Speaking and Listening Checklist

Do our students display positive attitudes towards speaking and listening?

 Our students have a positive attitude towards listening and speaking.

What is the quality of our students’ speaking and listening?

 Our students display confidence when engaging in listening and speaking activities
 Our students communicate ideas and experiences fluently and clearly using an expansive
vocabulary
 Our students display skill in framing higher order questions
 Our students justify and defend their opinions and present a coherent argument
 Our students display a command of grammar and syntax
 All students (including those at risk of underachieving and those of exceptional ability) are
making very good progress from their prior levels of achievement

Actions
Are teachers supporting the development of student speaking and listening?
At a whole school level
 Our teachers have high expectation with regard to students’ achievement in speaking and
listening

At a subject department level:

 Subject-specific and individual teacher plans reflect the school’s literacy strategy and action
plans for improving students’ listening and speaking skills
 Agreed approaches to support the development of students’ listening and speaking skill that
are relevant to their own subject
 Norms are agreed within subject departments for structured group work

At individual teacher level:

 Our teachers provide repeated exposure to and use (by students) of new vocabulary
 Our teachers demonstrate an appropriate balance of teacher and student talk
 Our teachers provide opportunities for structured co operative learning activities
 Our teachers engage in appropriate use of ‘wait time’
 Our teachers provide opportunities for open, extended discussion
 Our teachers’ questioning is clear, includes lower and higher order questions and stimulates
students’ response
 Our teachers explain concepts clearly and model the effective use of language
 Our teachers provide students with helpful feedback which supports the development of
speaking and listening
 Our teachers provide opportunities for peer and self evaluation of listening and speaking tasks