Learning through Talk

Developing Learning Dialogues in the Primary Classroom

Heather Luxford

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136609619
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Learning through Talk is a practical handbook. It is designed to help teachers and others working with five to eleven year olds develop the key skills which will enable their pupils to use talk effectively for learning. The activities within the book encourage thinking and learning across the curriculum and help pupils to improve their communication skills and become independent learners.

This book provides:

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• Advice and practical guidance on developing the essential skills of participation, collaboration, positive challenge, resolving differences and reflection

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• A series of motivating and exciting workshop activities

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• Photocopiable resources to support workshops with links to video material on the companion website

A practical, blended resource, Learning through Talk helps teachers shift their focus to evaluate the quality of pupils' talk as an insight into the learning process. The authors present tried and tested methods for reflection, including the use of a video diary room, an example of which is accessible online via the Companion Website.

An invaluable guide for both trainee and practising teachers, this book will provide those working with children with a practical framework to improve talk and communication in their classrooms in line with current curriculum developments.

Chapter 1

Participation

How can we enable children to participate and why is it important for effective talk?

An effective learning dialogue, by its very definition, involves more than one participant. (The exception to this is the internal dialogue we describe in Workshop Three.) It is therefore crucial to find ways to enable all children to feel confident in participating in talk activities, if effective learning dialogue is to be the outcome for everyone rather than just a minority. Our experience tells us that some children find participation difficult and that other children, who do not share that difficulty, are not always able to empathise with, or encourage, their less confident peers, as they simply do not recognise the challenges they face.

Photo 1 Participation. Are all the group participating?

This chapter sets out how to enable all children to reach the stage where they feel confident and secure enough to take part in, and contribute to, learning dialogues with their peers. It links very closely with the next chapter, Collaboration and the development of Ground Rules.

Figure 1.1 outlines what the children need to learn in order to be able to participate.

Figure 1.1 What the children need to learn in order to be able to participate.

Introduction to the participation workshops

The following five workshops present ideas for a range of simple games and activities, designed to develop children's awareness of their own and others' emotions and help them to understand the impact of these emotions in group talk situations, including how confidence to participate can be affected. Some of the activities are designed as whole class, shared activities and some for small groups, with or without adult participation. Where adults do participate, they should act as an equal group member, while being aware of their role in modelling appropriate responses. We have found mixed ability groupings work well in these activities.

• Workshop One is about raising awareness of a range of emotions and feelings. It involves identifying and recognising some of the emotions that might be experienced when working and talking with others in groups.
• Workshop Two is about raising awareness of the consequences of these emotions on group dynamics and the effect that each emotion might have on enabling confident participation within the group.
• Workshop Three focuses on developing an internal dialogue that can help children to stop and think about how they are participating and the effect this may have on others.
• Workshop Four is about collating phrases that help children to participate. We provide a series of prompt and phrase cards that can be used throughout the activities in this and the following chapters.
• Workshop Five introduces an expedition to an island through a problem solving activity designed to enable all children to participate in a learning dialogue.

Workshop One: Raising awareness of our emotions and feelings when talking with others

Identifying and naming our emotions and feelings working in a group

Using photographs

Work with a small group of children. Take a series of photographs that portray the range of emotions the children may experience when working in a group. Look at the photographs as a whole class activity and discuss how each child in the photographs feels. Try to allocate a named emotion to each child. Photographs 1.2 to 1.7 show six photographs of children taken after an eventful playtime, and were used with a class to discuss how each child was feeling.

Examples of other photographs we used with pupils are shown at the start of each chapter of this book. However, we suggest using photographs of your own class to engage and motivate the children.

Complete cartoon faces

In pairs, children should discuss the facial expressions and body language associated with each emotion discussed in activity one and then complete a cartoon face for each emotion (see Figure 1.2). Teachers could ask the children to start spotting expressions and body language in the playground, when shopping or on the television and start an emotions board, where children can log their ‘spots’! This extends their understanding of the range of contexts where any given emotion can be experienced. (Resource 8.8 gives some examples of cartoon faces.)

Dice game

The numbers 1–6 on a die are linked to six emotions.

Figure 1.3 gives an example.

In turn the die is rolled and the roller explains what would make them experience the shown emotion when working in a group. For example, if the die landed on ‘Sad’, a child may comment that they feel sad when they cannot get a turn to speak.

Photo 1.2 Happy

Photo 1.3 Sad

Photo 1.4 Surprised

Photo 1.5 Angry

Photo 1.6 Scared

Photo 1.7 Jealous

Figure 1.2 Cartoon face emotions grid.

Figure 1.3 Dice game emotions.

Figure 1.4 Charades emotion cards.

Recognising emotions

Non-verbal charades: One child picks an emotion card (see Figure 1.4) from a hat and has to use facial expressions and body language to enable the rest of the class to work out what the emotion is. The better the children get at this, the more subtle they become with their facial expressions and body language, which improves their skills in recognising the full range of emotions during subsequent activities.

Emotions Bingo (linked to how they might feel talking in groups)

Each child is given a board (Figure 1.5) and asked to draw four of their emotion cartoon faces (see earlier activity) on the four blank faces in the bingo grid.

One class member reads out a scenario card (Figure 1.6), and if a child feels the responding emotion is on their card, they cover it with a counter. The first child to cover all their boxes and be able to justify why each is covered is the winner.

Figure 1.5 Emotions Bingo grid.

Figure 1.6 Examples of scenarios for the Emotions Bingo.

Workshop Two: How should we express our emotions in a group?

This workshop develops the children's understanding of the relationship between emotions, reactions and the...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Illustrations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Participation
• Chapter 2 Collaboration
• Chapter 3 Build-on and extend ideas
• Chapter 4 Positive challenge
• Chapter 5 Resolve and reach agreement
• Chapter 6 Reflection
• Chapter 7 Conclusion
• Chapter 8 Photocopiable resources
• Bibliography