Speaking and Listening Ideas for the Classroom
Presentation and Sketch Notes to Improve Speaking and Listening Skills
One of the standards that we find that our students need the most growth is Speaking and Listening. Year after year, that strand is marked the lowest in our CAASPP scores. There are several things that we do to improve our students’ listening comprehension as well as speaking skills. One thing we do is have our students present to the class several times throughout the year, either individually or while in groups. To improve listening comprehension, while students are actively listening to presentations, we have them take sketch notes.
We are true believers in the power or sketch noting. Sketch-noting hones our students’ skills in
observation, listening, and distilling and structuring information. Essentially sketch noting is all about transforming ideas into visual communication, organizing thoughts, and giving order to concepts.
When we teach our students about taking sketch notes, we usually start with direct instruction. We let students know that taking notes on presentations should be quick, direct, and clear and is usually their primary sketch noting tool. We want our students to capture the meaningful quotes and key points and avoid trying to summarize everything. We then go on to practice serval images or icons that students can use to give emphasis to major ideas and can add interest to large blocks of text. Last, we want our students to avoid making lists or outlines and use the space on the page to their advantage by "chunking" information. Some ways that they can force themselves to work spatially might be by starting in the middle of a page and working outwards or working in columns for a panel discussion.
Another way that we try to incorporate listening comprehension and practice is by having our students listen to podcasts. You can check out our blog post all about it, and we also have an awesome resource in our Teacher Pay Teacher store that our students absolutely love.
When it comes to class presentations, we like to focus on the speaking traits such as: presence, articulation, animation, engagement, and motion when teaching the speaking standards. Students are given class time to practice their presentations, and we provide our students with a handy poster that they can refer back to again and again when completing presentations in their Showbie accounts. This free resource in our Teacher Pay Teacher store, can also be printed out as a class poster.
We like to stand in the back of our classrooms, or sit at a student desk while our students are presenting so they practice presenting to the class instead of us. Presentations also make grading student work a breeze. It’s a lot easier for us to grade what a student knows based on their presentation rather than searching for information in a written piece of work.
Having students present their knowledge of a subject to their class helps to build skills needed for college and beyond. They learn how to get comfortable speaking in front of large groups, prepare their material for group presentations, and sometimes even learn to accept and improve their speaking skills based on student or teacher feedback.
So really, you have nothing to lose by trying out group or individual presentations! If you add the active listening component of sketch notes, you have a win-win lesson on your hands! We’d love to hear how you incorporate speaking and listening into your classrooms. Drop us a line on our Insta or Twitter.
Until next time teacher friends,
Bottoms up!