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  • Support for early career teachers
  • Teach First
  • Year 2: First half term: revisit how to use structured talk to develop pupils' literacy
    • Summer week 2

    Induction tutor materials

    Training session - using structured talk to develop pupils’ literacy

    Duration: 90 minutes

    Session objectives

    By the end of the session early career teachers (ECTs) will:

    • know how developing talk supports literacy within a subject or phase 
    • have identified strategies to develop talk within their subject or phase 
    • have practised incorporating identified strategies into their teaching practice  

    Session structure

    Introduction (10 minutes)

    Settling task: As ECTs arrived have the settling task presented. Ask ECTs to reflect on:

    • what does ‘talk’ currently look like in your classroom?
    • how do you currently support pupils to engage in purposeful talk?

    Facilitator to explain the purpose of the training session, session outcomes and the related ECF statements.

    The importance of talk (5 minutes)

    1. Explore why talk is important.
    2. Explain the link between developing oral language and improved literacy (as identified in the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) teaching and learning toolkit).
    3. Note that research indicates all pupils benefit from developing oral language, however this appears to be particularly beneficial for pupils for disadvantaged backgrounds or who may be lower attaining.

    Disciplinary literacy and talk (5 minutes)

    1. Recap on disciplinary literacy from Year 1 of the programme.
    2. Link this to domain-specific talk; for example evaluating looks and sounds that are different in different subjects. Provide an example specific to the subject of the ECTs you’re working with.
    3. Ask ECTs to reflect on other areas where talk might be specific to their subject (for example, reasoning, arguing, vocabulary).

    High quality and structured talk (10 minutes)

    1. Explain the importance of quality of talk over quantity of talk.
    2. Explain and model the importance of setting up a ‘talk culture’. For example:
      • setting clear ‘talk norms’ or guidelines with your pupils
      • ensuring talk activities have a clear goal
      • where appropriate assigning roles for talk (for example, the summariser and questioner), and the importance of changing these cognitive roles so pupils are not always assigned to the same one

    Strategies for using structured talk to develop literacy – Dialogic questioning (25 minutes)

    1. Introduce the first strategy: dialogic questioning.
    2. Introduce the principles of dialogic questioning: collective, supportive, reciprocal, deliberative, cumulative, and purposeful (R. Alexander, 2020).
    3. Provide an example of a subject-specific area in which using structured talk would support pupil understanding; such as making critical comparison across texts in English.
    4. Model how you would use dialogic questions to develop pupil talk.
    5. Provide a non-example of using dialogic questions; for example where the teacher does not engage in dialogue with pupils but instead engages in a question and response series.
    6. Activity: Ask ECTs to work in pairs or small groups to rescript the non-example so that it develops pupil talk.

    Strategies for using structured talk to develop literacy – Scaffolds (25 minutes)

    1. Introduce the second strategy for structured talk: using scaffolds.
    2. Explore different types of scaffolds for developing talk; including prompts, sentence stems, question stems and speaking frames.
    3. Explore how these can be used, for example to support pupil responses, to support pair or group talk. Acknowledge that these scaffolds should be reduced over time as pupils develop competency.
    4. Provide an example of a subject-specific area where scaffolds could support pupil talk. For example, argumentation or evaluating a text.
    5. Model how you would use a scaffold to support pupil talk.
    6. Activity: Ask ECTs to get into pairs and discuss what scaffolds they currently use to structure pupil talk, and how effective they are. Ask them to also consider how they model the use of scaffolds to pupils for independent use.

    Next steps and close (10 minutes)

    Ask ECTs to reflect on the learning from the session and record their actions and next steps related to their classroom practice. Options include re-visiting certain areas of the course, talking with their mentor, watching another teacher, planning to adapt their practice, and more.

    Subject and curriculum

    • 3.10 Every teacher can improve pupils’ literacy, including by explicitly teaching reading, writing and oral language skills specific to individual disciplines.  

    • 3o Teaching unfamiliar vocabulary explicitly and planning for pupils to be repeatedly exposed to high-utility and high-frequency vocabulary in what is taught.  

    • 3r Modelling and requiring high-quality oral language, recognising that spoken language underpins the development of reading and writing (for example, requiring pupils to respond to questions in full sentences, making use of relevant technical vocabulary). 

    Classroom practice

    • 4.7 High-quality classroom talk can support pupils to articulate key ideas, consolidate understanding and extend their vocabulary.

    • 4p. Providing scaffolds for pupil talk to increase the focus and rigour of dialogue.