Sam and I had our TLIF observation this week. My lesson was successful as the students managed to answer the big question after a dialogue on whether a tomato is a fruit or vegetable.
What I managed to do:
- Introduced Talanoa at the start of the lesson.
- Provide cue cards for student talk moves.
- Used wait time to give students the opportunity to share their thoughts.
- Used non-verbal cues to remind students to use Talanoa.
- Also asked students to respond in non-verbal ways (thumbs up or down) to determine their stand on a question.
What the students did:
- Some students spoke up by saying, " Can you say that a bit louder as I can't hear, please".
- More dialogue between students. The most interactions before I had to speak were between 3 students.
- Students used the talk moves a few times (but lots of room for improvement).
What next:
- Increase wait time even more.
- Extend dialogue by deepening their thinking. (Refer to page 91 of the Classroom Talk textbook).
- Use more pedagogy strategies so that students can practice talking to each other.
- Bump up the context to make room for deeper conversations.
