I'm now way into the teaching year (the Singapore school year
starts in January). I haven't been the most consistent in blogging about
my teaching experiments - it's been so hectic!
Recently, one thing that has piqued my interest is getting kids to
have really meaningful class discussions, where students think and engage more
deeply with what each other are saying. I realise that most class discussions
consists of the me fielding the questions and having this two-way conversation
with the class, but the students aren't talking to each other.
I don't know how many of you have experienced this, but sometimes,
my class discussions turn heated and I'm there trying to prevent the class from
descending into anarchy. It puzzles me that my students get angry with each
other for having differing opinions, often not attempting to clarify their
thoughts and convince the other person to come over to their camp. Instead, it
turns into a competition where they try to see who can drag their 'NOs' the
longest and loudest. Also, in addition to academic excellence and sharing
knowledge with the children, it's important to teach them skills that help them
critically think through ideas and communicate effectively. I find that often,
my kids would not speak up or defend their ideas overzealously to 'save face'.
I’m working on teaching them that it’s ideas to be discussed respectfully, not
the person.
So I’ve started trying to enhance student talk for learning by teaching my kids to use these deliberate sentence starters and options called ‘talk moves’ when we are carrying out discussions.
They are pretty simple and I wondered why I hadn’t thought of doing these with
my kids ages ago. So there's a variety of talk moves out there but here's a list of those that I've started with whole class discussions and I've found to work:
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Talk moves
1. Repeat/Rephrase: Getting your students to ask someone else to repeat/rephrase their answer if they can't hear it or do not understand it. You can also get students to repeat/rephrase someone's answer to check if they are paying attention.
2. Add on: Students may volunteer to elaborate on what someone else has said.
3. Agree and why: Students should have an opinion on what their friends have shared. They may agree but more importantly, they have to state why.
4. Disagree and why: Pretty much the same as above. They may disagree and state why.
(I saw an interesting video where as a student was sharing, other students were taught to do a sign for if they agreed with their friends answer and if they disagreed. I tried this with my class and found it really useful as a tool for whole-class formative assessment. You could find out at a glance who agreed and who disagreed and made it easier to facilitate the discussion.)
5. Connection: Students may volunteer an idea that is connected/related to what their friend had shared.
6. Change my answer: Finally, after the whole discussion, students may decide that they want to change their answer. As a formative assessment tool, you could also make up a sign they could do to show that they would like to change their answer.
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Of course, these talk moves can also be used when students break up into their groups for group discussions.
There's a really good website here that explains 'talk moves' as well and that provides the ground rules for discussion. I modified and went through these ground rules for 'speakers' and 'listeners' and how classroom discussions should be carried out respectfully before even going through the talk moves. I was pleasantly surprised at how well it worked. Here's the link: Productive Talk in the Classroom
I've also created a powerpoint that explains the talk moves to the kids and the sentence stems they should use. It's written in kid-friendly language. =) Here it is: Talk moves powerpoint for kids
Enjoy!
