Encouraging and improving student talk with FlipGrid
Over the past 9 months I have been thinking a lot about ways in which I can encourage pupils to talk to each other, discuss topics and answer questions in English. The lockdown and subsequent work from home and zoom learning has meant that pupils have missed out on lots of opportunities to converse in English and many pupils find it uncomfortable to speak via zoom. It can also be difficult for teachers to include wait time within their lessons as the idea of ‘dead air’ can be even more undesirable than in a traditional classroom setting.
The term wait time was first coined by Mary Budd Rowe in her research paper, Wait-time and Rewards as Instructional Variables, Their Influence in Language, Logic, and Fate Control (1972). She noted that on average, teachers paused only 1.5 seconds after asking a question; some wait only a tenth of a second.
When that time was extended to 3 seconds, there were positive changes to students' and teachers' behaviours and attitudes. She explained that wait-time gave students a chance to take risks.
"Exploration and inquiry require students to put together ideas in new ways, to try out new thoughts, to take risks. For that they not only need time but they need a sense of being safe"
Her report detailed several of the changes that came about when students were provided wait-time:
The length and correctness of student responses increased.
The number of no answers or "I don't know" responses by students decreased.
The number of students who volunteered answers greatly increased.
Academic achievement test scores tended to increase.
Research has also clearly shown that in order for children to develop language skills, they need opportunities to engage in back- and- forth conversations with linguistically competent adults (Harris, Golinkoff, & Hirsh- Pasek, 2011; Justice et al., 2018).
When these opportunities to scaffold language do not occur at home, it is even more essential that they occur at school so students can develop the necessary skills to succeed.
It is with FlipGrid that I think both of these problems can be addressed. Flipgrid allows you to prepare open ended questions in advance of your lesson. Pupils can then be given time, both in class or at home, to prepare their answers which they can record and re-record on the platform until they are happy with them. These responses can include images and overlays such as presentations or whiteboards which pupils can use to explain their ideas.
You can then review answers and give verbal or written feedback to pupils. The platform can also be used for peer feedback and discussion and includes tools for including links and additional materials. FlipGrids can also be shared directly to google classroom which makes it quick and easy to add them to your existing workflow.
Another key feature for language learners is the built in closed captioning feature which will automatically create captions from teacher and pupil videos and aid in language acquisition.
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