Listen with Care, Speak with Confidence

©pinterest

          As a student I never considered speaking an aspect of the language curriculum. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love to talk which is exactly why I never thought of it as something to be assessed on. However, from a teaching perspective (or really from any adult/mature perspective) being able to speak with confidence and listen well are integral parts of basically all aspects of our lives. Therefore, making oral communication an extremely important part of every students education.

‘Communication works for those who work at it’ – John Powell

Coaches teach the fundamentals of athletics; doctors explain medical conditions to their patients and politicians speak to the world’s problems. As social creatures we are always communicating. This is not a trait that we are born with, it is a skill we must learn and practice because we rely on it throughout our entire lives. As teachers, we must ensure we are constantly giving our students opportunities to practice their oral communication skills.

©Relatably.com

The article ‘Grand Conversations in the Junior Classroom’ focuses on the beneficial impacts of adopting a dialogic stance in the classroom. This article follows up a previously written article about using Grand Conversations in primary classrooms to influence higher-level comprehension skills. By continuing this type of classroom stance in the junior grades and higher, teachers can ensure students are constantly moulding their communicative abilities.

Grand Conversations consist of guided discussions that use focussed questions and a previously determined ‘discussion etiquette’. Grand Conversations create a safe environment for students to practice communicating their thoughts orally while also learning to listen attentively and respond affectively to their peers. The article ‘Grand Conversations in the Junior Classroom’ is very helpful for teachers to create a dialogic stance in their classroom because it provides tips on how to encourage students to effectively share their thoughts and ideas and refine their vocabulary as well as how to properly facilitate Grand Conversations to support this particular type of growth.

Two of the oral communication overall expectations outlined in the Ontario Curriculum of language are, ‘listen in order to understand and respond appropriately in a variety of situations for a variety of purposes;’ and ‘use speaking skills and strategies appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes’. Grand Conversations allow students to learn to clearly and concisely communicate their ideas while simultaneously learning to remain engaged while listening and respond directly to the conversation at hand. 

          The third overall expectation for oral communication is ‘reflect on and identify their strengths as listeners and speakers, areas for improvement, and the strategies they found most helpful in oral communication situations.’ Grand Conversations also allow the students to take time to look back and reflect on their contributions, the clarity to which they communicated their thoughts and the relevance of their responses (and therefore how successful they were at attentive listening).

‘We are stronger when we listen and smarter when we share’ – Rania Al Abdullah

©brainyquotes

A teacher named Mrs. Obrien created an activity for her classroom that encouraged students to practice their oral communication and conversation skills called ‘conversation stations’. The activity is very versatile and is really not directed for any particular grade because it surrounds topics of interest to the students that promote critical thinking. Two students draw a question from the container and base their discussion around it. The questions require more than a one word answer and therefore strengthen students communicative skills without it looking like a formal ‘assessment’ or ‘task’.

‘The most important part of communication is hearing what isn’t being said’ – Peter Drucker

            The second and often forgotten (but equally as important) component of oral communication is listening. All people need to be able to gather information through listening and respond appropriately and affectively. Just like communicating through speech, listening is a learned skill.

I stumbled upon an activity that is focussed on developing listening skills and had to share it despite it being for elementary students. The activity is called ‘listen and colour’, it develops students listening skills by having them listen to a tape or to the teacher and colour a sheet accordingly. At the end they get to see a colour key that demonstrates how attentively they were listening. Although this is probably directed to primary students I believe there are ways that it could be adapted to a level appropriate for junior and intermediate grades. For instance, students could be asked to listen and respond by drawing or painting a picture; or by building a lego tower with specific colours and sizes of blocks. I believe this is an activity that strengthens students listening skills while simultaneously helping them develop their ability to self-reflect and self-assess. 

I Write, Therefore I Can

©Liyin Yeo

In my final year of high school I discovered my love for writing. I think at first it was because it was something I understood; I couldn’t explain it, but there was this part of me that just felt like I got it. The more I wrote, the more proud I became of my work and the more I wanted to write. I finally realized that the clarity and effectiveness of my writing was entirely correlated with my confidence in my abilities.

©Pinterest

I associate a lot of this confidence with my English and creative writing teachers very important mantra; at least once during every class he would say to us ‘write everyday’ and so we would. For five or ten minutes at the beginning of each class we would write in response to something; be it a prompt he provided us or something we’d experienced and wanted to vent about. We would write and we would stop and the lesson would begin. Occasionally, one or two people would share but it wasn’t about what we were writing it was about how we were writing it.

How Can We Encourage Students to Write? #studentengagement

A mother who home schools her two boys wrote a blog about her successful experiencing implementing a writing jar as an activity for language arts. She filled the jar with prompts that were related to topics of interest for her two boys and would begin writing activities by having them each grab 2 or 3 prompts and choosing the one they wanted to use. She would then focus the activity to the grade level of each child. For her youngest she might have him write a few sentences whereas her oldest would be expected to create thesis sentences and full paragraphs in response to his prompt.

Are Writing Jars Even Applicable? #corecurriculum

The possibilities of a writing jar are endless and allow teachers to encourage particular forms of writing and important aspects of the curriculum while still using topics that are relatable and interesting to the students. By have students brainstorm ideas and gather information, create a piece of writing, proof read and edit their work and then finally reflect on their strengths and weaknesses teachers would are able to apply the work related to writing jars to all four of the overall expectations for writing in the Ontario Curriculum.

Save the Trees, Use Technology! #makewritingfunagain

As a teacher I will take on my teacher’s mantra and the ideas presented by this woman and her writing jar by encouraging my students to respond to anything and everything by writing about it. The jar uses word prompts but I believe that in order to make students enjoy writing we need to inspire them by providing a variety of places to start. Specifically, we need to appeal to their interests and delve into their worlds so writing will be less of a chore!

As technology is a huge part of their world (and ours!) I believe it is important to incorporate it as much as possible into all aspects of teaching, especially because we know it is something most students will understand and be engaged with. Technology provides us with another great way to encourage writing… by using photos as writing prompts! It could be a photo the students take themselves, one provided by the teacher, or even a photo they found online. Check out Robyn’s World for some great ideas on how to get started using photos as writing prompts!

What Do We Want? Writers! When Do We Want Em’? NOW!

©TAA

When I was a student I learned that jotting down some nonsensical sentences for as few as five minutes built my confidence as a writer and made me love to communicate through words. And not that I or anyone else will ever be perfect (because wouldn’t that be a boring world!) but through this mantra I truly learned the meaning of practice makes perfect and that is exactly what I will try to reinforce when I’m teaching writing.