Oral Comm. Post- Talking to Learn

In the classroom, oral communication seems to be the most favorite type of communication between the students; anybody who has sat in front of a class of thirty screaming kids during an indoor lunch period can attest to this. It is the first way that we learn to communicate our ideas and feelings clearly as young children and it is the easiest way, for most of us, to communicate to one another as adults. However, there seems to be more emphasis put on the strands of teaching reading and writing then there is on listening and oral communication. I find this a little strange as it can be argued that our reading and writing skills are based on, and go hand in hand with our ability to speak and listen. That is why this week we were responsible for exploring a resource that dealt with teaching effective oral communication in the classroom.

The resource that I chose to explore can be found on edugains.com at http://www.edugains.ca/resourcesLIT/AdolescentLiteracy/AL_Resources/TalkingtoLearnALERT_8X11.pdf and is titled, “Make room for talking to learn”. The article makes a great point that although there is almost always talking in the classroom, this talking is not always effective to learning. Talking in the classroom must be facilitated in a way that not only promotes learning and deep thinking, but most importantly, it must be accountable; what matters is what students are talking about and how they are talking. This article gives a numerous amount of useful tips for promoting and facilitating talking for learning in the class, including an anticipation guide that can be used to frame the conversation and encourage students to think deeply on a topic and take a stance. By using the prompts and tips in this article you can create a lesson plan for a discussion that hits on multiple expectations in the OLC Oral Communication strand; Students will:

1. Listen in order to understand and respond appropriately in a variety of situations for a variety of purposes;

2. Use speaking skills and strategies appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes; 

3. Reflect on and identify their strengths as listeners and speakers, areas for improvement, and the strategies they found most helpful in oral communication situations. 

LESSON PLAN

I would start this lesson by picking a controversial topic that I know my class would be interested in. It is important to pick a topic that the students feel differently about so as to have supporters and people against the idea, this will ensure that both sides of the topic are covered and will ensure for a healthy conversational debate. The article gives a great example that I think is very relevant to student’s lives today. The topic they give is one that I would actually use because I think that it would create a good discussion in the class: “Do you think that handheld electronic devices improve our quality of life.” I would pose this question on the anticipation guide with questions such as “Some benefits of handheld electronic devices are”, “Some drawbacks of handheld electronic devices are”, “ Do you think handheld devices improve our quality of life? Explain your answer.” After giving the students some time to think about the questions and jot some thoughts down, I would open the floor to the conversation. I might start the conversation off by playing devils advocate and picking the side of the topic that I know most of the students would not pick. I would also include a question or two such as, “In 20 years how will we be using handheld devices? What are some positives and negative implications of this?” This type of question forces the kids to think deeply about the prompt and to form a stronger opinion. Hopefully these prompts and the anticipation guide would help to start a healthy debate in the classroom in which students can work on their listening and Oral communication skills.

SparkCBC. 2010. Microphone. [Online Image] http://bit.ly/1PNLZ2J

          I think that this activity would be best suited for grade sevens and eights as it requires some deep critical thinking as well as upper grade level listening and oral communication skills. In addition, the younger kids may not be able to defend their opinions as well and the conversation may loose its academic value and just become a screaming match. This can be a great lesson to encourage effective academic oral communication in the classroom and also hits on a number of expectations in the OLC Oral communication strand as stated above.