How ICT Can Help with Speaking and Listening Activities

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My Year 9 students were our target Level 5s; a lively bunch who, when given the right ignition, spark off lots of ideas. However, rather than being a series of systematic, well organised and developed debates, our classroom discussions appeared to be more like a series of Chinese firecrackers being let off: lots of brilliant ideas, but with no development. As their teacher, my contribution to the dialogue was frequently something like this: ‘Steve, that is an excel–Justin, stop doing that–lent idea….’
I wanted to investigate how ICT could help me with speaking and listening activities. Techniques that I have found useful include dialogic talk and recording discussions using 2Simple’s ‘2Connect’ software; using Google images to aid discussions about language in a pre-twentieth short story; and PowerPoint for explanations (which will include me sharing a confession with you).
Back to my Year 9 class. I desperately wanted to move away from using talk as a tool for controlling behaviour, but I was not sure how to do so. So when I recently attended an English Leaders’ Development Course where the new DfES ‘Speaking and Listening’ CD ROM was discussed and given out, I took a shine to the disc and one of the techniques that was being introduced, called dialogic talk. This disc allowed me to observe how other English teachers had used methods such as dialogic talk in their classrooms, albeit with perfectly behaved and focused children, all of whom were curiously in perfect uniform! I couldn’t help asking myself if my rowdy lot could be anything like those I had just seen on the disc.
Dialogic talk
Before I introduced dialogic talk to my Year 9s, I was sceptical of this technique. I thought it could end up going horribly wrong. But in fact, despite attempting this approach last lesson on a Friday, I could not have been happier with the results.
At the end of the year I had been preparing the class for their GCSE curriculum by focusing on three Gothic short stories: The Red Room by H.G. Wells, The Signalman by Charles Dickens, and The Black Cottage by Wilkie Collins. Having carried out initial preparation work into the meaning of ‘Gothic’, we embarked upon reading the first story. I paused at key moments to ask questions but this time I instigated the rules of dialogic talk (see them online at www. standards.dfes.gov.uk/secondary/keystage3/ downloads/en_sld_spr07_rls_dia_0002207. pdf). This worked a treat. The class explored the text in ways that no other class had. We ended the lesson having a 13-minute discussion regarding whether we felt H.G. Wells believed in ghosts and whether we could compare the narrator’s experience to our own. I had not spoken once. Success! Here are my rules for dialogic talk:

1. Explain to the class that you are going to try not to interrupt their dialogue. (Any behaviour management can still be made with non-verbal communication).
2. Start the conversation with a big meaty question which the students will be eager to respond to e.g. ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’
3. Encourage the idea that when the person talking has finished making their point, they have the responsibility to choose the next person to contribute. To show that they want to speak, the students raise their hands and wait for the last person who contributed to say their name.
4. If one student is being continually ignored by the others, explain that this will be a reason for you to interrupt and ask the person speaking to ask that student to contribute.
5. Don’t make verbal comments about what they say. (This is really difficult.) However, encourage the students to develop points and praise each other. If students know you are not going to be reinterpreting or repeating their contributions, then they know that they need to convey their ideas and listen to each other carefully the first time.
6. Gradually encourage students to ask each other and develop the question from the original one being explored, for example: ‘Do you think H. …