Improving the quality of pupils’ talk and thinking during group work

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What challenges did the teachers face when promoting group talk?

The teachers felt the “key challenge” with group work was helping pupils develop the necessary “implicit skills”. They commented how reiterating the ground rules of group talk (involving each other, and asking for reasons and explanations) helped because “they’re not in the habit of asking questions or including everyone”.

The teachers felt that pupils’ oral skills were the hardest of all the literacy skills to develop because:

Speaking and listening is something that [pupils] are doing all the time, informally, and for very different contexts so … practising it as an academic skill is difficult because they have a different relationship with it already.

The teachers also recognised the complexity of their role. For example, they needed to:

set challenging tasks appropriate for collaborative problem solving in groups;
encourage pupils’ independence through being non-controlling – “it’s difficult to stand back and not be a teacher;
avoid distorting the natural flow of the talk – learning “to hover about a metre away”;
“be a bit invisible” because they observed how often the richest talk occurred in the teacher’s absence; and
“know when and how to intervene”, without making the pupils talk “to you, then you go away and they fall silent again”.

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Research Home Themes \| Find digests \| About the digests resources glossary researchers contact TRIPS Introduction How did the teachers structure and model effective group talk? How did the pupil’s group talk change? What did the pupils feel they gained from working in structured groups? What challenges did the teachers face when promoting group talk? How was the study designed? What are the implications of the study? Where can I find out more? Send us your feedback Collated digests To find out more about collated digests click here Get Word Reader Improving the quality of pupils’ talk and thinking during group work This digest found in English Speaking and Listening Send to a friend Word doc 60KB Printer friendly Collate for later What challenges did the teachers face when promoting group talk? The teachers felt the “key challenge” with group work was helping pupils develop the necessary “implicit skills”. They commented how reiterating the ground rules of group talk (involving each other, and asking for reasons and explanations) helped because “they’re not in the habit of asking questions or including everyone”. The teachers felt that pupils’ oral skills were the hardest of all the literacy skills to develop because: Speaking and listening is something that [pupils] are doing all the time, informally, and for very different contexts so … practising it as an academic skill is difficult because they have a different relationship with it already. The teachers also recognised the complexity of their role. For example, they needed to: set challenging tasks appropriate for collaborative problem solving in groups; encourage pupils’ independence through being non-controlling – “it’s difficult to stand back and not be a teacher; avoid distorting the natural flow of the talk – learning “to hover about a metre away”; “be a bit invisible” because they observed how often the richest talk occurred in the teacher’s absence; and “know when and how to intervene”, without making the pupils talk “to you, then you go away and they fall silent again”.