How much talk is there in your classroom? Not low-level chatter, but time is given by you for pupils to speak their minds, answer questions, discuss lesson content and debate with each other? For some teachers, the answer will be “most of the lesson”; for others, it will be “as little as possible”; and some might ask: “Does it really matter?”
Neil Mercer, emeritus professor of education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge and director of Oracy Cambridge in the Hughes Hall Centre for Effective Spoken Communication, believes it does matter. A lot.
He concedes that the idea of promoting questioning, elaboration, and participation as a good classroom tactic isn’t “rocket science” but believes that this sums up the issue oracy faces: it sounds obvious, so is overlooked.
“Talk is taken for granted,” he says.
Partly, this is down to a belief among some that “talking” is natural and that teaching oracy skills is less important than other literacy skills. Often, that’s not a conscious thought but, he says, you can see it in action when teachers give children discussion or group work tasks without any training on how to structure those conversations.
“You don’t say to children, ‘Right now we’re going to do some long division and I’m sure you all know how to do that so just get on with it’, and it’s the same with asking children to work in groups and have discussions and debates,” says Mercer. “If you don’t prepare them for working well in groups, then they won’t. But if you do, it’s dynamite – and the research backs it up.”
Research studies are very clear that teaching children spoken-language skills has measurable benefits – from improved reasoning and debating skills to confidence in public speaking and problem-solving.
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Denne historien er fra October 03, 2019-utgaven av TES.
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Predictive technology – powered by increasingly complex algorithms – is finding its way into schools, promising to pre-empt misbehaviour, violence or mental health issues before they happen. But does it work, and is its use ethical, asks Simon Creasey
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In a bid to improve parental engagement, one Edinburgh school is putting parents in their children’s shoes to experience a typical modern school day – and the results are breathtaking, finds Emma Seith
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Do your school policies unintentionally ‘out’ children from disadvantaged backgrounds? One charity says such occurrences are all too common and have proposed ‘poverty proofing’ as the solution. Lucy Edkins investigates
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Aware of the mental health benefits of green-fingered working, Nigel Cox helped to set up an outreach course at his college to support people recovering from substance abuse and other personal challenges
Social And Emotional Skills In The Early Years
Children who are able to focus their attention, manage their behaviour and interact positively with others from a young age experience better learning outcomes later in life, finds Irena Barker
How Centralised Detentions Get Pupils' Attention
By adopting a consistent whole-school approach to rewards and sanctions, we achieved a marked improvement in attitudes to learning – and reduced teachers’ workload, says Calvin Robinson
Homework Truths
With some studies claiming that homework has little or no impact on pupil achievement, schools have been tempted to cut back on it or ban it altogether. But we shouldn’t write homework off, warn two gurus of UK education research. Steve Higgins and Lee Elliot Major argue that the evidence on homework has been misrepresented – and out-of-school study can, in fact, have a major impact on learning outcomes
