Perhaps unsurprisingly, quality of talk is more important than quantity in a classroom and the EEF suggest we should focus our attention in two areas: structure of talk, and variety of talk. One effective method for structuring students’ talk is the ‘Accountable Talk’ model. The model has three strands.
Knowledge – Talk allows us to focus on encouraging students to be accurate and/or true. This prompts explicit subject knowledge development and permits the addressing of misconceptions.
To do this effectively we can -
•Model how to form effective arguments in a given discipline
•Show how to look for appropriate resources to validate arguments
•Provide authentic tasks with knowledge rich resources
Reasoning – Talk allows us to push students to justify claims and rationalise opinions. Talking is an essential part of thinking, and we can use this drive towards reasoning to familiarise students with how to reason in different subjects. Reasoning is often subject specific. In a history lesson we might encourage a student to draw on quotes from other historians or sources, in RE we might want personal or ethical reasoning and in Maths we might expect quantitative reasoning. Some students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, may not pick up these subtilties implicitly and so teaching them explicitly is crucial.
