Through Your Ears and Eyes
Teacher Denise Farr
| Year
|
Level
|
Duration
|
| 3-4
|
2
|
Ongoing
|
| Achievement Objective Being Assessed
|
Learning Outcomes
|
| Interpersonal Listening
|
Take part in small group discussions, which focus on verbal and non-verbal listening strategies, to improve their own and others' listening skills.
|
| Processes
|
| Exploring Language
|
Identify and demonstrate an understanding of common verbal and non-verbal listening strategies that can be used to improve listening skills in small group discussions.
|
| Supporting Achievement Objective
|
Learning Outcomes
|
| Interpersonal Speaking
|
Join in group discussions, speaking about their feelings, ideas and opinions on the topic.
|
| Listening to Texts
|
Recall and respond to the ideas and issues in the story text.
|
| Presenting
|
Use verbal and visual features to communicate ideas using a video.
|
Teacher background reading
Introduction
This unit is designed to focus on the strategies of interpersonal listening in conversation and discussion. This unit can be integrated with any current cross curricula learning context or as a follow up to daily classroom "read to" sessions. Students learn to identify and apply interpersonal listening strategies in group and class discussion times. It could be used for a block of focused teaching and learning, or as an on-going unit, revisited many times during the year. This unit encourages students to take control of their learning, and to become active listeners and lifelong learners.
TEACHING AND LEARNING ACTIVITIES
Select and adapt these learning activities to best meet the needs of your students, and to fit the time available:
Learning task 1
Learning task 2
Learning task 3
Learning task 4
Assessment
(See note on Assessing against the Curriculum).
Formative Assessment Task: "Video I.D."
View a video of some students participating in a small group discussion and identify some listening strategies used by highlighting on a group assessement template
of possible strategies. Talk about one of the strategies highlighted, explaining how they knew which one it was.
Summative Assessment Task: "Zooming In"
View a video of themselves participating in a group discussion. Identify the listening strategies they use, highlighting on a checklist. Reflect on their use of listening strategies on the self assessment template, those they used well and those they would like to learn to use better. Reflect on their understanding and value of listening skills.
assessment (RTF 11KB)
Group Assessment "Video I.D."
Self Assessment "Zooming In"
Listening Reflection
RESOURCES
Electronic
Print
- Picture books for Older Readers
- Some further suggestions:
- The Great White Man-Eating Shark by Margaret Mahy
- Fog Cat by Marilyn Helmer
- Night Noises by Mem Fox
- My Cat Maisie by Pamela Allen
- Old Thomas and The Little Fairy by Dominique Demers
- The Lion and the Unicorn by Shirley Hughes
- The Rabbits by John Marsden
- Memorial by Gary Crew
- The Wonderful Journey by Paul Geraghty
- Norton's Hut by John Marsden
- Cubbit, S., Irvine, R. & Dow, A. (1999). Top Tools for Social Science Teachers. Longman: Auckland
- Ministry of Education. (1996). Exploring Language A Handbook for Teachers. Learning Media: Wellington
Follow up
- This is an ideal unit to use more than once in the year. It could be used as a class or school-wide listening focus or could be gradually introduced over a whole term or year. It could also be used to specifically meet identified student needs.
- This unit could be revisited at any time of the year to teach more strategies or to refresh and revise those already taught.
- This unit could be taught within many, many contexts eg. social studies, science, art, literature... Take advantage of what is already happening in the class learning programme. It does not need to be an 'added extra' but with a little modification could easily be integrated with learning units already scheduled.
- Listening strategies will need to be revisited often, and like most new learning will need many practice and reflection opportunities. Take advantage of the spontaneous moments as well as planned ones.
- It is important that explicit teaching, where the teacher talks about the strategies openly and specifically in the context of speaking and listening activities happens regularly in the class. Having the strategies on display in the class is a handy reminder for everyone. Knowing about listening ie. what good listeners do is critical if children are to take control of their learning and to become life-long listeners and learners.
- Students need to become familiar with the metalanguage of listening, so that they can use it as a vehicle to discuss their listening skills, eg. eye gaze direction, turn taking, overlapping, facial expressions, minimal responses, open-ended questions... This will happen if you talk about these strategies often, and will empower them as learners to talk constructively and knowingly about listening.
