Children better communicators

How can we make our children better communicators? A Think Piece written by The Learning Reimaged JPD Group. Monique Jacobs, Nicky Cole, Patricia Kavanagh, Valerie Branagan, Dan Owers, Natasha Nair, Tara Seton, Gareth Morris and Khalida WhahidIntroductionIn Autumn term The Learning Reimagined JPD group met to consider ways to ensure our chil-dren left school with confidence and the necessary skills to go and achieve in the wider world.BackgroundWe read a range of chapters from ‘Why do I need a Teacher when I’ve got Google’ (Ian Gil-bert) and ’Taking a slice of the Oral Language Pie’ (Sue McCandlish) as well as revisitingsome of Sugatra Mitra’s Ted Talks. The questions posed from Gilbert’s chapters (particularly’The Future’s Coming’ and ’The Great Educational Lie’) led to heated discussion. With hugelyexpanding labour markets in China (7 million graduates in 2012) and India and a shrinkingworld due to technology, UK young people have to be highly competitive and this doesn’t justbeen getting good grades. They must be creative, risk-taking and have that extra zip in theirstride. As Gilbert quotes from Tom Peters, ‘To do well at school means you play by the rules.To succeed in business you need to break the rules.’Also, due to modern working practices being far more collaborative, successful employees areoften those who have a high EQ (emotional quotient). ‘In a nutshell, your ‘softer skills’ such asdealing with yourself and others at an emotional level are far more valid in today’s world thanIQ alone.’ (Your EQ will take you further than your IQ, Gilbert.)So, what is lacking from our Netley students? How can we make them positive, brave,determined, self-believing, creative and bubbling with sheer energy (Lewis 1994)? How canwe ensure we’re not educating the next generation of unemployed accountants?After much discussion we kept coming back to oracy and communication skills. We felt that bysignificantly improving these skills (and self-esteem) our children would be on a far better foot-ing to leave Netley, enter the wider world and dream and achieve big. Our research questionwas born ‘How can we make our children better communicators?’ and we began to undertakea number of trials and research projects within classes and across the school. This Thinkpiece explores some of those trials and considers Next Steps.

‘Just a minute’ Netley Style Philosophy for Children (P4C)We thought an interesting and enthusing Philosophy for Children offers a way to open upmethod to exploit children’s engagement children’s learning through enquiry and thein more purposeful talk was to establish exploration of ideas. They realise that they don’ta ‘Just a minute’ programme so we always have to be right, but they gain thetrialled this in Year 5. The outcome was confidence to ask questions and learn throughto promote more thoughtful and clarified discussion. (http:/www.philosophy4children.co.uk)speech in a class who rolled over wordswithout thought for articulation or We have introduced weekly 3o minutes P4Caudience enjoyment. Children were told sessions in Year 3 to improve the children’sthis was their opportunity to talk about a discussion skills. The class was shown a range ofsubject which they really liked. We open ended and closed questions and thediscussed the pitfalls of something too children were asked to decide which type ofwide or too specific. We rehearsed with questions would illicit the best discussions. Wetwo enthusiastic children who had agreed that open ended questions, with nochosen a wide and a specific area and definitive answer, would generate the mostthey discovered that neither would be interesting discussions.ideal for the game. Next we explainedthe terms hesitation, deviation and Each session begins by adding a differentrepetition. Children practised their stimulus. The stimulus could be an image, anspeeches and in subsequent sessions object, a statement, a book, or anything thatteams played against each other with captures imagination. The children are asked toone winner for each game. We arranged generate as many discussion questions as theya ‘knockout’ competition approach so can and then they vote on which one they wouldincreasing motivation. most like to discuss.Early on we found that we had to reduce We encourage the children to show activethe time to 30 seconds as they didn’t listening by looking at the person who is speaking,have the stamina to use a full minute. turning their body when necessary; and to useSurprises were that children really modelled sentence stems to explain whether theyenjoyed it, got to grips with the agree or disagree with the person’s comment thatterminology, quiet children found their they are responding to. To motive the children wevoice and new ‘stars’ were discovered. use a tally chart to record when children areImportantly they now know what we demonstrating these skills.mean by asking them to clarify what theymean and to be concise. The next steps The sessions have been a huge success. Thefor these children are to increase the children are now thinking in a much deeper andtime to 60 seconds. more creative way. The children’s confidence in

Year 4 Class Café ProjectWe trialled an entrepreneurial project which was to open a class café as a vehicle to improve confidence andoracy skills. Volunteers from Lloyds Bank introduced the idea, as part of Young Enterprise. This sparkedexcitement and children learnt about the different roles needed. Within maths, children learnt about profit,budgeting and working with money in a real life context.When the café first opened and parents and staff were invited, it was a success in terms of the maths learn-ing. However, it became evident that the children did not have the necessary communication skills to servethe customers. Whilst we had role-played serving the customer before our first opening, the reality of usingmore formal language in front of a new audience had been hugely underestimated. We realised it was es-sential that the children had as many opportunities as possible to use more formal language with a range ofaudiences to build up their confidence and their range of language skills.Our next step was to over practice the language. Much of the vocabulary needed for the cafe was new. Ithad to be embedded so when children were faced with a new audience, they did not have to formu-late the sentences from scratch. We collated a bank of key words and phrases that we practiced role play-ing and performing in front of each other. The children loved performing and the vocabulary became morenatural to them.We wanted to provide a different practice audience so we invited people from a business (ZS Associates) torun a workshop about how to promote our cafe. This worked well in two ways. It gave the children the oppor-tunity to practice their role plays on complete strangers, but in the safe and comfortable environment of theirown classroom. It also led to the idea that we should survey people in our local community to find out whatthey wanted from the cafe. The children created and conducted the survey so giving them the opportunity topractice approaching people, using formal language skills and interacting with a new audience. At the nexttwo cafes, children were worked with in slightly different ways to ensure that their oracy skills were beingextended. Some children needed confidence and a little guidance when approaching customers was suffi-cient however with those who needed more help with the language skills practiced the set phrases beforethey approached a customer.Following on from the cafe we recently went out into our local area to highlight the importance of voting.Again this was a new audience but also a new topic for the children to talk about; would they be able totransfer the oracy skills that they learnt from the cafe to this new setting? We were extremely impressed thatthe majority of children were able to transfer these skills. They approached with confidence and could usemore formal language eloquently and naturally.

Show and Tell Project PresentationsChildren love to talk about things that are special To improve the children’s presenting skills we intro-to them, especially toys, so we trialled the traditional‘Show and Tell’ in Year 1. It was introduced by the duced ‘Homework Project Presentations’ in Year 2. Eachteacher modelling a ‘Show and Tell’ using a specialobject she had brought from home and then encour- half term children have a topic to research and make a pro-aging the children to ask questions. The childrenwere then shown images of possible things they ject about. Children were chosen to present their project tocould bring in, including photographs, books andclothing. The sessions take place weekly with two the class. We realised it had dual purpose; children workedchildren having a minute to talk to the class abouttheir special thing. The class then ask questions us- harder on their projects knowing they had to show them toing a question flower prompt (different questionwords in each petal). A letter is given to the chil- the class and it gave them the opportunity to speak in frontdren's parents a couple of days before the sessionas a reminder of what the children can bring in. We of the whole class and gain confidence.used a tick check list to monitor the class's participa-tion (asking questions) during the session. Over time While children presented their project we encouraged themthis showed a gradual increase in all children’s to make eye contact and project their voices. Good ques-participation. tioning came from the audience after each child’s presenta- tion. It also had a positive impact on future homework asThe children love the sessions and they are becom- children gave each other ideas and it raised expectations. Iting more confident when speaking to the class and gave children the chance to 'show off' good projects theyalso more active listeners. We would like to continue had worked hard on.to use these sessions in future with Year 1. Next Steps We want to continue to improve children’s commu- nication skills by embedding some of these projects into the school’s Curriculum. We think it should remain a priority in the school.  Introduce P4C from Years 1-6.  Have an enterprise project each year in Year 4 which will include some element of communicating with the public.  Continue to find opportunities in the Curriculum and in the school day where children can present to their class, oth- er classes and the school e.g. through homework projects presentations, Dragon Den type projects.  Embed debating across the Curriculum. Begin the After School Club ‘Debate Mate’ to train up expert debaters.  Continue Show and Tell in Y1, consider introducing in Reception.