, but after talking to the rest of the group I think that drawing whilst listening is much more effective way of recalling a story.
“How how are are you you?” is a very simple but great activity and I was surprised at how hard it is. I found myself consciously keeping to short sentences to keep it manageable. It made me realise how fast speech and general stream of conversation is.
Reading when being questioned by another person was also a lot more difficult than I anticipated – especially when the book we were given was Shakespeare. I found myself giving very short sharp answers and being quite deflective. I had no idea of what I was reading and it was very frustrating. I found myself getting quite angry and this made me realise why teachers can get angry when they are constantly interrupted.
The drama activities were lots of fun. Imagining blowing a feather let me use my imagination, though I did wonder what the point of the exercise was and also my feather did not stay up in the air for long.
High tide and low tide was a brilliant story and I found myself listening intently for the key words. Acting out the story was also lots of fun and helped me pay attention to the story and not just listen out for the key words.
What are you doing was my favourite activity and really worked well. I was nervous about what task I would be made to do. I was impressed with everyone’s creativity and how everyone adapted so easily.
Lend me £50.00 was one of the more weaker games as I caved in very early and revealed the reason for the money. I think I wasn’t persuasive enough and was also more interested in other people’s stories, which were a lot more inventive than mine.
The robots activity incorporated both speaking and listening. Being blindfolded made me lose my sense of direction and it felt quite scary to be directed around. I was very cautious and moved around very slowly. It was interesting that I often ‘turned’ to the left or right rather than moved to the right or left and this subtle difference meant I didn’t get very far across the room.
The street party activity was handled very well especially as the atmosphere and context of the war period of recreated at the start. By engaging with the feelings and emotions of the war it felt easier to dramatise events and put forward different perspectives from War heroes and their families.
The Auction game was hard to engage with. From a teacher perspective reflecting back on the task I feel that we didn’t really explain the rules enough and the aim of the game was also not very clear. The game dragged on for far too long and focused too long on the bidding as opposed to trying to out word each other. Again from a teacher perspective, I think we should have monitored each group’s budgets more closely or devised a way of making the bidding procedure quicker.

3.What it taught me about others/ about group dynamics etc.
When given a specific task to work on as a group such as the Street party, I really enjoyed working in different groups. Given the specific time constraints it was very easy to listen to each other and choose our roles. Everyone participated and engaged with the activity and there was no feeling of exclusion.
It was interesting that with the Auction game the element of competition created a ‘them and us’ culture sparking off subtle disagreements that did not occur with the street party activity.
The drama activities were more fun and everyone got involved with a group discussion, sharing ideas and knowledge, whereas the game and pair activities were not as engaging and didn’t provide as much insight.

4b. Aims ‘hit’ by the activities:

Speaking
Year 1 Listening to Alice in Wonderland hit the objective of speaking by stories.
Year 6 speaking objective was hit by the street party activity.

Listening and Responding:
Year 1 Robots activities – listen to and follow instructions accurately, asking for help and clarification if
necessary and Alice in wonderland tape for listening and expressing views about a story etc.
Year 6 Lend me £50.00 activity analyse how speakers present points effectively through use of language and
gesture and identify the ways spoken language varies according to differences in the context and
purpose of its use.

Group Discussion and Interaction
Year 1 What are you doing task – Take turns to speak, listen to each other’s suggestions and talk about what they are going to do
Year 6 Street Party – Consider examples of conflict and resolution, exploring the language used

Drama
Year 1 High tide and low tide – explore familiar themes and characters through improvisation and role play
Year 6 Street party – Improvise using a range of drama strategies and conventions to explore themes such as hopes, fears and desires.

Aims we haven’t ‘hit’ include:
i. Tell stories and describe incidents from their own experience in an audible voice
ii. Interpret text by reading aloud
iii. Experiment and build with new stories new stores of words to communicate in different contexts
iv. Participate in whole-class debate using the conventions and language of debate
v. Discuss why they like a performance
vi. Devise a performance considering how to adapt the performance for a specific audience.

4c. What activities can you come up with to ‘hit’ some of the aims?
i.Ask the children to draw favourite family holiday or place and then take it in turns to show off their drawing and then describe their holiday or place in detail.
ii.Children are all given a chance to read a part of a story aloud and asked questions regarding the story and/ or accompanying pictures.
iii.Different sentences are put on the whiteboard and children have to come up with a story as a class incorporating the sentences (with new words) into their class story.
iv.Choose a topical subject such as should all children have to wear school uniform and discuss both sides of the argument as a class. Divide the class and get them to argue both sides.
v.School trip to theatre/cinema/show. Discuss the show the following day and ask them to write an account of the show in a review style for a magazine/newspaper.
vi.School play. Perhaps with the twist of pretending show is going to be televised or broadcast worldwide.

liked this cos you only had 4

amazing how we all baulked at the idea of more homework yet most of us managed to find plenty to say! and yes you did cave pretty quickly on the lend me exercise but i'd like to think that was down to my amazing persuasive skills more than your lack of willpower......................