6-listening-skills for level 2 arab university .ppt

6-listening-skills for level 2 arab university .ppt

1. 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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2. 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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3. 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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4. 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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5. 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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6. Listening Skills
INITIAL SCREEN
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7. 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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8. 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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9. Listening Skills
SKILLS CHECKLISTS
Listening Skills has three checklists:
Understanding Instructions and Questions
Hearing Sounds and Word Patterns
Understanding Meaning
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10. Listening Skills
SKILLS CHECKLISTS
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11. 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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12. 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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13. 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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14. 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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15. 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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16. 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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17. 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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18. 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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19. 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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20. 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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21. 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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22. 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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23. 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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