TALK: DEVELOPING COOPERATIVE & CRITICAL COMMUNICATION SKILLS
As a teacher, I have a passion for helping students become better communicators. Often, this means providing strategies that help students exercise Talk in a cooperative and critical way. In the classroom, I often use the following strategies when helping students develop and practice their Talk skills:
The 5 Pillars of Great Talk
The 'Building' approach
The 5 Pillars of Great Talk
This strategy was developed from the NCTE's 'Teach the Talk, not the Text' and Literacy Today's 'Talk that Supports Learning'. This strategy is helpful for Grade 7 & 8 students as well as less talkative students, as it helps students focus their talk around the 5 different Pillars: Initiate, Justify, Extend, Clarify, and Challenge.
How does it work?
After going through what each of the Pillars are and why/how they should be used, students will get into small groups and 'label' their Talk with the appropriate Pillar (example: "I want to challenge/extend/justify what Sara said..."). This helps students organize their thinking and be strategic when they Talk. The end goal is for students to have more rich and varied conversations and to reduce the amount of one-word or "what he said" answers.
For more information on what the Pillars are and for downloadable classroom printouts, please see the infographic below:
