Talk Box

Activities for Teaching Oracy with Children aged 4–8

Lyn Dawes, Claire Sams

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781317239666
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Talk Box supports teachers implementing the new curriculum, who are looking for fresh ideas with a focus on teaching talk skills, encouraging discussion and developing articulate children. It sets out different types of teaching involving children learning collaboratively through discussion with peers and centres on step-by-step lesson plans to develop hidden potential across the entire classroom.

At the heart of the lesson plans is the 'talk box' - a collection of interesting objects which provide a focus for class discussion and where the activities are based on these linked ideas:

• Young children need their teachers to help them make sense of the world;

• The most effective medium for explaining, discussing, describing with children, is talk;

• Children learn very well from one another when taught how to do so, and are a good resource for one another in the classroom;

• Children may be able to talk, but they are not often aware what sort of talk can help them to get the best from their education;

• Direct teaching of essential talk skills and understanding is straightforward and should be undertaken in school classrooms.

The numerous lesson plans included in this book are each built around specific learning objectives for speaking and listening and cover subjects such as literacy, numeracy, science, citizenship, ICT and Computing. Each lesson includes a resources list and photocopiable worksheets and range from whole class to small group work.

This book will help you teach children to engage in the educationally effective kind of discussion known as Exploratory Talk, where everyone's viewpoint is considered, opinions are justified with reasons, and decisions are made together. This new edition includes updated curriculum links, new research findings, a home-school link section and contain additional EAL and SEN materials.

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Chapter 1 Talk about talk

Raising children’s awareness of their spoken language as a powerful tool for learning with others.

About this chapter

Children’s talk is a distillation and re-purposing of the talk they have experienced. Some children talk fluently from their earliest years; for others talk is difficult. Setting aside specific learning difficulties, some children may not have had the chance to be part of the sort of conversations which will help them speak within a group with confidence, fluency and a good working vocabulary. Talk in school enhances children’s spoken language. Talk with peers about a common educational focus is a chance for every child to understand the importance of their own voice, and to learn that communication is an interesting and valuable two-way process. In this chapter, we suggest three specific lessons to raise awareness of talk for learning and to encourage group cohesion, with some extension or follow-up activities.

Activity 1: Talk it up!

Raise awareness of talk as a tool for finding things out.

Learning intention to share with the class

To find out more about a classmate by asking questions and listening.

Whole-class activity

Ask for volunteers to come and choose one of the selection of tools from the Talk Box; hold it up and to say what it is used for. Explain that people make tools to help us do particular jobs well. Show the shoe box and tell children that it is a mystery – we do not know what is inside! Ask children to suggest how we can find out what’s inside without damaging it, but using the tools available.

A child will suggest looking into the hole and using the torch because it’s black inside. Ask a child to try. Explain that this is a good use of tools: we need the right one for the right job.

Ask one of your confident children (Leah in this example) to volunteer for an investigation. Explain that our brains (where we think) are also something of a mystery, like the shoe box – can we tell what’s in someone’s mind? Why do we need to do so? Can we use any of these tools from the Talk Box? The torch? Stress the danger of light in the eyes. Ask children how we might find out what the volunteer child thinks. Lead children to suggest asking him/her, which is the right way to go about it. We can use the tools of spoken language.

Now help the class to investigate what Leah thinks.

Use some starter questions, for example:

Leah, what’s your favourite colour?

Please say yes if you have a bike, no if you haven’t.

What are you planning to do after school today?

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In the Talk Box

Torch: other tools, for example spanner, screwdriver, garden trowel, paint brush, big ladle, scissors, key, hair brush, scissors – anything unusual you can find.

Shoe box with lid taped down, small hole at one end, small toy taped inside

Model how to listen and respond to the answers.

Ask the class to suggest, ask and listen to further questions and answers, respecting Leah and the way she is prepared to talk about herself.

Explain that by asking Leah to talk, we have found out more about her. She has told us what she thinks about some things. Leah has been good enough to share some information about herself. People might not always want to talk, but in a school classroom, everyone gets on better if there is open sharing. Particular talk tools help us to find out what others are thinking. Questions are useful talk tools, for example the questions, ‘What do you think?’ ‘Why do you think that?’. Knowing about people helps us to understand them. Thank Leah for her help.

Group work

Ask children to talk to one other child. They should take turns to ask each other questions and listen to the answers. They can use the questions already heard, if needed, or provide a definite focus for the talk, such as ‘Favourite people’, ‘Best day ever’, ‘A story character I like’ or ‘What I like about weekends’.

Plenary

Ask children to say what they found out about one another. Were there any surprises? Ask for examples of good questions, clear answers and who could be nominated as a careful listener.

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Extension

Share some key ideas about spoken language with the children.

1. Explain that we use spoken language – talk – as a tool to find out what’s in each other’s minds, all the time. Often we do this without really considering what we are doing. We are rarely taught how to talk, but instead pick up our spoken language skills by talking with others. The talk lessons – this is the first one – will help everyone in class to get more out of their talk with one another.

2. We can use reading and writing to find out what people think, but neither is as quick or easy. Writing has benefits. We will go into those another time; for now we will concentrate on talk. Ask children why they think talk is important for learning.

3. Talk is a tool for finding out things about what others and we think; particular language tools are special ways of talking; for example, we can use questions to find things out. We’ve found out a bit of what’s in Leah’s mind. Is there more? How can we find out more? By asking questions, listening and encouraging others to talk. What other sorts of talk are there, as well as questions? Other language tools – children might suggest them – are explaining, describing, sharing ideas, giving opinions or reasons, challenging others, agreeing with others.

4. Ask children to consider the relationship of speaking to listening, and talking to thinking. Do we put fully-formed thoughts into words, or do we speak in order to arrange our thoughts?

Activity 2: Talking in my group

Outline

For the important task of using talk tools together, we need special Talk Groups. Introduce the special talk groups that will help children to work together. The talk lessons are about learning language tools so that we can talk more effectively – for children, you can compare this with learning how to use tools to paint, or how to write using a pencil, pen or keyboard.

You will know your class best. In advance, allocate them to a group with one or two other children; try to mix boys and girls and abilities, and try to avoid friendship groups.

Learning intention to share with the class

To join a group and work together by sharing ideas through talk.

In the Talk Box

Coloured dot stickers

A selection of small plastic animals/sea creatures/insects/dinosaurs

Whole-class activity

Explain that each child has been chosen for their group because they are good at sharing (give a red sticker); have good general knowledge (blue sticker); are particularly helpful (yellow sticker); or are good listeners (green sticker) (adapt these, or make your own positive criteria). Point out to the children that their groups will have mixed colour stickers because everyone has different abilities and strengths to bring to the group. Call each child to collect a sticker, be congratulated on their strength and to join their group.

Ask children seated with their partner or group to say hello and be ready to listen.

Group activity

Ask a group member to come and choose three animals from the Talk Box without looking. Stress that children cannot swap animals with other groups. Let the children look at these animals with their group and share anything they know about the creatures: names, where they live, what they eat and so on. Now ask the children to think about listening and taking turns. Ask them to take it in turns to tell their group which of the animals they would choose to be their ‘group mascot’ and why before jointly deciding on an animal mascot. If this isn’t possible, leave the choice open for now.

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Whole-class plenary: Suggested questions

Can anyone tell us anything interesting they found out about their animals?

Anything you didn’t know before?

Anyone give an example of someone who is a good listener?

How well did your group work together?

What should groups do if they didn’t reach an agreement?

Were there any problems – what happened – how can the rest of us help?

Can you think of times when it’s useful to ask questions?

How did you learn to talk in the first place?

Who doesn’t really like talking in groups – can they say why?

Finally ask the class to think about talk. In this lesson, talk has been used to complete the job of choosing mascots. The talk tools in use were questions. During the next lesson the class is going to learn a special sort of talk that will help everyone to do better at school and get on better with people generally. Explain that by working well together we can do better than we could if we worked separately.

Extension activity

Ask groups to write their names or draw pictures of themselves/each other with coloured stickers and a picture of their group mascot.

Find out about other animals that use tools (there aren’t many), e.g. chimpanzees, sea otters.

Activity 3: Using questions

Outline

Some children ask questions incessantly. Others may be less familiar with using this way of prompting others to talk. Children in classrooms may get used to being asked questions, and may stop asking questions themselves. In this lesson there is a focus on how and why to ask questions, with the corresponding focus on answering questions. An answer may be that you don’t know; it’s useful for us to think about what is not known.

Learning intention to share with the class

We are going to think about asking and answering questions.

Whole-clas...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Talk Box
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Talk About Talk
• 2 Listening and Thinking
• 3 Me and My Group
• 4 Your Class Ground Rules for Talk
• 5 Exploratory Talk in Mathematics
• 6 Spoken Language in Science
• 7 Talk in English
• 8 Talk Box Activities Across the Curriculum
• 9 A Variety of Talk Boxes
• 10 Classic Talk Box Activities
• 11 Assessment of Children’s Talk for Learning
• Appendix: Photocopiable Worksheets
• Talk Box Links and References