Interactive teaching in literacy and language/2. Talk for writing: Difference between revisions

* enjoy writing and find the process creative, enriching and fulfilling;

* '''Supported pupil talk''': Structured and scaffolded opportunities for children to develop and practise ''Talk for Writing ''through class and group conversations and activities.

* '''Independent pupil talk''': Opportunities for children to develop and practise ''Talk for Writing ''in pairs and small groups, independent of the teacher.

All of this needs to be applied in '''whole-class '''learning and teaching and in '''guided writing'''.

= What does ''Talk for writing ''look like? Talk strategies =

‘Book-talk’ is the extended opportunity to use '''talk '''to explore children’s personal and collective responses to a text '''as readers '''and uses open-ended questions to elicit and develop response.

‘Writer-talk’ is the articulation of the thinking and creative processes involved in all stages of the act of writing; talk that helps children to think and behave like a writer (and indeed consider themselves to be one). It involves externalising and making explicit, through '''talk''', the thinking involved in both '''‘reading as a writer’ '''(understanding what response the writer wishes to elicit in the reader and how he/she achieves this) and '''‘writing as a reader’ '''(applying the same understanding when making the choices involved in planning, creating and improving one’s own writing).

This involves the learning and repeating of oral stories, building children’s confidence to develop them through telling and then extending that development into writing; later creating ‘new’ stories orally as a preparation and rehearsal for writing. The learning and development of stories through oral retelling builds up in children enormously valuable banks of language and narrative patterning that can be incorporated into later writing. It can also build towards a confidence to create ‘original’ stories (although even these often draw on or ‘magpie’ previously learned/read ideas) and to rehearse them orally. In this way, the development of storytelling is built through a sequence involving first imitation (the straight retelling of learned stories) then innovation (developing, extending and changing elements of a story) and finally invention (creating a ‘new’ story).

Talk games and activities can be used to:

Say a word e.g. storm, fire, summer. The children have one minute to write down as many words as possible that they associate with the word. Ask some to share then repeat the game and see if they can add more words. This game could be done with a picture or object as a stimulus too.

Invent creative ways to cross a river, e.g. make friends with a frost giant and ask it to breathe onto the river, freezing it so that you can walk across.

Split the class in two. One half makes a list of places, e.g. room, town, city, village, mountain, river, star, sun, kitchen, alleyway, box, etc. The other half has to make a list of nouns and abstract nouns, e.g. memories, love, doom, sparklers, curtains, sunsets, wisdom, jealousy, disasters, grass, stars, etc. Then put children into pairs and they match the words listed exactly in the order they wrote them down, e.g.

Drama activities can be used effectively across the curriculum to promote high-quality thinking, discussion and written outcomes. Here are some examples of strategies.

Working in small groups or a whole class, the children create a moment that shows the action in a narrative frozen in time, as if the pause button has been pressed. This allows them to think about what is going on for each of the characters in the frame, or to consider what is happening from different points of view. The moment itself may be the interesting thing, or they may be asked to think about what has just happened or is about to happen. Make sure children have sufficient background knowledge of the context for the freeze-frame to understand their own role in the action or to discuss it.

When the freeze-frame has been created, the teacher moves quietly and slowly between the characters in the scene. At the teacher’s given signal to an individual child, that child – in character – voices their thoughts aloud in a few words. This allows all the children to hear what some or all of the characters are thinking at that very moment. It gives clues about the role each child has chosen and can raise issues about different viewpoints. It also deepens children’s engagement with the learning context being established.

Similar to thought tapping, this approach allows the class to follow one character’s train of thought through the action for longer. For example, one or two children move through the freeze-frame in slow motion, speaking their thoughts aloud as they continue to reveal their feelings, viewpoints and/or motivation. Alternatively, other children track the freeze-frame players’ thinking by speaking their thoughts aloud for them.

Select one of the characters in the freeze-frame and ask the child to begin the action again, showing what happened next for that person, but moving slowly so that the rest of the class, still ‘frozen’, has time to think not only about what is happening but why. Another option is for the teacher or a child to narrate the slow-motion action that is taking place for one character.

These drama and talk activities support preparation and planning for writing by helping to establish the links between characters and their settings. They also help children to manage the interweaving of description (setting and minor characters), action (including background action) and dialogue (or ‘thoughts’). Children can use the drama as a source of ideas for writing.

The children hear a conversation that they would not usually have access to and can use this extra information to consider its impact on a narrative or a situation. For example, they have been using conscience alley to explore two different sides of an argument. The teacher introduces two or more characters who are in some way connected with whatever the situation is, and the class is able to listen to a conversation they have. For example, when the main character reaches the end of the conscience alley, the children all sit down and ‘accidentally overhear’ the conversation between two people walking along the road. An overheard conversation often needs to include specific information that impacts on the situation. The teacher can ensure that the right information is included, by taking part in the dialogue. Conversations can also be overheard to provide a range of different viewpoints about the same issue.

Activities that allow children to rehearse two different sides of an argument or explore different viewpoints are useful preparation for discursive writing and persuasion texts.

The class sits in a circle and the teacher takes on the role of one speaker in a conversation. The whole class takes on the role of a single, second speaker. The teacher begins the conversation, talking to the ‘other person’ (the class) and any child can speak to continue the dialogue. A common purpose is for the children to find out some information from the first speaker or for them to give advice. This sounds complicated but is a powerful teaching convention and most children quickly adopt the strategy to take turns at speaking. If more than one child speaks at once, the teacher decides how to answer one or both. Children usually manage the ‘corporate role’ well because they are focused on what the first character (the teacher) has to say and they want to find out more. Once children are familiar with this convention, the class can take on the more responsible role of the character with information to pass on.

A character is depicted and developed in a visual way using a large format note-making

Such drama or talk activities can support children in creating and developing characters when writing fiction. They demonstrate that characters are sometimes complex and have a history, a background, views and opinions, interests, hopes and fears. Activities such as ‘hot seating’ and ‘character on the wall’ allow children to ‘meet’ a character in role and to gather information about them in a drama context before writing. Children can use the information they collect as a resource to help them create a vivid and interesting character when they write.