Dialogic Talk

In a CPD session last year, we watched a video on dialogic talk. The lesson that we watched was a fourth grade Maths lesson. The teacher wrote an equation on the board asked the students to decide whether the equation was true or false. They had to give reasons for their answers.

The teacher chose a task which was the correct level of difficulty for her (presumably mixed ability) class. This was important as it was crucial that there were a mixture of responses. It needed to have the right level of difficulty to facilitate the students working out amongst themselves with minimal teacher prompts.

Throughout the lesson, the time that the teacher was talking was minimal compared to the time that the students were talking. When setting up the task, the teacher used very precise and succinct instructions and reminded the students only of what was crucial (‘you need to have reasons for your decision’). The clarity and simplicity of the instruction was very effective as it allowed the students to take ownership of the problem themselves after she had posed it.

When taking responses from the students, the teacher passed no judgement of their answers, often replying with a simple ‘ok’ and asking others ‘do you agree?’. This meant that the students couldn’t derive any clues from the teacher for the correct answer. This made them much more independent and gave them more responsibility for coming to the answer. They had to rely on themselves and each other rather than the teacher. Much of the lesson consisted of the students talking through their ideas. This was done first in pairs and then as a whole class. The teacher had clearly cultivated an environment where all students felt comfortable sharing their ideas at length.

The minimal intervention from the teacher was by far the biggest thing that I took away from this CDP session. I find that students too quickly look to the teacher for validation of their ideas and are scared of making mistakes. On reflection, I think it is often clear from my body language and tone of voice if I think their answer is ‘correct’. I have reflected that this approach could be limiting the range of answers that are generated in my classroom and reinforcing the idea that the teacher is the ‘fountain of all knowledge’ and ultimately gives the approval to what is right or wrong. When I tried the move to a more neutral and objective response style, my students found it quite a shift to receive a simple ‘ok’ in response to their ideas, as they were used to receiving praise and validation. During class discussion, however, this approach helped the students to build on each other’s ideas and I feel that over time, it could improve their confidence and independence with interpretation.