Talking and Listening

Fostering Productive Talk

Creating a classroom driven by discussion, rather than distraction, requires planning and well-honed procedures. To create classrooms that talk, the latest issue of Educational Leadership suggests the following.

Offer meaningful and complex tasks.

Students need to understand the purpose of the task. If they don't, they'll talk about other things. The purpose isn't for students to complete an assignment or activity, but rather for students to learn something. And that something has to be relevant.

The task has to be sufficiently complex to garner students' collaborative attention and effort.

Model behavioral cues.

Nonverbal communication is as important as verbal communication. When students work collaboratively, we focus on their interactions. We observe the ways in which they point, lean in, hold their bodies, and stick together. These behavioral cues tell us that students are interacting well. When these behaviors are absent, the group is probably not engaged in productive discourse and may need some teacher guidance.

Encourage argumentation, not arguing.

In highly productive group conversations, members make claims, offer evidence for those claims, seek clarification, offer counterclaims, and reach consensus or identify points of disagreement. In other words, members of the group can disagree without being disagreeable, and they can interact in sophisticated ways as they solve problems.

This type of language has to be taught, and some teachers use language frames to do so.

Provide language support.

In the disability community, there's a saying, "Not being able to speak is not the same as not having something to say." Students often have ideas that they aren't sure how to frame linguistically—and when they don't know how to frame their ideas, they stay silent. That's why language support is so important in the classroom. It can come in the form of sentence frames, teacher modeling, word walls, audio devices, or peer supports.

Find the right group size.

Effective teachers can facilitate whole-class discussions, which is often appropriate. But whole-class discussions enable relatively few students to participate, which is why expert teachers use a combination of whole-class and small-group configurations.

Small groups should consist of two to five students. All of the groups don't need to be the same size. Some students who need to develop their social or language skills perform better with a partner. Others enjoy a diversity of opinions and work well in a larger group. However, in groups of more than five, some students typically won't talk or the students may self-divide into smaller groups. It's important to match the group size to the task at hand as well as to student needs.

Listen, question, prompt, and cue.

Listening to students carefully gives the teacher an opportunity to guide future understanding. Rather than simply giving students information, teachers should question, prompt, and cue their thinking. In addition, teachers should be aware that their comments can build students' sense of self—their self-esteem, agency, and identity—or damage it.

An Invitation to Speak

Students need to be fully engaged in speaking and listening in the classroom, beyond the need to just perform well on an evaluation or meet standards. Inviting students to talk in class improves the education experience and ensures that students learn at high levels.

Let's change the balance of talk in the classroom so that students speak more and teachers speak less. And when we do, there will be lots to talk about.

A Teacher's Conversational Moves

• Can you tell us more?
• Would you say that again?
• Can you give me another example so we can understand?
• I'd like to hear what others are thinking about Robert's comment.
• Take your time. I can see you've got further thoughts about this.
• Why do you think that?
• Where could we find that information you just brought up?
• I'll restate what you just said. Listen to make sure I got it right.
• That's a great question. Let's pose it to the rest of the class. What do you think?

From Speaking Volumes, Talking and Listening Pages 18-23

November 2014 | Volume 72 | Number 3