5 academic skills for primary students

Carol Higho
Carol Higho
A young girl working at a desk, there are others working in the background

In an ever-changing jobs market, the skills we all need to use have developed beyond numeracy and literacy – and part of our jobs as teachers is to give students the skills they’ll need in their future careers.

Primary students preparing to go to secondary school (and then university) will need academic skills too. While there are lots of courses offering to teach these skills to older learners, we can give our younger learners a head start in the classroom.

A breakdown of academic skills

There are a number of important academic skills that can be carried into many different areas of students’ lives. These include:

  • time management
  • prioritization
  • cooperative learning and delegation
  • research
  • analysis.

Each skill will help students manage their workloads and work effectively and efficiently, whether working in an office, studying for a degree, or being self-employed.

Activities to develop an awareness of academic skills

Here are a few ideas for use with students of all ages, to develop students’ awareness and understanding of these skills.

Time management

For much of the school day, children are told where to be and what to do. However, knowing how to tell the time is not the same as managing time.

Some students underestimate how long an activity will take and then feel cheated or ‘behind’ when their work takes longer (especially fast finishers). Others overestimate the time needed, feel overwhelmed, and want to give up before getting started.

Helping each student understand what each activity involves will help them to plan and manage their time. It will also encourage them to recognize everyone has differing abilities and works at a different pace.

Give each student sticky notes representing 10 minute blocks of time (6 pieces if your classes are in 1 hour segments).

Explain an activity:

  • You will read a story, and they will need to listen for key information and make notes.
  • After that, they will work in groups to make a Venn diagram.

Next, have the students think about how much time each part of the lesson will take using sticky notes. If they think making the diagram will take 20 minutes, they should put two sticky notes on top of each other.

Have students share what they think the time allocation should be, taking into account how long your lesson is. Did any ‘run out of time’ or have time ‘left over’?

After the activity, ask students how accurate their predictions were and if there was any time wasting.

Let students practice using this type of task analysis throughout the week for different activities, so they begin to see which activities they work quickly through and which they find more time-consuming. This will help students plan and manage their time better.

Also, involve the parents by sharing what has been done in class. Get students to manage the time allocation:

  • from waking up to getting to school (getting washed and dressed, having breakfast, the journey to school),
  • from arriving home to going to bed (homework, evening meal, any cores, time for watching TV or playing games, getting ready for bed).

How does their time management change at weekends/in the holidays?

Prioritization

Prioritization is another big part of time management. Task analysis helps students recognize what they must do and how they must do it in order to get a good grade. It also helps them understand the things they will most enjoy about an activity.

To teach prioritization, it should become a regular part of the class. At the start of each week list (approximately five) class objectives to be achieved:

  • Ask each student to number these objectives - 1 being their top priority, 5 being their lowest. Make a note of which students prioritize the same tasks in the same order to help with grouping.
  • Next, ask them if any of the objectives will need planning or preparation (for example; growing cress for a science experiment) – and if so, should that be started earlier in the week?
  • At the end of each day, review how the students are doing in reaching the objectives and if they need to reprioritize.
  • As the week progresses, add additional items that are not priorities. For example, clean out your school locker/sharpen all the pencils, as well as other new real priorities: revise for the quiz on Friday. This will give students an understanding of how priorities can change.

Collaborative learning and delegation

Delegation and collaborative working are both essential academic and life skills. Thankfully they are already quite familiar topics for students. Students often delegate roles and characters in their everyday play – ‘You be Spiderman, I’ll chase you’, etc.

It’s helpful to encourage this behavior in the classroom too. It can help students (of all ages) to recognize what they can achieve through cooperation and delegation because of their different skills.

Explain that a group project (e.g. a group play) will require students to share information and to work together. Make it clear there are rules to follow:

  • Everyone must take part in the performance.
  • The play must be at least one minute long.
  • The group needs to write a script and create some props.
  • As a team, all are accountable/responsible to each other (as well as to you).
  • The activity will only be classed as a pass/success if everyone takes part.

There is a finite goal – the play will be performed at the end of next week to the Year 2 classes.

Suggest that the group meets and plans together (reading corner, at lunchtime, etc.). As they prepare, ask for updates on who is doing which tasks and why. Also encourage the group to determine whether something could be done differently/better by sharing the jobs.

Listen in to see how objections are handled (recognize some of this discussion may be in the students’ first language).

At the end of the project ask each student to list what they enjoyed the most and what they found most challenging. Ask them what skills they would like to develop for the next project.

Research and analysis

This can sound daunting for Primary students, but laying the foundations for academic research is easier than you might think.

Big questions are a gateway to developing research and analysis skills. Two examples are, 'Why are plants and animals important in our world?' Or 'What can you do to help people in need?'.

Providing students with a way to remember the important steps in any kind of research makes this type of activity less daunting.

'Hands On’ is a five point guide that can be demonstrated by drawing a hand with five fingers:

  • Hypothesis
  • Research
  • Gather data
  • Create a report
  • Present evidence
  • Research and analysis (written on the palm).

Following the five point guide students must:

  • give their thoughts and ideas on possible answers (create a hypothesis)
  • use books, the world around them and the internet to find information (research)
  • learn how to recognize what is fact and what is opinion (gather data)
  • review the data and summarize the main points (create a report)
  • use examples from their research to support their argument (present evidence).

Any research needs to be methodical; using the five points above helps students build a clear structure that can become more detailed and complex as they advance through school.

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  • A group of children looking engaged on a task whist their teacher is sat near them

    3 opportunities for using mediation with young learners

    By Tim Goodier

    Mediation in the CEFR

    The addition of ‘can do’ descriptors for mediation in the CEFR Companion Volume is certainly generating a lot of discussion. The CEFR levels A1 to C2 are a reference point to organise learning, teaching and assessment, and they are used in primary and secondary programs worldwide. Teachers of young learners aligning their courses to the CEFR may wonder if they should therefore be ‘teaching’ mediation as a standard to follow. Is this really the case? And what might ‘teaching’ mediation mean?

    This short answer is that this is not the case – the CEFR is a reference work, not a curriculum. So the ‘can do’ statements for each level are an optional resource to use selectively as we see fit. This is particularly true for young learners, where ‘can do’ statements may be selected, adapted and simplified in a way that is accessible and meaningful to them. This approach is demonstrated in the many European Language Portfolios (ELPs) for young learners that were validated by the Council of Europe following the launch of the CEFR and ELP. 

    So let’s recap what is meant by mediation in the CEFR. The new scales deal with three main areas:  

    • Mediating a text: taking things you have understood and communicating them in your own words to help others understand.Ìý
    • Mediating concepts: collaborating with others to talk through ideas and solutions and reach new conclusions. Ìý
    • Mediating communication: supporting the acceptance of different cultural viewpoints.

    Focusing on mediation with young learners

    Mediation activities may involve aspects of cognitive demand, general social competencies and literacy development that are too challenging for a given target age group or level. These factors need to be carefully considered when designing tasks. However, with the proper guidance it is possible that young learners can engage in mediation activities in a simple way appropriate to age, ability and context. of the potential relevance of the new descriptors to age groups 7 to 10 and 11 to 15.

    Opportunities for mediation in the young learner classroom

    It’s fair to say that opportunities for mediation activities already regularly occur in the communicative young learner classroom. These can be identified and enhanced if we want to develop this area.  

    1. Collaboration 

    Many young learner courses adopt an enquiry-based learning approach, guiding learners to collaborate on tasks and reach conclusions through creative thinking. The CEFR provides ‘can do’ statements for collaborating in a group starting at A1: Ìý

    • Can invite others’ contributions to very simple tasks using short, simple phrases.Ìý
    • Can indicate that he/she understands and ask whether others understand.Ìý
    • Can express an idea with very simple words and ask what others think.

    Young learners at this level can build a basic repertoire of simple ‘collaborative behaviors’ with keywords and phrases connected to visual prompts e.g. posters. A routine can be set up before pair and share tasks to practice short phrases for asking what someone thinks, showing understanding, or saying you don’t understand. This can also include paralanguage, modeled by the teacher, for showing interest and offering someone else the turn to speak. 

    It is important for young learners to be clear about what is expected of them and what will happen next, so such routines can effectively scaffold collaborative enquiry-based learning tasks. 

    2. Communication 

    ‘Can do’ statements for mediating communication, such as facilitating pluricultural space, can orient objectives for learners themselves to foster understanding between different cultures. Again young learners can develop their behaviors for welcoming, listening and indicating understanding with the help of visual prompts, stories and role-model characters.

    3. Discussion of texts  

    Young learners also spend a lot of time mediating texts because they enjoy talking about stories they have listened to, watched or read. Although there is only one statement for expressing a personal response to creative texts at A1: ‘Can use simple words and phrases to say how a work made him/her feel’, this can inspire a more conscious focus on classroom phases to talk about responses to texts and stories, and equipping learners with keywords and phrases to express their reactions. In this way, as they progress towards A2 young learners can develop the confidence to talk about different aspects of the story in their own words, such as characters and their feelings. 

    Moving forward

    Clearly, it is not obligatory to focus on mediation activities with young learners – but the ‘can do’ statements are an interesting area to consider and reflect upon. There are some obvious parallels between mediation activities and 21st century skills or soft communication skills, and the CEFR ‘can do’ statements can help formulate manageable communicative learning objectives in this area. This, in turn, can inspire and orient classroom routines and tasks which prepare learners to be active communicators and social agents in the target language, developing their confidence to engage in mediation tasks as a feature of their lifelong learning pathways.