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 1

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 2

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 3

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. 4

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. 5

6. Listening Skills INITIAL SCREEN 6

7.  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

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. 8

9. Listening Skills SKILLS CHECKLISTS Listening Skills has three checklists:  Understanding Instructions and Questions  Hearing Sounds and Word Patterns  Understanding Meaning 9

10. Listening Skills SKILLS CHECKLISTS 10

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 11

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 12

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 13

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 14

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 15

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 16

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. 17

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 18

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 19

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 20

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 21

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 22

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. 23