Speaking and Listening at Key Stage 2 and Beyond

Section 2.2 - Raising student teachers' awareness of the structure of teacher-pupil talk in classrooms and how to assess its quality.

We have found the following resources useful for working with student teachers on this topic:

It can be obtained from: Dialogos UK Ltd, Rose Hill, Osgoodby, Thirsk, North Yorkshire YO7 2 AP (Currently £3.50inc p&p.)

The subtitle of this text is 'Rethinking classroom talk'. It provides an introduction to the idea of 'learning to talk, talking to learn' and a philosophy of dialogic teaching. This is teaching and learning which is essentially based on the thoughtful questions, negotiation and discussion which generate reasoned debate amongst teachers and learners. The text provides food for thought. It also gives a range of further reading and practical suggestions for encouraging dialogic teaching. It will encourage students to identify dialogue when they encounter it, and to ensure that they organise their classrooms so that dialogue is how learning proceeds.

The first of these chapters describes and exemplify the different ways teachers talk to pupils: 'direct elicitations', 'cued elicitations', 'reformulations' and so on. Student teachers can be encouraged to record and transcribe their own dialogues with pupils and consider which of these teaching techniques they have used and to what purpose. The second chapter focuses more on how pupils participate in classroom talk.