Do you take time to focus on speaking and listening skills? A lot of lessons and activities often focus on literature, reading, spelling, and writing. Sometimes the speaking and listening skills get lumped into lessons, or we realize we’ve really been lax on the speaking skills the first time we have students give a presentation. However, students need to have dedicated opportunities to practice speaking and listening. Read on for activities you can incorporate into your classroom. Create Anchor Charts Have a lesson on appropriate ways to have an academic discussion and conversation. Make sure students are also contributing to the list created with the anchor chart. This is also a good way to develop classroom culture, as everyone will be on the same page regarding conversation expectations. You can have varying anchor charts to help in all parts of the discussion, such as paraphrasing what someone says for understanding, asking for a rephrasing, honoring revisions, building upon a p...

Socratic seminars are great learning tools because they allow students to voice their own questions and opinions about the subject being discussed. But with the size of classrooms constantly increasing, they can also be problematic. It becomes problematic when a few students take over the conversation. Without a teacher regulating the discussion, some students can feel left out and unable to communicate their thoughts. But that defeats the purpose of a Socratic seminar. The benefit of a Socratic seminar is that it is entirely regulated by the students. You get to sit and listen, maybe offering a comment now and then, but otherwise, the time entirely revolves around the students having an open discussion about the subject matter. Join my email list! Subscribe to receive updates from The Daring English Teacher. Thank you for subscribing! You will soon receive updates, freebies, and teaching ideas. There was an error submitting your subscr...