How Can Teachers and Schools Promote Talk and Small Group Learning NATE Conference 4th April 2009
Build on prior knowledge Move from concrete to abstract Ensure everyone works with everyone else Convert social language into curriculum language Provide motivating ways to go over the same thing more once
Activities that provide access to the curriculum, opportunities to practise predictable language structures and improve social relations
Build on prior knowledge Buzz groups/talk partners Information gap
Move from concrete to abstract Key visuals/graphic organisers Humanising the abstract
Some key visuals Chart Grid Venn diagram Tree diagram Sequencing line Time line Cycle Diamond Nines Sorting table Tracks
Everybody working with everybody Create different roles and then jigsaw!
How do you jigsaw?
Move social language into curriculum language
Provide motivating ways to go over the same thing more once
How are activities planned? What do we want the children to know? What kinds of thinking do we hope they will practice? What kinds of language do they need? Necessary language and potential language? What key visuals best produce the thinking and the language? Can we make our activity collaborative/sociable?
Here is an example!! We want children to consider the different habitats of animals. Where do they live? What is it like there? Why do they live there? How do they survive and/or thrive?
What key visual will help their thinking? A sorting grid or chart.
This can be made into a game. You need 4 people, one baseboard and two sets of cards (different colours.) Work with a partner to make a team of two. Shuffle your cards and place them in a pile facing down. Take it in turn to turn over your top card and decide where to put it on the board. The winning team gets four in row vertically, horizontally or diagonally. Decide whether to have challenges or a checking system.
Go to http://www.collaborativelearning.org/nate2009.html For links to all the resources I mentioned today and a summary of the presentation