Speaking and Listening

Speaking and listening may seem like easy skills that do not require much attention or practice, but they are quite important and we work on them daily. As young children, we are expected to be able to continue a conversation through multiple responses and describe things that are familiar to us. It seems simple enough, but what about the kids who don't speak up or engage in class? How are we supposed to assess their speaking and listening skills? One way this could be accomplished would be by having a conversation with them afterwards to see if they could articulate the main points of the conversation from class. As students get older though, the expectations for speaking and listening get more complex and require greater preparation. By third grade, students are expected to come to class having read the assigned materials in order to participate properly in class discussions. As students get to high school, they are expected to have read the assigned readings and draw on evidence from the text to support arguments. As students get older, there has to be an increase in complexity and importance in what they are reading and discussing.

In a majority of our classrooms, and states for that matter, there is a tendency to listen to respond rather than listening to understand and evaluate what the speaker said. In our class, we discussed a large case study that looked into wait time or the time a teacher waits before talking again after asking the class a question. Initially I thought the average wait time would be 5-10 seconds. It was actually one second. A single second that teachers gave their students to respond before they interjected their voice again. I was very surprised by this. I know it can be intimidating to have silence in a classroom after asking a question, but we have to give students time to process what we have said and think. Taking into consideration all of the skills we are asking out students to learn, I think it is worthwhile for us teachers to work on our patience skills in regards to wait time. Some students need a few seconds to think about the question and comprehend it before they can think of an answer to the question.

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