Teaching the Core Skills of Listening and Speaking

by Erik Palmer

With the Common Core State Standards emphasizing listening and speaking across the curriculum, these long-neglected language arts are regaining a place in schools. For teachers, this means reexamining practices and rethinking expectations. How much do we know about teaching listening and speaking as the complex communication skills they are? How do we teach students to discuss appropriately, integrate and understand the mountains of information they receive, and express themselves clearly and effectively?

In this lively and practical book, 20-year teaching veteran Erik Palmer presents an approach aligned to the six Common Core anchor standards for speaking and listening but focused on preparing students for 21st century communication inside and beyond the classroom. Here, you’ll get concrete guidance for teaching and assessing

* Collaborative discussion
* Listening and media literacy
* Questioning and reasoning
* Speech presentation
* Effective multimedia use
* Adapting speech to different content and tasks

With due respect to reading and writing, we do most of our communicating—in the classroom and in life—through listening and speaking. Filled with examples and specific activities targeted to variety of subjects and grade levels, this book is an essential resource for all teachers interested in helping students acquire core skills that cross the content areas and support long-term success.

219 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 20, 2013

About the author

Erik Palmer is an author, speaker, and communication consultant from Denver, Colorado. He works with teachers, trainers, and managers showing practical ways to improve their oral communication as well as the verbal skills of those they instruct and manage. He is a frequent presenter at conferences, and has given keynotes and led workshops for districts across the US and around the world.

Prior to becoming a consultant, he had a career in business (national sales leader for a prominent commodity brokerage firm and a floor trader on a Chicago commodity exchange), and a career in the classroom (21 years in the Cherry Creek School District as a teacher of English, math, science, and civics).

Palmer is the author of Well-Spoken: Teaching Speaking to All Students (Stenhouse Publishers, 2011), Teaching the Core Skills of Listening & Speaking (ASCD, 2014), Researching in a Digital World (ASCD, 2015), Good Thinking: Teaching Argument, Persuasion, and Reasoning (Stenhouse, 2016), Own Any Occasion: Mastering the Art of Speaking and Presenting (ATD, 2017), and Before You Say A Word: A School Leader's Guide to Clear and Compelling Communication. Palmer is a program consultant for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's Into Reading and Into Literature language arts programs.

His educational background includes Oberlin College, University of Denver Law School, and the University of Colorado.