Listening: The Golden Frame

We have been using Peter Reynold's picture book, 'The Dot' with year seven in their oracy lessons this week.  Picture books can be a really good way to reduce transition anxiety at the start of the new year and really capture their attention.

This fabulous book has all sorts of lessons about the learning journey within it.  I originally bought it for my nervous and shy son, who struggles with struggle and persistently told himself that struggle equals a huge, resolute and scary problem.  Whilst reading it to him, I fell in love with the book; like all the greatest picture books, there is an economy of words - the visuals are equal to the words.  In our school, we use it to explore listening, in particular we use the 'golden frame' within the story as a metaphor for the power of listening - how focus and attention in listening can increase a person's capacity to talk well.

The 'Golden Frame' surrounds Vashti's first dot, the first mark she makes in her art class, where in a state of crisis she tells the teacher she just 'can't draw'.  The teacher meets her struggle calmly, insisting she simply makes a mark and owns it by signing it; once Vashti leaves, the teacher frames the simple dot and hangs it above her desk.  This affirmation spurs Vashti on to open her 'never before used' water colours to paint many dots in many colours and sizes, which are then shown as a collection at the school art show that term. There are so many things that Vashti's school is getting right in her education, because the authentic audience for the gallery sharing of her work is younger learners including a boy who believes he can't 'draw a straight line with a ruler' and who interacts with Vashti, giving her the opportunity to help him make his first mark and pass the inspiration to paint on.

One of our 'catch all' phrases for our oracy work is that 'the quality of talk will not exceed the quality of listening': that to talk well, we need others to listen well.  This is easy to model within the lesson: a volunteer is asked to come up to the front and have a conversation with the teacher twice.  In the first conversation, the teacher listens carefully, focusing on the speaker and smiling encouragingly whilst asking questions to draw points out.  In the second conversation, the teacher loses her focus, turns her back and walks away a little, she asks no questions to develop the talk.  The quality of the talk is diminished by the teacher's negative listening.

The lesson then develops to explore the different messages for us as learners within the book (you’ll have to buy the book to understand these quotes – I promise you its worth it):

• Courage and Resilience - 'just make a mark'
• Humour - 'Ahh, a polar bear in a snow storm'
• Kindness - 'she was surprised to see what was hanging above her teacher's desk'
• Inspiration - 'she opened her never before used set of water colours' 
• Agency and self belief - 'I can make a better dot than that'
• Teacher expectations - 'Just make a mark and see where it takes you'
• Grit - 'Vashti even painted a dot by not painting a dot'

Before drawing all of these ideas towards listening and talk:

• Courage and Resilience - once you've talked once in class talking again gets easier, listening well is the first step in this journey
• Humour - be human with each other, making someone laugh through a reflection on their talk can free them up to talk more
• Kindness - a kind listener hears more
• Inspiration - you are all 'change makers', your listening will inspire others to talk; changing the world involves listening first
• Agency and self belief - by letting our light shine, we give others permission to do the same, by listening well we give others the context in which to shine as talkers
• Teacher expectations - all of your teachers will plan lessons where talk will be significant, they will expect to hear your voice and expect you to hear their's
• Grit - if you keep listening, others will keep trying - remember to use drawing out questions, immerse yourself in what they are telling you, help them to explore their ideas fully

We currently teach these protocols within this lesson and then consistently model them and scaffold student behaviour toward exhibiting them through the year; I picked them up from leading the EEF/Voice21 Research Pilot in school and must acknowledge the huge part this played in developing our work:

• The 3 M's of Listening: Teaching self regulation
• Me Listening
  Attention is focused entirely on themselves.  You are me listening when you are bored or distracted.  Your focus is not in the room.
• Micro Listening
  Your focus is entirely on WHAT the person says verbally, you will be able to remember what they have said, but have not been thinking actively about their words' significance.
• Macro Listening
  Large net listening, absorbing everything the speaker is saying; you've considered their tone of voice, energy, facial expression beyond what they are saying and have started to connect HOW they are talking into your understanding.  Beyond this you may notice what they are NOT saying as much as what they are saying.
  
  PRACTICAL TASK - with the whole group watching say these words 'I'm fine, thanks for asking' firstly as if you really mean them, then as if you really don't - you must indicate this physically both times.  Consider the impact of the voice and body in making meaning.  Try to get the students to find a different statement that can also function like this, e.g. I love you, I hate you, etc.
• The 3 magic keys to good listening: ***CONTENTIOUS KLAXON***
• We continue to teach focusing and accepting as good practice, but in lessons discuss how some students/people find eye contact and tracking a speaker difficult.  Using the social and emotional strand, we consider how necessary these skills are:  they do work for the majority of people, but their absence isn't always an indication of negative listening.  I offer the example that many times in a lesson a student will not have focused on me but immediately shows in a question to me that they have indeed been listening.  We reflect on how it feels different to the speaker if they are met by smiling faces, accepting their words and willingly drawing out the talk.  The audience for talks are part of the process, not passive receptors.

• As teachers we reflected after our #Embrace week last year that as 210 students each gave a speech, the majority of the experience for the majority of the students was listening.  By the end of that week, they understand how key the audience are in helping you to deliver your speech: this lesson prepares them to really enter into that process whole heartedly.
  
  PRACTICAL ACTIVITY: Ask students to talk to each other in triads, use cards to decide what role they will play in the talk (Good listener/Poor listener/Speaker).  The listeners should not identify themselves: the talk must be easy for the speaker such as describing their route to school that morning.  Let the exercise run then ask the speaker for feedback on the listening in their group - look for themes of how the good/poor listening impacted on their ability to continue to talk.
• PROOF OF LISTENING - 
• The direction 'I'd like to see your proof of listening everyone!' has been really helpful to teaching staff.
• Again, it involves the contentious notion that your proof of listening requires eye contact.  We ask each student to consider what their proof of listening would be and offer those behaviours in that moment.
• The key is to focus on their awareness of how they shift to make themselves receptive and encouraging to others as best they can and to recognise the individuality of how this might look
  
  PRACTICAL ACTIVITY:  Ask students in pairs to establish their 3 behaviours that will prove they are listening: stillness, single focus point, ears towards the speaker, eyes up, smile, calm pose, etc.  Then get them to demonstrate them all at the same time - pick three examples that contrast with each other and talk through the differences, noting for the class how they all have their own merits and individuality.  In our school, I would reference our #uniquetogether statement from the school mission statement.

When we started planning our discrete oracy curriculum for year 7, the intention was to teach the implicit expectations about talk explicitly and through this to up skill both students and teachers in using talk more actively in the classroom and beyond.  Daniel Willingham asserts, 'Memory is the residue of thought': a student's talk within the classroom is an expression of their thinking.  If we structure and plan for better talk, we will prompt more focused and developed thought and therefore, memory.  Listening is an implicit part of this process; the clarity in our expectations and standards for listening as teachers will impact on the quality of talk. Teaching and modelling the listening expectations, consistently asserting the standards for how we listen will develop the quality of talk also - it's a virtuous circle based in a culture of mutual respect.

We are now moving into our third year of teaching oracy, the entire of our KS3 have been exposed to a year long discrete oracy curriculum and are either on the way to presenting a speech or have presented a speech in our #Embrace week.  We have had university tutors recognise that students have been taught oracy whilst observing their trainees in our school, however, as the Oracy Lead I recognise that the use of oracy protocols is still patchy and needs further attention to become consistent.  Listening is the cornerstone of most lesson practice and developing a school wide approach to it is key to our success as a school; this year I will be working to establish these behaviour expectations as part of our 'Ready to Learn' rule in school.  I hope this will develop more consistent use of language in how teachers refer to the skill of listening and our listening expectations of every student in every lesson.

This week I set a homework asking the students to look out for a 'Golden Moment' of listening in school to talk about in our next lesson.  I am always able to tell them that my example of a 'Golden Moment' was the way they listened to me reading 'The dot' voicing out all the characters with a rapt and silent audience; at the end of one lesson, three girls said that they had their golden moment already - it was me listening to everyone all lesson.  Blooming marvellous!  We are our students best models in listening and talking, as Paul Dix says 'Model the behaviour you want to see'.

I hope this helps you to have many 'Golden Moments' of listening in your lessons.