After realising neither myself nor my students had made a strong connection to the language used in theTalk Moves framework we changed the speaking frames to incorporate the language we use. I explained why we were making these changes, then embraced the changes my students suggested.
Today we carried out our usual thinking group challenge, something we have been doing all year. This means that as we move into the latter part of term 2, the students are all familiar with each other and have developed the confidence needed to participate actively within these groups. We began the lesson by unpacking our adapted speaking framework. This meant that anything that needed further explanation was broken down so that connections could be made. I asked each group to choose a leader and that the leader could be anyone who wanted to have a turn to lead the learning conversation. 4/6 groups had a student from my focus group step up as the leader.
The photos in this slideshow capture a snapshot of the whole lesson to preserve the anonymity of the students in my focus group.
The difference today was once the initial independent problem solving challenge had been completed, the academically productive conversation flowed. I think this may be due to the fact I introduced the updated speaking frame as our own. Each group had a least one student who had participated in the process of changing Talk Moves into LS2 Moves so the ownership and connections were in place. The photos above show the level of engagement.
At the end of the lesson I asked for group feedback linked specifically to the wording of our questions:
- 'Who has a different strategy? let students avoid self doubt if they had no strategy to share'.
- 'My group feel that Who has a different strategy? and What other strategies could we use? are the same so maybe we could choose the one that helps us share our thinking more confidently.'
- Can you tell me what you said? and Do you mean… are asking the same information.
Focus group feedback at the end of the lesson:
Hi Robyn
ReplyDeleteI'd heard you were doing some wonderful work with your students and critical thinking. Your work here on Talk Moves must be really empowering for your students because of their involvement in the process. It's inspiring to see how your developing student's confidence. Thanks for sharing 😉
Thanks Kerry. It is amazing to see the engagement through ownership evolving. We have made a few tweaks since this post, each one being made due to very valid reasons. I'm excited to see where this goes when we share our oral language framework with the other groups in our class.
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