Two More Easy Student Talk Strategies

Did you get a chance to try our student talk suggestions from last week? Here are two more suggestions, again from Sarah Tantillo’s blog, “12 Ways to Get Students Speaking and Listening.” Feel free to visit her blog to find even more.

7. Don’t repeat what students say.

Students are like cats who want more food in their bowl: they train us! If you allow students to train you to repeat what they say, then they won’t develop proper speaking or listening skills. When you repeat what students say, it sends the message that they should not to listen to one another. It also teaches them to mumble because they know you will amplify everything.

Another downside is that repeating unnecessarily lengthens class discussions and undermines the ratio of student cognitive work. Doug Lemov (Teach Like a Champion) describes an array of methods for enhancing this ratio, including unbundling (asking numerous questions to dissect a topic or problem), feigning ignorance, and batch-processing (instead of responding to every single comment, responding after several have been made), among others.

                   

9. Invite students to ask questions as often as possible.

But this does not mean asking, “Does anyone have any questions?” for which the answer is almost invariably, “No.” Instead, ask, “What questions could we ask in this situation?” or “What questions can we ask about ____?” Then write their questions down on the board to show how much you value them. As a default, students need to know the utility of applying Five W’s and the H (who, what, when, where, why, and how) to pick apart texts.

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).