Speaking and Listening - more than project presentations or show & tell
Ask any teacher if they do oral language in their classroom, and the answer is a most definite yes. We are teachers, of course we teach speaking and listening skills to all our students. In fact it’s impossible not to. Oral language is our main way of communicating with our students.
But what makes one classroom develop more eloquent and capable communicators compared to others?
Well the key is in the explicit teaching! Ok, yes, I can hear the groans. “Everything is about explicit teaching.” Well it kinda is. But let’s take a look at how we can use explicit teaching to give our students the skills they need to become more confident and articulate speakers.
Have you heard of Accountable Talk? Google it. There are loads of resources out there to help you to include more meaningful speaking and listening lessons in your classroom. You will find a range of sentence stems that promote clear communication of ideas, questions and phrases for respectful debate. They are often grouped in categories such as:
● Adding on
● Clarifying
● Prompting
● Questioning
● Agreeing
● Disagreeing
This is one of those ‘little prep, big pay off’ lessons. Plus you can use it for any subject or topic you are studying. It not only builds communication skills but encourages a deeper level of thinking about any given topic (but maybe start with something that ALL kids will feel confident talking about).
Once you have introduced it to your class, you will surely be amazed with the level of insight your students have or may gain from their peers, when given the skills to be actively engaged in meaningful discussion.
What a powerful way to help level that playing field for all kids! We all know that kids come into our classrooms with a wide range of oral language skills. Well this activity certainly provides bang for its buck when it comes to equity.
Implementing Accountable Talk discussions in your classroom
Begin by establishing classroom expectations for discussions (eg. everyone is expected to contribute, look & listen respectfully to each speaker, use sentence stems to express your ideas in complete sentences, etc)
Model how to use sentence stems with several examples. (I do)
Allow students to practice repeating the sentence stems out loud. (We do)
Work with a partner or group to practice completing sentence stems with familiar topics. (You do)
Provide open ended discussion prompts for small group discussion.
Present ideas from group discussion back to the whole class.
Reflect on participation and use of sentence stems during the lesson.
If you want to see a fantastic school that has embraced the explicit teaching of oral language, click here. Oracy 21 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ADAY9AQm54
Extra resources to check out-
https://www.classroomnook.com/blog/accountable-talk
https://educationtothecore.com/2017/04/using-accountable-talk/
