Assignment #10 Mini Lesson Strength and Weaknesses Listening and Speaking Skills

By: Sam Vanden Berge

For this particular observation a group of twenty fourth and fifth grade students were observed
during the S.T.E.A.M (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Mathematics) Works Summer
Program. This program is made up of many different levels of students as well as a few EL
students. For this lesson student were to design and build a marble run with the slowest run
time. They sketched and recorded their group’s run times so that they could make design
improvements as they work cooperatively. The goal of this lesson is to develop important
communication skills as they work together, discuss design ideas and explain their thinking.

Listening
Listening skills are crucial to everyone, not just students. Therefore, as teachers, it’s important
to constantly try and teach these skills to our students so that they are successful inside and
outside of the classroom. Like Diaz-Rico said, “The role of the teacher is to set up situations in
which students feel a sense of purpose and can engage in real communications.” (Diaz-Rico,
pg. 74)

● Listening Strengths
○ Microskill: Recognize the communicative functions of utterances, according to
situations, participants, and goals.
Students are able to understand the importance of a particular direction or lesson
because of the specific tone of voice and utterance of keywords. Many students
are able to pick up on the importance of key details based off of the execution of
the spoken words. When something is important and students need to listen, the
teacher will over emphasize the importance of it. For example in this particular
lesson, students were told a series of directions and the first directions was to
make sure students work collaboratively with partners in order to make this
project a success. For example: You MUST work with your partner in order to be
successful.

○ Microskill: Recognize cohesive devices in spoken discourse.

For the most part, students were able to understand the order in which the
process of building this marble roll took place. They were able to pick up on the
teacher and understand that there may be one or more ways of creating the
project. For example (cohesive device): Teacher says, “For example, we can
build this ramp using these materials, however, you may also build it using…”

● Listening Weaknesses
○ Microskill: Recognize the communicative functions of utterances, according to
situations, participants, and goals.
This is both a Strength and Weakness because even though students are able to
recognize the communicative utterances of the teacher, they often lacked this
 skill when it came to peer collaborative work. Often, many students struggled
with their partners ideas and struggled with listening to others input.

○ Microskill: Retain chunks of language in short-term memory.

While observing this lesson, it was evident that many students struggled to retain
the information and directions that were given. Many students were off in the
order of steps and were not focusing on ALL of the content of the lesson that was
being taught.

Speaking
There is no doubt that many students struggle with speaking skills. I believe that many students
lack the confidence in presenting their ideas to others or a group due to a limited knowledge of
speaking skills and or fear of failure. As a teacher, the primary goal is to help students create a
dialogue for for the informal communication with peers as well as the skills to present dialogue
for academic purposes (Diaz-Rico, pg. 78)

● Speaking Strengths
○ Microskill: Use facial features and body language along with verbal language to
convey meaning.
This particular lesson had the teacher using a lot of hand gestures and you really
noticed how engaging she was with the students. Because of this attitude from
the teacher, it transpired down to the students. When it was the students
opportunity to share ideas with their partners, they were excited (used facial
expressions to express that) and were using gestures to express their solutions.

○ Microskill: Accomplish appropriately communicative functions according to

situations, participants, and goals.
For the most part, students were able to express themselves in order to better fit
the needs of their team. Some groups and some individual students were able to
share their ideas successfully in order to better enhance their project. The most
successful groups were the ones that had appropriate accountable talk to were
they would have active conversation and politely agreeing or disagreeing with
their partner.

● Speaking Weaknesses
○ Microskill: Monitor oral production and use strategic devices (e.g., pauses,
fillers, self-corrections, and backtracking) to enhance the clarity of the message.
Because of the excitement of the lesson and the activity, Students were not able
to productively able to express themselves to their partners. Rather than
expressing themselves in a clear and cohesive way, many students shouted,
talked extremely fast, and we’re not listening to the ideas of others.
 ○ Microskill: Accomplish appropriately communicative functions according to
situations, participants, and goals.
Again, this microskill was found to be both a strength and weakness in this
group. The other group of students who were not successful in communicating
with their partners lacked the communication skills that would support a
collaborative lesson. Many of these students were not communicating or listening
to the partner’s ideas in order to reach their goal.

Díaz-Rico, L. T. (2014). The crosscultural, language, and academic development handbook: a

complete K-12 reference guide. Boston: Pearson.

Mini Lesson
4th grade
Language Arts SL.4.5

Overview: Students will practice their listening skills with a focus on retaining chunks of
language through short memory.

Material: Handouts, pencils, iPads, headphones

Introduction: Students will work in teams reading different articles about Martin Luther King Jr.
As a table, they will discuss the article they have read and summarize the information by
providing the main idea and supporting details. Students will then Stand-Up and Pair Up and
discuss their article with another person from a different group. This will happen four times so
that everyone has had the opportunity to hear about a particular article.

iPad activity: Students will each grab an iPad and headphones and login to google classroom.
In their google classroom they will be taken to the following google form:

MLK-Active Listening

Students will work individually listening to the youtube video and answer the questions based off
what they listened in the video. Note: Students are able to go back and relisten to the video. The
goal of this lesson is to make sure students are focusing on listening to the key details so that
they may answer the questions.

Assessment: The google form acts as a formative assessment to check for students
understanding.
Post Lessons: This lesson can be done with multiple text and with different standards that
address the students listening skills. By giving students the opportunity to listen with iPads, it
allows them to engage in different language skills on a different platform.