Using questions to support the development of listening and talking

Project summary

This project evolved from an ASG in Orkney which set out to explore the moderation of listening and talking. It began when one of the teachers involved realised that the focus on listening and talking could provide a way of extending work in P4-P7 on Literacy Circles to earlier stages in the school. She also saw an opportunity to involve parents and then older pupils in helping pupils in P1/2 to improve their talking and listening skills by engaging them in discussions about science, PSD and literacy using pre-selected materials and carefully framed questions. The parents and older pupils all received training before taking part; as a result, everyone learned something from the experience of working with P1/2 pupils.  

The project has grown gradually and developed into a collaboration involving pupils from pre-school all the way through to P7 and eventually impacting on every parent of every family.

Case study extract

There was a wish to extend the philosophies of Literacy Circles further but no clear path to go down. The signpost came from the need for children to be able to listen and talk. It’s as basic as that. The better children can do that in groups, the more successful learning will be. It was obvious - we needed the younger children to be better skilled in listening, talking and thinking.  

Nothing in schools happens in isolation. Through an early years science initiative the Nursery teacher had recently purchased a wide range of exciting science resources with an obligation to incorporate them into the ethos of home/school partnerships. She already had a successful ‘Book Bag’ system for home lending in operation but was unsure about the practicalities of lending science activities in a similar way. It suddenly came to me that the best way forward might be to …

motivate listening, talking and thinking 

• improve the skills of the above 
• add the element of self-evaluation 
• involve parents 
• increase children’s choices and sense of responsibility

… all by the use of science activity boxes. 

The Nursery teacher was interested to see what had been done to support parents with listening and talking. She liked the idea of pasting questions inside the book covers and decided to follow a similar strategy with her books for home lending. Nothing new in putting questions in books but the teacher had time to consider quality questions which would enrich and widen discussion, not just test memory. This was a particularly useful strategy for PSE books which were going home.

Good quality questions will guide parents towards a better shared experience with their children - and everyone benefits.

Encouraged by the training of the parent groups, we asked the P7 children if any of them would like to help the P1/2 class with a younger version of Literacy Circles. Every single member of the class volunteered. It was amazing!

Each P7 pupil had two children in their group. P1/2 pupils chose a book from a selection appropriate for their reading level. They practised reading most of the ‘script’ from the book at home but did not actually take the books home. Perhaps it seems a bit odd to do it this way round, but it avoided children memorising the narrative from the pictures and meant they are seeing the pictures ‘fresh’ within their groups.

Contact details

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