Tagged: Scaffolding
Blog of the week | 31st January 2016
This weeks #BOTW comes from Matt Davies a secondary MFL teacher who describes how he is setting the bar high for all students and supporting them through scaffolding. Here’s a snippet from Matts post…
But challenge is difficult. I am the first to admit that I get things wrong, gauging work either too hard or easy at times. But I would like to think I am flexible and can adjust in these circumstances. The key thing though is that the bar is high always regardless of the students starting point. As Andy Tharby and Shaun Allison discuss in ‘Making every lesson count’, to not set the bar high is to disadvantage students who might be deemed less able (for example) and it is therefore about how we scaffold tasks and make them more accessible.
Read the full post here: https://mrdavismfl.wordpress.com/2015/12/21/challenge-and-scaffolding/
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‘Quick wins’ #9 – Developing oracy: Getting students to respond in full sentences.
Why? Students, due to apathy or due to the state school pandemic of not wanting to sound clever, often avoid giving a thorough explanation to reveal the depth of their learning; rather, given the chance, they will utter a barely audible ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and quickly retreat back into their protective shells. Sound familiar?
Possible solution. To combat this – a simple solution: have high expectations of students’ oracy so that they respond in full sentences.
a) To achieve this, get students to rephrase your question as part of their answer.
For example: Why does Dickens open his novel, Bleak House, with pathetic fallacy?
Student answer: Dickens opens his novel, Bleak House, with pathetic fallacy because…
b) When posing an open-ended question, provide an oral scaffold to extend students’ thinking.
Resources.
An example slide scaffolding oracy.
Example oracy scaffold.
Outcome. Having high expectations around students’ oracy has resulted in students providing in-depth feedback as opposed to giving one word answers. In English, levels can also be attached to the quality of student responses: level 5 is linked with being able to explain your ideas; level 6 requires students to explore ideas, thereby showing that information can be interpreted in different ways. As a result, students have evolved to see the value and importance of talk in a lesson – no longer is it an opportunity to doze off or give a mere one word answer, which had previously given them the impression that they were making a meaningful contribution to the lesson – but, by giving extended answers, students now realise that this is an integral part to the lesson. It has also helped to bridge the gap between the talking and writing stage of the lesson. Students recognise that if they can articulate their ideas verbally, this also helps them to translate their ideas to the page.
Post submitted by:
Steve Gill
English Teacher
#neverstoplearning
Feedback. Please let us know how ‘Developing oracy: Getting students to respond in full sentences’ worked for you. Leave a comment on this post or tweet us at @nslhub.
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