The On-Your-Feet Guide to Partner Talk (On-Your-Feet-Guides)

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When the goal is for the rapid sharing of ideas, with multiple people, the doughnut sharing technique is appropriate. This technique involves a large group of students, such as the whole class, forming two circles – an inner circle and an outer circle. Students in the inner and outer circle find partners and face each other. Speaking of praise, make sure it’s constructive and meaningful during every step (“well done” and “good listening” are neither).

Use this strategy during your teacher input part of the lesson, or try it at another point ​when ​you think ​it ​would be beneficial. Why is it a good strategy?Randomly select pairs to share with the rest of their table (you can join a different table each time)

We know that the nature and quality of teaching practice in the classroom has abig impact on pupil learning. Pilots of dialogic teaching in the UK have suggested that it can change teachers’ practice, and there is other evidence that cognitively challenging classroom talk can lead to gains for pupils in language, mathematics and science, but this is the first trial of this approach. Talk partners can be one of the easiest and most useful tools you have as a teacher. Plan when to use them. Use open-ended questions. Change your talk partners often. Involve yourself in the discussions and praise, praise, praise. Who goes with who is arguably the most important thing when it comes to using the talk partners strategy. There’s many different ways you can pair the children in your class – you know them best. As for how long each instance takes, you want to keep the balance between maintaining the pace of your lesson but giving enough time for it to be valuable to the children. Try one minute for discussion and then two minutes to share with the class. Another tip is to put a timer on your board. Sharing with the classFor Partner Talk to be effective in the classroom, there are five steps that must be executed by the teacher:

Secondly, how you choose to use the strategy can hinder more than it helps. For instance, you might plan to use the strategy at the wrong time or let the talking go on too long. These were both problems I encountered when I first started using the approach in the classroom. It’s sometimes called think pair share, because it’s often a three-stage process. First you pose a question or talking point. Secondly, children partner up and talk about it. Finally some students share what they were discussing with the whole class. Another benefit is the increase in thinking time. You might fall into the trap of not giving enough time for this. Properly planning to use talk partners ensures more thinking time. This then lead to more articulate answers, which leads to better engagement for all. Let’s have a deeper look at talk partners as a teaching tool. What is it? Why should you use it? And most importantly, how should you use it? What are talk partners? However, even if your class used talk partners with their previous teachers, you need to introduce and model how it works in your classroom.

The majority of participating teachers felt that it would take longer than two terms to fully embed aDialogic Teaching approach in their classrooms. It could therefore be valuable to test the impact of the intervention over alonger period. Even if that child isn’t the one to share the pair’s idea with the class, they still get the benefit of being more involved in the discussion. Partner Talk Comprehension Activities: 17 conversation starters and comprehension activities that can be used throughout the year. Perfect for partner talks, read aloud discussion prompts and guided reading groups (sentence starters that are very helpful for English Language Learners). Think, pair, share is an easy and engaging talk technique. At any stage of the lesson, students may be asked to ‘turn and talk’. The purpose of the technique may vary. At the beginning of a lesson, students may be asked to think, pair, share early connections or predictions. During an inquiry, students may be asked to share ideas, challenges or opinions. While at the end of a unit of work, students might share their reflections. The intervention was highly regarded by headteachers, mentors, and teachers who thought that the Dialogic Teaching approach had positive effects on pupil confidence and engagement.

Please build in preparation time if you split students in pairs/small groups as they will need to get to know each other. The success of talk partners is that it gets children involved and engaged in their learning – something most of us would agree is important in helping children to progress. Reading Reflection Journals: Reading Skills practice that can be used with ANY text (3 different levels of worksheets, great for differentiated reading groups). Although research has recognised that student engagement in dialogic talk, where students initiate questions and seek responses is an enabling strategy (Alexander, 2006), not all students participate or participate effectively.Providing each member of the group with a few tokens or counters is a useful technique, when establishing the protocols for talk in the classroom, or encouraging fair participation. Each group member is provided with a few tokens. Each time a contribution is made, the student places aside a token. When all tokens have been placed aside, the student is no longer able to contribute to the discussion. Two colour tokens may be given, one to represent talk contributions and the other to represent questions to pose to the group.