With more weight given to evaluation questions in the new GCSE spec (from 40% of the marks to 55%), developing students’ ability to develop, justify and challenge a point of view is even more essential, and must begin at Key Stage 3. These skills can be developed through the promotion of high standards of oracy. While we all engage in speaking activities in our classrooms, thinking more explicitly about the way we structure classroom talk and providing extra scaffolding (such as Voice 21's speaking 'role cards' and sentence stems) can promote better articulacy and critical thinking skills.
The following speaking activities are adapted from activities developed by Voice 21, a charity affiliated with School 21 in Stratford, which was featured in Edutopia's 'Schools that Work' series. They are for a Year 8 unit on the 'Prophetic Role of the Church', but can easily be adapted for any unit or Key Stage.
Some teachers may be worried about not having any work evidenced in the books after such activities. One way around this is for students to write up a summary of the points raised in the discussion, both for and against, and answer it as an evaluation question, either in class or for homework.
An example from a recent class discussion is below:
Activity 1. Talking Points (2-3 persons)
Activity
In pairs, students are given 5 minutes to discuss a range of statements on the unit:
‘The rich should do more to help the poor’ (cf. Amos 5.11)
‘People only worship celebrity and money’ (cf. Hosea 2.2)
‘We are destroying our world’ (cf. Jeremiah 4.23)
To support discussion, students are given the following sentence stems. If they finish discussing one statement, they can move on to the next. The aim is to develop students' ability to build and challenge on each other's ideas and negotiate a consensus with each other.
Activity 2. Small Group Discussion (6 persons)
Activity
Each person in the group must pick up a talking role card, that can be downloaded from the Voice 21 website or projected onto the board.
Students are first asked to review the Old Testament prophecies that they studied in the previous lesson. In groups they then discuss the following statement: ‘The Old Testament prophecies are still relevant today.’
1. Instigators have two minutes to present their arguments in favour of the statement, with builders, clarifiers and probers contributing.
2. Challengers then have two minutes to present their arguments against the statement, with builders, clarifiers and probers contributing.
3. At the end of the discussion, summarisers from each group will be asked to share the main points from their group discussion to the rest of the class. The discussion can then be opened to the rest of the class.
Giving every student a role in small group discussion ensures everyone participates and begins to get them to understand the conventions of a good discussion.
Activity 3. Presentation (whole class)
Activity
At the end of the unit, students are then asked to deliver a presentation on one modern day prophet: Oscar Romero, Mother Teresa, Jean Vanier, Dorothy Day, Pope Francis. Students must then research their prophet, from biographical information, to the injustices they faced, and their legacy today. They will then have an opportunity to debate the significance of their chosen prophet in class, prior to presenting their findings. After the presentation, they will be assessed by their peers on the following four categories:
By encouraging students to think about how to present their information, they are encouraged to think about how to structure ideas coherently and their impact on the audience.
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