A series of three DVDs offering:
- Planned and purposeful opportunities for talk
- Explicit teaching of the four strands of speaking and listening
- Good models for talk
- Opportunities to rehearse and apply skills in literacy and across the curriculum
- Opportunities to talk about talk and reflect upon its usage
- Planned assessment opportunities
- As with i-learn: writing, there are 3 DVDs, each covering two year groups.

It’s all to do with the Primary Framework for literacy. This brought speaking and listening back into the fold, and emphasised how important it is by making the first four ‘strands’ of literacy relate to these skills:

- speaking
- listening and responding
- group discussion and interaction
-drama

Ofsted will now be looking at speaking and listening in schools.

i-learn: speaking and listening has been designed to support the explicit and systematic teaching of the first four strands of the Primary Framework for literacy.

Schools need to teach, develop and rehearse these skills across the whole curriculum, in subjects other than English. i-learn: speaking and listening has been specifically designed to be highly flexible and open-ended to allow for easy integration into all areas of the curriculum.

There are a number of possibilities:

- As a booster if children need support and reinforcement of particular skills.
- As part of a whole-school speaking and listening solution (as with Penpals for Handwriting, INSET materials are provided in the Teacher’s Books)
- Integrated into existing planning units – either in literacy or in other curriculum areas.

The DVD-ROMs cover many speaking and listening techniques including:

- Jigsawing
- Rainbowing
- Envoys
- Freeze-frames

Each technique is introduced by a video showing a real class of children using the technique. The DVD-ROMs give a context in which a class can attempt the techniques, and the teacher’s notes explain how to lead the class.

Each unit is split into six focuses.

Setting the scene: This focus provides the overall context for the unit, by means of fun introductory activities.

Learning from models: This focus will typically exploit the ICT medium (audio, video, animation), or provide an engaging, interactive activity, with the aim of modelling effective speaking and listening behaviours.

Let’s practise and Let's practise some more: Both of these focuses provide opportunities to practise the text type, incorporating all four Strands, but with a heavy emphasis on group discussion and interaction.

How did they do?: This focus provides an opportunity to watch other children speaking and listening. By using their learning from the unit to date, and referring to a set of Top Tips, children will be able to analyse the examples and suggest appropriate improvements.

Over to you!: With a heavy emphasis on audience and purpose, this focus provides a fun and engaging ‘end-of-unit’ task.

However, the teaching sequence is designed to be flexible. Teachers can ‘dip in’ to different areas as they wish – for example, just using the models for talk.

Suggestions for written work are in the teacher’s notes. However, the main outcomes of this product are spoken or dramatic.

The teacher’s notes for each unit provide ideas for differentiation.

The difficulty of assessing speaking and listening was one of the main themes which emerged in our market research.

Each unit provides an opportunity for assessing a particular aspect of speaking and listening. The Teacher’s Books supply assessment grids which can be used to monitor an individual child’s progress.

Yes. A Teacher’s Book accompanies each DVD, containing:

Matching to the new framework for literacy
Lesson planning
Differentiation
Suggested follow-on activities
INSET materials
Assessment grids