8.5 Using classroom talk to stimulate students’ thinking  (Page 3/4)

In general any communication strategy will help students become more articulate if it both allows and invites further comment and elaboration on their ideas. Taken together, the invitations closely resemble a description of class discussion, though they can actually be used singly at any time during teaching. Consider these possible conversational moves:

• The teacher asks the student to explain his initial idea more completely.
• The teacher rephrases a comment made by a student.
• The teacher compares the student’s idea to another, related idea, and asks the student to comment.
• The teacher asks for evidence supporting the student’s idea.
• The teacher asks the student how confident he is in his idea.
• The teacher asks another student to comment on the first student’s idea.

Promoting academic risk-taking and problem-solving

In [link] we described major features of problem solving, as well as three techniques that assist in solving problems—problem analysis, working backwards from the beginning, and analogical thinking. While all of the techniques are helpful, they do not work if a student will not take the risk of attempting a solution to a problem in the first place. For various reasons students may sometimes avoid such risks, especially if he or she has sometimes failed at a task in the past, and is therefore concerned about negative evaluations again (Hope&Oliver, 2005).

What can a teacher say or do to counteract such hesitation? There are several strategies, all of which involve focusing attention on the process of doing an activity rather than on its outcome or evaluation.

Where possible, call attention to the intrinsic interest or satisfaction of an activity . Consider, for example, an elementary-level activity of writing a Japanese haiku— a poem with exactly seventeen syllables. This activity can be satisfying in itself, regardless of how it is evaluated. Casually reminding individuals of this fact can contribute to students’ sense of ease about writing the haiku and encourage them indirectly to do better work.

Minimize the importance of grades where possible. This strategy supports the one above; by giving students less to worry about, they become freer to experience the intrinsic satisfactions of an activity. In writing that haiku mentioned above, for example, you can try saying something like: “Don’t worry too much about your grade; just do the best you can and you will come out well enough in the end.”

Make sure students know that they have ample time to complete an activity. If students need to rush—or merely just thinks they do—then they are more likely to choose the safest, most familiar responses possible. In writing an amusing story from their early childhood, for example, middle years students may need time to consider and choose among story possibilities. Then they may need additional time to experiment with ways of expressing the story in writing. In this case, to make sure students know that they have such time, try saying something like: “Writing a good story will take time, and you may have to return to it repeatedly. So we will start working on it today, but do not expect to finish today. We’ll be coming back to it several times in the next couple of weeks.”