Oral Communication Blog Post

Creating Great Discussion

Hello to my readers! This blog post will discuss a part of language arts that is often neglected, but is an integral part of the program. Students must be able to present orally and listen to the ideas of others in order to be successful. I believe that the best way to foster these skills is through student led discussion in the classroom, and this post will expand on how this can be done.

Resource Critique

One resource that I discovered to help me understand how to teach oral communication skills is one found in the capacity building series entitled Grand Conversations in the Junior Classroom. It is a document which not only outlines the importance of fostering educational discussions in the classroom, but also explains how it can be implemented. It argues that these conversations can create a much deeper understanding of the text being studied as the students discuss the key topics. On top of this, students develop their presentation skills by talking about their ideas in an articulate manner while also progressing in their listening abilities as they respond to the ideas of their classmates. It lists strategies like literature circles or congresses as platforms that teachers can use to organize the students so that they can begin their conversations. It says that it can be introduced to the students by modelling what these conversations would look like, then gradually release responsibility to the students. Finally, perhaps the most important piece of advice it gives to teachers is to not dominate the conversation, but to provide prompts which moves students toward a path of deeper understanding.

Other Helpful Resources

In order to further help me understand how I can teach effective oral communication skills I began to search for resources that could assist me.  One resource that gave me a wealth of information is an article called Oracy in the Classroom: Strategies for Effective Talk (found here: https://www.edutopia.org/practice/oracy-classroom-strategies-effective-talk). This article lists a variety of ways that teachers can create effective discussion like creating guidelines so all students are respected, differentiate in the way students are grouped from pairs to congresses, and providing students with points to talk about or tasks they must complete. One particular strategy that I found most interesting was giving roles to each student, below you will find a picture listing each of these roles and what they are responsible for.

Edutopia, September 12, 2016, "Types of Talk", (online image). Retrieved from: https://www.edutopia.org/practice/oracy-classroom-strategies-effective-talk.

However, these strategies cannot be introduced until the right culture is introduced in the classroom. This is what Socratic Seminars: Building a Culture of Student-Led Discussion (found here: https://www.edutopia.org/blog/socratic-seminars-culture-student-led-discussion-mary-davenport) as it talks about creating a classroom with discussion like they had in ancient Greece. It talks about how you can your students comfortable, how to introduce it to your students using anchor charts, and how discussion can be assessed and reflected upon in order to improve the students’ abilities.

Finally, below you will find a video developed by a teacher which lists a plethora of discussion techniques and prompts that teachers can use in order to get their students to go deeper in their discussion. It is important that student discussion does not simply provide them with a shallow understanding of the topic, but that they are prompted to get a deep understanding of what they learning.

Applying it to the Classroom

These resources are so helpful in my education on this topic because it provides me with simple ways I can introduce education discussion in my classroom. For example, I could organize my students into literature circles in order to foster discussion on a story being studied. If there are students who are not participating I could assign roles to them so that each student has a job they must complete. If the idea of educational discussion is new to a classroom that I am entering into then I could use the socratic discussion article to provide me with techniques that I can use to begin to teach educational discussion to my students. Overall, all of these resources gave me a variety of ways that I can use to create educational discussion so that students truly understand what they are learning and give every student a chance to get involved in their education.

Curriculum Expectations

Although teaching oral communication skills can be applied to any grade, I believe that the kind of discussion I have discussed in this blog post would be best suited for grade 6. I believe that the overall expectation that these resources meet is: “Use speaking skills and strategies appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.” Discussion also touches on specific expectations such as: “Demonstrate an increasingly sophisticated understanding of appropriate speaking behaviour in a variety of situations, including paired sharing, dialogue, and small- and large-group discussions.” In addition, students must also be prepared to participate in discussion so it touches on expectations like: “Analyse oral texts in order to evaluate how well they communicate ideas, opinions, themes, and information.”