Looking for examples of 21st century teaching, I came across this school in London who puts great emphasis on oral language across all subjects, all day.
Students were all on the floor listening to the teacher present the question. The question was, "Raise your hand if someone in your family has come to live in this country from somewhere else in the world?" She then asks the children to turn to their partner and begin addressing the talking point up on the screen. Right away students began a very conversation with their partners. Every child was on task speaking or actively listening to each other. I say "actively" because those listening would ask clarifying questions. The video shows a piece of another lesson where the kids are doing fractions. The students again are on the carpet and the question is posted on projector above them. The teacher seems to be just a facilitator in the learning process. The students are the ones discussing the problems and working through them using sentence starters. I know the students are learning because they have something called "talk tasks" they do these tasks as they are solving their math problems with their partner. Not only are they learning how to do the math, they are also developing academic vocabulary and language of explanation During the whole video, I never saw students sitting at their desks with paper and pencil in hand working independently. The learning that happens in this classroom is all done through collaboration and oracy. The students are the ones doing all the talking, not the teacher. I would love to bring in this strategy more efficiently into my classroom. I do partner and group talk, but not to this level. I know I would have to start with the basics and really get students to understand the discussion guidelines. Discussions guidelines would be more powerful if we were to write them together. I will use sentence starters more efficiently by carefully planning them before a lesson and really thinking about my groupings. As we learn more about 21st century skills and education, I can see why a simple skill that we all take for granted like "oracy" plays such an important role in preparing our students for the future. |
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