TIPS IN TEACHING THE MACRO SKILLS: LISTENING, SPEAKING,

READING, WRITING, & VIEWING

EED 209: Teaching English in the Elementary Grades (Language Arts)

TIPS IN TEACHING THE MACRO SKILLS: LISTENING, SPEAKING,

READING, WRITING, & VIEWING
Teaching the five macro skills—listening, speaking, reading, writing, and viewing—
is essential in developing a child’s overall language proficiency. Each skill plays a vital
role in effective communication and must be nurtured from the early years of schooling.
With the implementation of the MATATAG Curriculum in the Philippines starting SY
2024–2025, elementary English instruction is now more focused, developmentally
appropriate, and aligned with multilingual education principles.

At the end of your self-paced learning, you are expected to:

a. Know different ways to teach the five macro skills—listening, speaking, reading,
writing, and viewing—to elementary pupils.
b. Identify simple and effective strategies that match your learners’ level and the
English curriculum.
c. Improve instructional plan with Create fun and meaningful activities that help
pupils practice and improve their communication skills.

Cultivating Listening and Speaking Skills in the Elementary Grades

https://www.edutopia.org/article/speaking-listening-strategies-primary-grades/

As a student-teacher, you have to learn as early as know how to effectively teach

young learners how to speak and listen to one another. These foundational skills are vital
for learning socializing which is often being undermined due to children spending more
time on screens and at home. Thus, it is crucial that as teachers you explicitly teach
speaking and listening in the classroom.
Incorporating engaging and effective strategies are helpful in developing these
interpersonal skills. You can use these strategies to directly teach, model, practice the
essential communication skills at a developmentally appropriate level.
1. Teach Turn-Taking with Fun Talk Prompts
Young children often struggle to wait their turn in conversations. You can teach,
model, and practice turn-taking with fun talk prompts, especially during morning meetings.
Once students master this, introduce academic turn-and-talk strategies during lessons.
You can start by assigning each student a partner, and designate them as Partner
A or Partner B.
Directions for Students:
a. Face your partner.
b. Partner A speaks first while Partner B listens.
c. Partner B listens for a pause and asks, “Are you
done sharing?”
d. If Partner A is finished, Partner B speaks while
Partner A listens.
e. Partner A listens for a pause and asks, “Are you
done sharing?”

Tips in Teaching the Macro Skills 1st Semester / AY 2025-2026

EED 209: Teaching English in the Elementary Grades (Language Arts)

Sample Talk Prompts:

• What did you have for breakfast?
• Would you rather travel to space or the ocean?
• If you could have a superpower, what would it be?
• What’s your favorite thing to do with a friend?
Extensions: When facilitating this activity, you may teach your pupils how to summarize
their partner’s response ask follow up questions, or build on a topic. It is also prescribed
that the prompts are relate to the lesson of the day.
2. Teach Small Group Communication with Hands-On Props
From sharing materials in table groups to project planning, small group discussions are
common in primary classrooms, but they require explicit instruction. One effective
strategy is using a “talking object” to guide turn-taking.
How to do it:
• Introduce a talking object (e.g., a fidget or small
toy) that the speaker holds while talking.
• Decide whether students pass the object in a set
order or choose their own.
• Teach the steps, model, and post a visual
anchor chart.

Directions for Students:

a. The first speaker holds the talking object while responding to the prompt.
b. Listeners face the speaker, stay quiet, and think about their response.
c. The speaker hands the talking object to the next person, becoming a listener.

Extensions: Use sentence stems (e.g., “I agree because...”) to help students articulate
their thoughts or graphic organizers to record ideas.

3. Teach Whole Group Speaking and Listening

Do not commit the mistake of assuming that your pupils know how to participate in
whole group discussion. This skill needs explicit teaching and reinforcement.

How to do it:
• Decide on a designated whole group meeting area and seating arrangement.
• Teach the steps, model, and post a visual anchor chart.

Steps:
a. Teach students how to move to their learning spots.
b. Establish hand-raising expectations.
c. Model what it looks and sounds like to be called on (speaker) and to listen
(listener).
d. Teach active listening skills (e.g., facing the speaker, making eye contact, staying
quiet).
e. Practice by role-playing active listening.

Extensions: Have students summarize a speaker’s point, build on ideas using

accountable talk, and practice keeping discussions on topic.
Tips in Teaching the Macro Skills 1st Semester / AY 2025-2026
EED 209: Teaching English in the Elementary Grades (Language Arts)

4. Teach Accountable Talk with Sentence Stems

Accountable talk encourages students to listen actively and respond thoughtfully,
making discussions more meaningful. It is particularly useful for literature.

How to do it:
• Create and display an anchor chart with accountable talk sentence stems.
• Focus on one skill at a time (e.g., how to agree, disagree, or add on).

Steps:
a. Teach students what it means to agree, disagree, or add on.
b. Model conversations using sentence stems such as “I agree because…,” “I
disagree because…,” and “I would like to add on…”
c. Practice in partnerships with fun talk prompts before applying accountable talk to
academic discussions.

Extensions: Use popsicle sticks with sentence stems, praise students who use
accountable talk, and display student quotes on a bulletin board.

10 Strategies in Teaching Reading in the Classroom

https://pce.sandiego.edu/how-to-teach-reading-in-the-classroom-10-strategies/

It is believed that reading opens up endless possibilities and opportunities for

children to discover new world and learn new concepts. And teaching a student to read
is arguably one of the most important functions of the teaching profession. Due to its
vitality, it is necessary for a teacher to know doable strategies to teach reading.
But before you can effectively teach reading it is vital that you understand the
primary components of reading instruction:

1. Phonemic Awareness: an understanding of how consonant or vowel sounds can be

arranged to make words.

2. Vocabulary: the range of words a student is able to understand and use in context.

3. Fluency: the ability to read and understand words with accuracy, speed and
comprehension.

4. Comprehension: complete understanding of information being delivered by a text.

There are many instructional strategies for teaching reading. Below are the ten
(10) most dependable strategies among educators and even reading specialists:

1. Assess Students’ Ability First

Begin the school year by getting a baseline reading of each student’s current
reading level. This will help you to A: Understand the abilities(s) that you are working with
and how to group students (which is another effective instructional strategy) and B:
Determine what reading strategies and tools will work best for each student’s individual
needs.

Tips in Teaching the Macro Skills 1st Semester / AY 2025-2026

EED 209: Teaching English in the Elementary Grades (Language Arts)

2. Choral Reading/Partner Reading

Choral reading is an exercise where the
teacher and class read a text aloud together in
unison. This allows struggling reader to still
participate in the practice of reading without
embarrassment. Partner reading is a small
version of choral reading, where students are
grouped together to read a text aloud with a
partner, alternating sentences or paragraphs.

3. Use Visual Aids

This practice focuses on enhancing

reading comprehension—a key part of
overall reading skill—by using graphic
organizers to break down texts. These
visual tools, used individually or in
groups, help students better
understand content and explore
diverse perspectives.

4. Assign Reading Buddies Across Ages &

Grades
A reading buddy program pairs older students
with younger readers to model fluent reading
and build comprehension. It fosters
mentorship, patience, and leadership in older
students, while boosting confidence and
exposure to accessible texts for those still
developing their reading skills.

5. Implement Audiobooks
Using audiobooks while reading it is a
great way to assist struggling readers.
Using audiobooks in along with
focused phonics instruction has been
proven to help students improve their
reading accuracy.

Other strategies include:

6. Teaching Academic English: integrating general and subject-specific vocabulary into
instruction, which strengthens reading skills for learners of all levels.

7. Summarizing What They Read: have students answer the basic who-what-when-
where-why-how questions to help them focus on key ideas and retain what they have
read.

Tips in Teaching the Macro Skills 1st Semester / AY 2025-2026

EED 209: Teaching English in the Elementary Grades (Language Arts)

8. Expose Students to different Discourse Patterns: introduce alternative text types

like articles and personal letters to enhance comprehension and support deeper
understanding.

9. Let Students Choose The Story They Read: Students become more engaged and
enthusiastic about reading when they can choose from a curated list of topics that match
their interests.

10. Have Students Read the Same Content Multiple Times: Fluency-oriented reading
instruction (FORI) strengthens pronunciation and comprehension by having students
repeatedly read the same text in varied settings, reinforcing skills through consistent
practice.

Strategies for Improving Writing Skills

https://bedrocklearning.org/literacy-blogs/improving-writing-skills-in-primary-school/

Developing our learners as writers is more than just asking them to remember
tricky spellings, handwriting joins or grammatical constructs. It is a process which is
intricate and complicated, but if done consistently and thoroughly, gives learners a tool
which is vital for their school years, across all subjects and in life after education.
Writing makes learners’ thinking and learning visible. It provides them with the
opportunity to clarify and refine their ideas for others and to themselves.

1. Teach the Different Writing Styles: Exposing learners to diverse genres—nonfiction,

narrative, and poetry—and guiding them to analyze each text’s purpose, structure, and
language features helps them apply these techniques effectively in their own writing

2. Encourage Regular Reading in the Classroom and at Home: Exposing learners to

high-quality, diverse texts across genres—both in school and at home—models effective
writing, enriches vocabulary, and fosters a lifelong engagement with reading through
varied approaches like guided reading, independent reading, and reading for pleasure.

3. Give Learners a Real-life Situation to Write About: Writing becomes more

purposeful and effective when learners identify their intended audience, allowing them to
tailor tone and style while recognizing writing as a tool for communication across all
subjects.

4. Use Sentence Starters and Prompts: Providing sentence starters as a shared or

student-generated word bank supports writing flow, boosts confidence, and empowers
learners to adapt language structures across genres, with independent readers even
collecting their own from texts.

5. Engage in Collaborative Writing: Collaborative writing through shared, modelled, and

guided approaches, helps learners develop writing skills by engaging them in joint
composition, observing expert strategies, and receiving targeted support in small groups.

Tips in Teaching the Macro Skills 1st Semester / AY 2025-2026

EED 209: Teaching English in the Elementary Grades (Language Arts)

Developing the Skill of Viewing

https://www.onestopenglish.com/advancing-learning/advancing-learning-the-fifth-skill-
viewing/557577.article

In the K-12 Curriculum, viewing is defined as the process of understanding and

evaluating visual texts such as images, videos, advertisements, films, and other
multimodal materials. As teachers who will be teaching the English language, developing
viewing among our pupils is important as they deal with mainly modal texts (e.g., online
videos, websites, blogs, social media sites) as they need to understand them and to
become more effective, active and critical viewers to be able to participate fully in society.

The Viewing Process

Pupils should understand that effective, active viewers engage in the following
procedure:

Stage Key Student Actions (What They Primary Goal / Purpose

Do) (Why They Do It)
1. Pre- Prepare by activating prior knowledge To prepare the mind and
Viewing (schema). Predict, speculate, ask establish a context to
questions, and set a specific purpose effectively receive and
for watching. anticipate the text's
message.
2. During Monitor understanding by To actively understand the
Viewing seeking/checking comprehension. message in real-time,
Make connections, confirm/adjust seeking meaning, and
predictions and inferences, interpret, critically engaging with the
summarize, pause, review, analyze, visual information as it
and evaluate the content. unfolds.
3. After Respond personally, critically, and To process, apply, and
Viewing / creatively. Reflect on the experience, extend learning from the
Responding perform final analysis and evaluation, visual text, demonstrate
and potentially create new content critical thinking, and
based on the text. articulate a final
understanding.

The Viewing Frameworks

The following are three viewing frameworks which have been developed by
prestigious institutions to help students become better viewers:

1. Film and Video: The 3Cs and 3Ss

This framework was developed by Into Film and is used widely in schools in the
UK. The 3Cs (Color, Camera, Character) and the 3Ss (Story, Setting, Sound) framework
can be used to help students discuss and analyse all the elements of a film text.

Colour
• What colours do you see?
• What do the colours make you feel?
• Why do you think certain colours are used?
• What mood do you think the colours create?

Tips in Teaching the Macro Skills 1st Semester / AY 2025-2026

EED 209: Teaching English in the Elementary Grades (Language Arts)

Camera
• What shots have been used? Can you name them?
• Through whose eyes do we see the story?
• When do we see different characters’ point of view?
• When does the camera move and when does it stay still?
Character
• What do the main characters look like?
• How do they speak and what do they say?
• How do they behave?
• Which character interests you the most? Why?
Story
• What happens in the beginning, middle and at the end of the story?
• What are the most important things (events) that happen in the story?
• How do we know where the story takes place?
• How long does the story take place in ‘real’ time?
Setting
• Where does the action take place?
• When and how does the setting change?
• How could you tell where the story was taking place?
• How could you tell when the story was taking place?
Sound
• How many different sounds do you hear? What are they?
• How does the music make you feel?
• Are there any moments of silence?
• Can you hear any sound effects?

2. Paintings and photographs: See, Think, Wonder

The See, Think, Wonder routine is one of the Visible Thinking Routines developed
by researcher-educators for Project Zero at Harvard University. This routine helps
students make careful observations and develop their own ideas and interpretations
based on what they see when viewing a painting or photograph by asking these three
questions.
• What do you SEE?
• What do you THINK about what you see?
• What does it make you WONDER?

3. The Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS)

The Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) approach was co-developed by Abigail Housen and
Philip Yenawine 30 years ago. It finds meaning in imagery and develops visual literacy
skills through learning in the arts, fostering thinking and communication skills through
listening carefully and expressing oneself. The approach works in the following way:
• Students silently examine carefully selected art images
• The teacher asks these three open-ended questions
o What’s going on in this picture?
o What do you see that makes you say that?
o What more can we find?
• Students then …
o Look carefully at the image
o Talk about what they observe
o Back up their ideas with evidence
o Listen and consider the views of others
o Discuss many possible interpretations
o Construct meaning together

Tips in Teaching the Macro Skills 1st Semester / AY 2025-2026

EED 209: Teaching English in the Elementary Grades (Language Arts)

• The teacher …
o Listens carefully to each comment
o Paraphrases student responses demonstrating language use
o Points to features described in the artwork throughout the discussion
o Facilitates student discussions
o Encourages scaffolding of observations and interpretations
o Validates individual views
o Links related ideas and points of agreement/disagreement
o Reinforces a range of ideas

TASK 5.1: Integrate Macro Skill Strategies

Now that you have learned strategies on how to teach and develop the macro
skills of your future pupils, it is time to apply these strategies. Revisit your
lesson plan and assess whether you have already applied a strategy in
developing macro skill/s of your students. Present your assessment using the table below.

Macro Skill Strategy Used in Evidence of Ways to Improve

the Lesson Integration
Example:
Reading Guided reading with Students annotate Add leveled texts
Questioning texts and key and peer support
ideas.

TASK 5.2: Summarize It!

Create a one-page infographic that summarizes one effective strategy for each macro
skill, including a brief classroom example.

Sample Infographic:

Note: Accomplish the task in a long-sized coupon. Submit the soft copy in the Google
Classroom on November 4, 2025.

Tips in Teaching the Macro Skills 1st Semester / AY 2025-2026