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Working to move beyond unstructured chat to Structured Talk that drives learning, confidence, and academic achievement for all students.
Evidence: Why Oracy Works
Oracy helps students articulate ideas, process new vocabulary, and deepen their comprehension in all subjects. Research shows that focusing on Oracy will improve reading and writing outcomes and enhance understanding across the curriculum.
EEF evidence suggests these approaches are particularly effective for disadvantaged pupils, addressing the differential in language exposure, also for EAL students where talk may be in a different language at home.
The greatest learning gains come from structured approaches with well-designed tasks, not just unstructured group work
An Approach to Structured Talk
Purposeful Pairs: A learning mode in which students work with a partner to discuss a topic or complete a task.
Students can be fantastic resources for each other’s learning. They can elaborate on each other’s ideas, address misconceptions and solve problems, as well as learning to cooperate and listen.
However, clear class routines are necessary to ensure paired work is purposeful.
What Are Some Of The Potential Issues?
Conversations not purposeful because students are not given thinking time, leading to one person in a pair dominating, or both partners struggling to express ideas. This is why the conversations/paired talk needs to be carefully planned – students need to see the point in it and how it links to their learning.
Precise expectations are not provided, meaning paired work becomes simply a less effective version of independent work. Students will struggle with quality talk if they are not shown a model and / or not given sentence stems, with key vocabulary. We need to build their confidence and get them speaking.
A precise time is not given. For example, asking students to discuss something for 2 minutes rather than 2 minutes 15 seconds could indicate to the students that you haven’t planned the time carefully so they don’t use the full time for their conversation and instead go off task.
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