ISSUES TO DO WITH LITERACY AND SPEAKING AND LISTENING
- Speaking and listening is part of School Effectiveness considerations and needs to be stated as part of the culture and ethos within a school.
- Although crucially important, the modelling of talk can be problematic, if only because of its sheer complexity. Other children in the class may provide the best models. The models of talk which exist presently are rather crude. A more sophisticated model should go beyond words and their order. (QCA has commissioned Ron Carter to develop a 'grammar' for Speaking and Listening)
- The profile of speaking and listening must be high in all subject areas. Using talk for learning, encouraging different types of talk, allowing pupils to make mistakes, collecting contexts for talk are issues for debate with teachers from all subject areas
- Not enough attention has been paid to the range of listening modes. The connections between speech, image and writing in both expressive and receptive modes need thorough exploration.
- A range of contexts for talk already exists within each school and subjects other than English are often better placed to provide those contexts which arise naturally in, for example, PE, music, art, etc.
- The current inclusion agenda is one which supports speaking and listening and schools should ensure that they follow the guidance in the subject specific documents of Curriculum 2000.
- Warwickshire has been piloting 'conversation clubs' in a group of primary schools. These happen in the last 15 minutes of lunchtime with groups of disaffected boys. A teaching assistant encourages them to reflect on the morning's learning and talk about the work to come in the afternoon. This has been having a marked effect on the boys' behaviour.
|
Literacy Issues
NAAE's view:
|
