Thrive in Action Blog Series: Student Voice, GPS 8 - Increase Student Talk
The Thrive In Action blog series highlights practical applications for Great Pedagogy Strategies (GPS) within the EdConnective Thrive Framework, summarized here. The EdConnective Thrive Framework is unique in that it can be applied to teaching actions seamlessly whether learning is in-person or remote. This week we get more familiar with:
Student Voice, GPS 8 - Increase Student Talk: Teacher plans for lessons that place the majority of thinking, talking and work on students.
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“Whoever is doing the talking is doing the learning.” (Bowman, 2009)
There are many benefits to increasing student talk in the classroom that brings this quote to life. First, student talk is a wonderful check for understanding to access what students are learning. Second, talking helps students process what they are learning by giving them an opportunity to think aloud. The next reason is that purposeful student talk gives students ownership in the learning process. Finally, student talk increases social connections in the classroom with the other students and the teacher.
There are so many wonderful ways to increase student talk in all subjects. The use of sentence stems is a way to get students talking more and using complete sentences. This works well for any subject and grade level. Partner work, such as think- pair share, gives every student an opportunity to speak. One of my favorite activities is having students in the “Hot Seat” where they take on the role of a character in a story or current or historical person to answer questions that their classmates pose. Discussion protocols are another way to get the conversations going in all classes.
Many of the traditional in-building strategies to increase student talk easily adapt to the virtual classroom. One method that works successfully in virtual classrooms is to activate student talk using break out rooms as you would partner or small group work in the building. Many Learning Management Systems have an audio recording feature. Teachers can ask students to give a verbal response rather than a written response. Students can also respond to one another.
Teachers need to remember to plan for student talk when developing lessons. Purposely determine which parts of the lesson will be student voice and shoot for 50% of the lesson. Build student talk into your routines: morning meetings, warm-ups, exit tickets. Remember to also give sufficient wait time to allow students the opportunity to formulate clear thoughts. Being intentional about planning and facilitating student talk will give you the added benefits of having more student engagement, hearing the many voices and thoughts of your students, and seeing the connections between the students and also with you grow.
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