ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the crucial importance of classroom talk for learning. It identifies the ways that teachers use talk for learning. The chapter examines when and how to move between different sorts of talk within lessons and raise children’s awareness of their classroom talk and its impact on others. Organising effective talk involves raising children’s awareness of the power of spoken language. In whole-class settings, talk with a teacher can provide children with new information. Exploratory talk requires shared motivation and purpose; when it happens, it enables children in a group to achieve more than each child would alone, whatever their ability. By employing a dialogic approach and simultaneously teaching children how to engage one another in exploratory talk, we offer them opportunities to work on their own thinking and that of others. Focus the children on active listening and ask them to try to remember something that they think is particularly interesting from their group talk.
