1) Are the students (esp LP) able to ‘state out/describe’ the different movement verbs? I struggled to describe them myself when I tried. Haha.

2) How many instances of using movement verbs do they encounter in their Composition writing? Do they know how to write a sentence/paragraph so that they can use the words learnt to describe the movement?

3) I am curious with one of the questions Salma asked too – One of the evidence of learning was to see these words being used in the SA2 compos. What was observed? Was the samples representative of the whole cohort? What kind of movement verbs did they use?

4) In the video from Kenneth, we see students who are shy and refuse to catwalk/participate, especially for P5s. How do you counter that? Did they have the time to practice?

Sharing of experience:
-  I have tried an activity in class to get children to act out (or show me) what some saying verbs – whisper, stammer, question, ask, shout, sob, reply, yell, scream etc… mean, so I think letting the children act out the actions of movement verbs is ideal.

- For the P3s, the saying verbs were printed out in their WoW booklet, and they could refer and study it for their composition writing. To consider putting the movement verbs into Wow?

- Students will google definition and prepare to role-play à What could be better was for the children to view videos so that it is clearer for them to ‘see’ the actions. They can even share using ITT a GIF/picture of the movement verbs they are assigned.
- Sequencing the Hangman activity before the Matching activity? Personally, I felt that the Hangman (given a hardcopy or split screen side by side) sparked me to challenge myself to ‘guess’ which was the answer and then ‘learn’ the definition.

- Using audio response in SLS to explain a given movement verb during the students can show whether students have met the success criteria. That of course, requires that teachers listen to their audios – takes time.

- Getting the children to write out short paragraphs of difference scenes (eg, when they are being followed, being chased, sneaking home in the middle of the night/out of the classroom etc, so that they can have more experience to ‘play’ the scene in their heads.

1) How to ensure full class/group participation? The LP students will often tend to drift off or keep quiet as they are less confident, or do not have anything to say. Have you all encountered this in your lesson? How did you solve this?

2) Possibility of using ‘ARE’ into this discussion too so that the ‘content’ will be more beefed up? How will it be like?

3) The group recording – was it done for all groups? What are the observations obtained from the recordings? Any transcript of what was discussed?

4) How did the teacher monitor the discussion when this was done?

5) Any samples of written work from the LP/MP/HP for their worksheets? Did the sentence starters help with their Oral results?

1) I like the 2 videos on the dos and donts of Group Discussion! Very good examples to show our children (who don’t know how to discuss in a group)!

2) Your Sharing is titled ‘Talk Moves’ but I don’t really see much ‘moving’. Instead, it’s more on the usage of sentence starters. Will it be possible to introduce ‘Talk Moves’ to the children in P2s for class/group discussion? These ‘Talk Moves’ ensures that everyone is listening and participating. (See picture attached.)

3) As your lesson was more on oracy/group discussion, I did not see the need to differentiate the worksheets for HP/MP/LP in terms of sentence starters, and the MP/HP needing to write down their own, and thus take more time. Perhaps, we can see a greater and better variety of responses coming from the MP/HP if the cognitive load was taken off them for this and they just had to verbally share what comes to their mind.

4) Any way to record down the group discussion using ipads for each group? And as they are wearing masks, how to ensure better clarity of the recordings? After the recordings the children can listen to themselves and write down what they have shared on hardcopy.

I love it for three reasons:

1- I was not familiar with this animal-Platypus but now I know more about it. 

2- The unique feature of Platypus reminded me of juxtaposition in art (creative thinking technique), how a few distinctly different objects/things are being placed together, morphing of objects.

3-The flow of the lessons are clean, friendly and especially the ideas for investigation sections are great! 

-It would be fun if students can make their own comparison between the bird to the mystery animal.

4- For our conclusion, the students can add on by drawing their own juxtaposition of an animal e.g. "Platypus & Friends"

Thank you Fransa :)

 

Routines to help students get used to Talk Moves

To hang up posters of Talk Moves in class -> Students will naturally look at the posters during discussions and attempt to use them. 

 

Other roles specifically for the Talk Moves lesson? 

There are only 3 students in each group. 

WT shared the use of background music in order to allow students to have a benchmark of what the discussion noise level should be like. 

 

How to beef up the content of the discussion?

LP students often give simple responses. Same problem faced my music. Teacher to demonstrate how to answer the questions with elaboration. To provide a Word Wall to help students gain the required content/vocabulary knowledge when they respond to the questions. 

 

How to get the LP to talk?

When class does group discussions, HP will be the scribe, but the LP students are the ones who are expected to talk more. By getting them to scribe, HP students will be deterred from dominating the discussions. In this way, LP students will be able to share their ideas without having to feel pressured by the need to write. 

 

Culture of respect and care?

How do we as teachers step in to teach (some of the) HP kids to be patient – to wait for the LP kids to gather thoughts and to speak up. There is the need for teachers to guide the LP kids explicitly. Teachers need to inculcate the culture of care and respect. Teachers to model the need to provide LP kids with more wait time.

 

Not just LP students not talking; HP and MP students are also reluctant to talk. They are more at ease with writing. They felt awkward during the discussion, and not confident of speaking and expressing themselves. 

 

Teacher to help students to understand the question by breaking down the questions and providing them with various examples/ scenarios. Need to support the kids by reducing cognitive load by reducing the need to think about the contents/ contextual understanding.

 

Picture prompts were provided in the PLT package. However, more help can be given, for example, through the use of a video to help students generate ideas. 

 

Use of hand signals/gestures to help internalize Talk Moves. 

Using hand signals to represent the respective main Talk Moves. This can be incorporated into daily class discussions/ comprehension. Teacher will observe the students’ signals. When teacher sees someone disagreeing, teacher will then clarify with the student(s). Need these to become a daily routine in order for students to internalize.

Actions tried before by P5(LP) teacher. She found it useful especially for the LP kids. It allows them to express themselves. 

 

Strategies or Tools that can be used? 

How more DI can be done? Is it applicable in Art/PE? What are the topics that this can be applied to? 

 

For PE – talk moves can be used to allow teacher to see if students understand the teacher. Students then buzz about what they have learnt/understood. With the hand signals, teacher will be able to assess who does not understand and address the misconceptions immediately. 

 

Will Fastkit help? 

Only limited to 3 colours and closed responses. Does not seek deeper responses from students.

There is then the need to scaffold students to internalize which colour stands for which Talk Moves. 

 

Some students may also just copy their classmates’ responses.