Alyssa Johnson

Listening and Speaking Skills

EDUC 426.1
Assignment 9: Mini Lesson Strength and Weaknesses Listening and Speaking Skills

1. Tell us the grade level and content you teach, or the ages of the subjects you
observed.
My class is made up of a total of 23 third graders. The students come from a middle-class
suburban neighborhood that is predominantly Asian, Hispanic, and White. My third-grade class
is made up of 9 boys and 14 girls. There are 11 students with IEP’s: 4 for speech, 4 for learning
disabilities, and 3 for emotional disturbance. There are two students with 504’s, which are both
for anxiety and depression. There are 8 students who are classified as English Language
Learners, however none of them receive pull out or push in services to support their language
development.

2. Identify the strengths and weaknesses of students’ listening skills & speaking skills.
Use the lists of microskills from Brown.

Listening Strengths
Microskill #1 Retain Chunks of language in short-term memory
My students are able to process and execute two step directions successfully. My school utilizes
responsive classroom as a school wide behavior management system. Within the responsive
classroom framework there is an outline for introducing new routines, such as partner talk and
setting up for Reading Workshop. The step by step framework teaches routines through the use
of teacher modeling, role play, and visuals. All students are able to experience high success
because they are given multiple and consistent opportunities to practice routines with teacher and
peer feedback.

Microskill #5 Process speech containing pauses, error, corrections and other performance
variables
I saw this microskill as a strength for my students from the perspective of student to student
interactions. Third grade is a transition year for students where they begin to “read to learn”
rather than “learn to read.” It seems this is true for listening skills as well. As students progress
through school, they are expected to participate in increasingly more difficult language tasks. In
third grade, my students are still playing with language and it’s different functions. They are very
patient and supportive of one another as they attempt different verb tenses and conjunctions.
Third graders are also beginning to organize and create a systematic way of engaging in
conversations and answering questions. My students are flexible in providing their peers
additional wait time to formulate their thoughts and they are comfortable asking their peers
clarifying questions when needed.

Listening Weaknesses
Microskill #10 Distinguish between literal and implied meaning
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Distinguishing between literal and implied meaning is a demanding and rigorous task for my
students. Implied meaning can make ordinary language more interesting and effective. However,
my students struggled immensely when the implied meaning did not translate to their first
language. Nearly a third of my students are language learners, which made teaching strategies to
navigate phrases, such as “you are driving me up the wall” very difficult.

Microskill #11
Develop means of retaining information
Two of the “big” reading skills taught in third grade are predicting with evidence and
summarizing. In order to be successful with either of these skills, students need to have a system
for organizing and holding onto information. My students struggled with this skill during read
alouds. They did not have strategies in place for tracking the characters through a variety of
events. Their predictions tended to rely on personal experiences and lacked strong textual
evidence.

Speaking Strengths
Microskill #1 Produce chunks of language of different lengths
My students are able to use different chunks of language to engage in a variety of language tasks.
My students are presented with consistent opportunities and a variety of tasks to practice. We
start everyday with a morning meeting. One of the components in a morning meeting is a
“share,” where every student gets the chance to share. The share topic varies from something that
happened over the weekend, a content question, or a “would you rather” question. The variety of
share questions provides students with daily language practice and encourages them to use
different amounts of words.

Microskill #10
Use facial features and body language along with verbal language to convey meaning
My students heavily rely on body language and facial expressions to communicate. These are
forms of communication that are universal and easily recognized by all of my students.
Sometimes these nonverbal forms of communication are more effective than my students trying
to use their words. These nonverbal cues also give my students a sense of belonging. Having
something the same across all languages and cultures feels very grounded and safe to students
that are coming into a new space.

Speaking Weaknesses
Microskill #3
Use an adequate number of words to accomplish purpose
Though one of my students’ strengths is using a variety of chunks of language, they struggle
when differentiating between when and how to use different chunks of language. My students do
not have a clear understanding of when a language task requires a 3-5 word phrase or multiple
sentences with details. For example, some of my students will try to give a summary of a text in
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one sentence, in comparison to another chunk of my students that will write two pages for the
same task. My students need more explicit support around how and when to elaborate versus
how and when to be concise.

Microskill #4
Monitor oral production and use strategic devices (e.g. pauses, fillers, self-corrections, and
backtracking) to enhance the clarity of the message
Self monitoring and goal setting is something that my third graders are starting to be introduced
to. However, it seems self reflection is not something that comes naturally to third graders. My
third graders need a lot of support with problem solving around language. Part of the reason they
need so many scaffolds is because language is abstract. It is hard for a third grader to pinpoint
the problem in their speech. For example, a student explains a strategy for solving 20 + 19. When
another student does not understand, the original speaker tries to clarify his/ her work. The
original speaker is able to register that their audience does not understand what he/ she is trying
to explain, however he/ she tends to clarify by using the same words over again.

3. Develop a mini-lesson that explicitly teaches a listening microskill.

Speaking Microskill Being Taught:

Microskill #3 Use an adequate number of words to accomplish purpose
I will use this lesson as an introduction to my Fairy Tale Writing Unit. It will be a lesson on how
to use a story map to summarize and get to know a classic fairy tale well. The fairy tale unit
requires that students have knowledge of some of the classic fairy tales, as well as common
terminology used in fairy tales prior to the start of the unit. This lesson will get students working
collaboratively and using language in an organized and structured format.

Materials Needed:
Goldilocks and the Three Bears, 15-20 copies of original or adapted fairy tales, students
organized in groups of pairs, anchor chart paper, markers, paper, pencil

Outline Sequence of Events:

We always start our day with a Morning Meeting. It functions as a time and space that
my students and I can use to connect, reflect, preview topics, and review topics. This lesson will
be implemented during a Morning Meeting (about 30 min) and used to preview our Fairy Tale
Writing Unit. I will start the lesson by connecting with the students and building excitement
around our new unit. I might say something like, “Third graders, we are about to start a new
writing unit! This unit we are going to take our characters on adventures to new places that
have magic and amazing creatures. We are going to be writing fairy tales!”
Then, I will name the purpose of today’s Morning Meeting: “Third graders, today I want
to teach you that writers use story maps to help them retell a classic tale and get to know the
classic fairy tale well.”
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Next, I will engage the students in an interactive read aloud where I will model how to
use a story map to track the text and provide a clear, concise retell of the story. I will be using
Goldilocks and the Three Little Bears to model. Before I read, I will make sure to reintroduce my
story map anchor chart. The students should be familiar with this chart since we have used it for
several previous units. I will call on students to read and explain different parts of the chart. As I
read, I will be thinking aloud as well as monitoring for students’ comprehension by asking
questions and providing students opportunities to turn and talk. Once we have filled out our story
map, the students will be paired up and sent off to try it on their own. This might sound like,
“Boy and girls, now you are going to get a chance to try this with a partner. You and a partner
are going to get your own fairy tale. Your job is to make a plan for how you want to read it
together. Then, you both need to get your writing notebooks, and work together to fill out your
story map.”

One of the scaffolding strategies that I am using in this lesson is a story map. A story map is a
type of graphic organizer. In this case, the story map is being used to present a graphic that
shows the connection between different ideas and events in a story. This story map also has
sentence frames, which provide “opportunities for students to use key vocabulary while
providing a structure that may be higher than what they could produce on their own” (Diaz-Rico,
2018, p. 104)

Assessment:
At the end of Morning Meeting, the students will meet back on the carpet for a “share.” The
students will sit down in a circle next to their partner. Each partnership will get a chance to share
out their summary of a classic fairy tale. I am looking for partnerships that use the story map and
keep their language clear and concise as they provide their summary. We will use one additional
Morning Meeting to do this activity again. Students will work with the same partner. I will also
be able to assess students when we begin our Fairy Tale Writing Unit. Students will use story
maps again, because the first step in writing a fairy tale is “knowing the classic tale well.”