Year 5

English Support Materials

English snapshot: Discussing healthy eating

English/Literacy/Interacting with others

Content Description Relevant aspects of the Achievement Standards

Use interaction skills, for example paraphrasing, questioning and interpreting non-verbal cues and choose vocabulary and vocal effects appropriate for different audiences and purposes
(ACELY 1796)

Students use language features to show how ideas can be extended. They contribute actively to class and group discussions, taking into account other perspectives.

Nature of the assessment

Teacher observation of selected students

Purpose of the task

Assess students’ speaking and listening skills in a group activity

Stage in the teaching sequence

Start of a teaching cycle

Assessment task

  • The students had recently completed a unit of work on healthy eating and the teacher used this context as the stimulus for a group discussion task. The students were told that they needed to teach the Year 1 class about the importance of healthy eating and the problems associated with poor eating.
  • The teacher had assigned the students into mixed ability groups based on his assessment of their understanding of the health lessons so that the less able students could be supported by the more able in the discussions of healthy eating.
  • The teacher provided a worksheet to encourage discussion of what essential information needed to be conveyed and possible ways that it could be conveyed.
  • The groups had to work together to agree on the best approach in presenting the importance of healthy eating to the Year 1s, and then to develop a product such as play, a poster, a brochure or a short story.
  • The teacher selected several students to observe and used a checklist to record his judgements.

Assessment criteria

The teacher’s checklist included the following criteria: listens to others; asks questions and extends others’ suggestions; interjects appropriately and communicates their point of view; explains why they agree or disagree. The teacher also noted the range of vocabulary used and any grammatical errors made. 

Using the information

Although the teacher had only observed a small number of students closely, he was also able to observe the class more generally and he used both his specific and general observations to plan a series of lessons to develop the students’ interaction skills.

While observing specific students the teacher noticed that one student made very little contribution. He made a note to observe this student more closely in other contexts to determine the extent to which shyness was the issue rather than poor listening and speaking skills.