It makes sense that to support quality partner talk there needs to be something to talk about. In their analysis of forms of teacher-student dialogue that are most productive for learning, one finding by Hennessey, Calcagni, Leung and Mercer was that high achieving dialogue lessons usually revolved around an object making explicit the thinking and co-construction of knowledge.” (2023, p.22) They referred to this as an “artefact for co-building knowledge. “ (Hennessey et al, 2023, p.18)
The artefacts mentioned by Hennessey et al. (2023) were those that required more than one person to write, draw and/or fill in information and allowed students to compare and contrast ideas more effectively. Students were able to refer to these objects in their dialogue and were able to add to them throughout the learning. Examples could include
a shared number line in mathematics,
a pile of prompts to rank, or student generated ideas to rank (google diamond ranking strategy or diamond 9) which can be revisited throughout the learning sequence,
hexagonal tiles pre-made or made by students to join to show connections (google hexagonal thinking or see one of our favourite blogs here Cult of Pedagogy https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/hexagonal-thinking/),
partially completed diagrams, or
a blank graphic organiser like a fishbone or Venn Diagram.
Obviously the artefact is an element of learning design that supports quality talk and will not magically improve learning on its own. And remember, the artefact should require more than one person to complete.
What artefacts to support quality talk do you currently use?
Idea 1: Ranking
Ranking based on importance, relevance or preference is a method to co-build knowledge. The objects or items being ranked can be physical, written or drawn on cards by students, created by teachers, or created by the class. Imagine ending a lesson with each student adding three or four key ideas from the lesson to individual pieces of paper, and then dividing them between the learning partners the next day as a ranking exercise with the prompt, ‘Rank your cards from the most important key ideas from yesterday's lesson to the least important? What makes you say that?’.
Figure 1 shows hexagons used for ranking. Students were given the prompt, “Which activities are most likely to increase your heart rate?” and added their ideas to 4 hexagons. With a partner they had to negotiate and rank from most to least likely to increase your heart rate.
Figure 1
The bonus of this ranking is that as the teacher you can see individual understanding from previous work and can listen in on their thinking and reasoning. Obviously the Ranking task on its own is not enough. Students would also need to be taught quality partner talk. (see Micro Move #1)
Idea 2: Making Connections
Hexagons are a brilliant shape for joining pieces to show connections. (Hot tip, you can buy pre-cut hexagons as templates for quilting, hexagon cutters from scrapbooking sites or have students cut their own.)
Figure 2 below shows the same hexagons used in Figure 1 to show connections between the ideas. You can see how the students have labelled their groupings. At key times throughout a lesson students revisit the connections and move or add hexagons.
Figure 2
You can use different coloured markers to show additions to the thinking. This can help students see the changes to their thinking throughout the lesson and reflect on progress they have made. Try the prompt, ‘Since the start of this lesson new understandings I have about … are…’.
Another idea!
In Figure 3 individual students sorted the hexagons. The different colours show changes and additions to individual student thinking as a result of talking with partners.
Figure 3
References
Sara Hennessy, Elisa Calcagni, Alvin Leung & Neil Mercer (2023) An analysis of the forms of teacher-student dialogue that are most productive for learning, Language and Education, 37:2, 186-211, DOI: 10.1080/09500782.2021.1956943
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