Student Talk

How might you painlessly integrate more student talk opportunities into your classroom?  Sarah Tantillo’s blog,  12 Ways to Get Students Speaking and Listening is a great resource. 

Here are two of our favorite suggestions from her blog. We’ll share two more next week. Feel free to visit her blog to find even more.

3. Move from paraphrasing to inference as much as you can, and ask students for evidence to back up their ideas or arguments (2.1, 2.3).

For example: “What can you infer from what James just said? What evidence gave you that idea?” Teach students how to paraphrase and infer early in the year so that they can log many hours of practicing these skills. Also, clarify the difference between argument and evidence. No matter what grade or subject you teach, even if the terms are not new to them, the review will establish a common language in the room. Posters can serve as handy reminders. The more students are invited to explain their ideas, the stronger their inference and comprehension skills will become.

5. Ask why as often as possible, to give students more opportunities to explain their ideas (2.1, 2.3).

This will boost their inference skills. Even when they give the “correct” answer, ask them why because (1) they might have guessed and (2) their explanation will teach others in the room who might not have understood the material.

Note: The first few times you ask why, students who aren’t accustomed to being questioned might back away from their response or become defensive. I like to tell students, “I’m not asking why because I think you’re wrong; I’m asking why because I genuinely want to know how you think and because your explanation will help your classmates understand this better.”

Is there data to support student talk?

John Hattie says that “self-verbalization and self-talk” has a .64 effect size in enhancing student achievement.  Since any effect size over .4 exceeds the normal effect that student development with an average teacher would yield in a year, it’s no surprise that our CEL 5D document has two criteria for student talk: 2.2 (Expectation, support, and opportunity for participation and meaning making) and 2.3 (Substance of student talk).