Speaking and listening enable children to problem solve, exchange ideas, participate in decision making and reflect on issues which matter to them. Through these interactions, a child's creativity and understanding are engaged and developed.
Try these tips to hone your child’s skills to help during their SATs (and beyond!).
Practical speaking and listening ideas for KS1
At this stage in your child's life, cultivating good listening skills is very important. As younger children find it difficult to concentrate for sustained amounts of time, your speech needs to be succinct, informative and fun.
Try reading your child a story which is perhaps more challenging than one they would be able to read to you. Ask them to listen to the details of the story carefully. Once you have finished, ask them to retell the story in their own words.
You could then ask your child to 'become' a character from the story and conduct an interview with them, asking questions which your child must answer as the character. This will really help consolidate their listening and speaking skills, as well as being a fun activity they will enjoy.
Speaking and listening for KS2 SATs
Debates are an excellent way of ensuring that children are not only finding their voice through sharing opinions and facts, but also find their ears too by patiently listening and respecting the views of others. Suggest a topic your child has expressed an opinion about and get them debating at home. It’s a great way of getting the whole family involved and will certainly improve your child's confidence in their communication skills. You never know, you might find you have a budding politician sitting at your dinner table!
For another challenging exercise, ask them to find an item in the house that they must try to sell to you. As a buyer, you will be asking them lots of questions and they must focus their pitch on convincing you that their product is the best. If you have other children, you could ask them to be rival salespeople. This fun and lively activity could even help them practise their ICT skills if they wanted to do a presentation to support their pitch.
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