Oracy Idea: Small Talk Before Big Talk

When did you last have a meeting where the very first thing you spoke about was the subject of the meeting? Unless you are getting fired or firing someone, it almost never happens. A meeting without preliminary small talk lacks the human touch.

Yet when we get children to work in groups, we don’t usually leave any space for that small talk to take place. We assume that they are primed and ready to talk about whatever we want them to talk about.

But often, the small talk either intrudes anyway, or doesn’t happen and therefore the “Big Talk” is from a cold start and feels stilted.

Small questions before big questions

A good rule to follow when you want effective dialogue in the classroom is to get the children talking about a less important question before you get them talking about the main topic. Have them talk about nothing before talking about something!

It relaxes them, makes sure everyone is engaged, defines groups, makes sure they can hear each other, and breaks the ice for the serious talk that follows as you build Stretch gradually.

Small groups before big groups

For some children, the larger a group the more intimidating it is to speak. So make sure everyone has talked to someone, before someone talks to everyone. “Snowballing” the same activity with progressively larger groups that merge together, building towards a whole class discussion, is very effective. It raises the stakes gradually, so that there is no “panic point” at which a shy child suddenly becomes self-conscious.

A warm-up game example is Ping-Pong Proverbs*. Explain what a proverb is, and then model going back and forth with a partner one word at a time, creating new piece of wise (or more usually, ridiculous!) advice. It helps to start with “always” or “never”. Once they’ve had a go in pairs, snowball into fours, eights… perhaps the whole class? This increases Exposure gradually but in a way where the Stretch is not too great.

Sometimes, start small and stay small!

It’s been a striking feature of our online debating classes that the best debates are often those about the lightest subjects, frivolous motions such as, “This house believes humans would be better designed with tails.” 

If you simply want to practise a speaking skill and do not have to cover any specific content, it can be good to stick with low-stakes, light questions. And as we’ll see, there are plenty of reasons for remaining in pairs and small groups and eschewing whole class discussion.

Activity: Starting positions

Starting positions is our go-to way of efficiently running a discussion session. It incorporates all of the principles we’ve written about so far and the next three unpacks why it works so well. First, here’s how it works.

Physical Set-up

If there’s enough pace:

1. Stand in a circle round me.
2. Pair up.
3. One person in each pair raise a hand.
4. Hands up people take one step towards me.
5. Turn and face your partner.

That gives you a donut with two circles: of “insiders”, and “outsiders”.

Alternatively, you can have two lines facing each other (some early years classrooms use tape marks on the floor to speed this up). Or if you want to minimise the set-up to do this in the middle of a lesson in a crowded classroom, simply “Stand up, pair up, one in each pair hands up.”

However you’ve set it up, you can now give an instruction for a warm-up question to discuss in pairs. You can just give a question or (see “Sides Then Selves”) assign sides for arguing. Then get pairs to pair up and discuss a bigger question in 4s, and finally your “main course” question in groups of 8. You might want to use a object to serve as a speakers’ conch as the groups grow. Here are some examples.

Animal rights

2s – Which is smarter, a dog or a fox? (Insiders dog; outsiders fox)

4s – All farmed animals should be free range (Insiders no; outsiders yes.)

8s – No animal should be farmed for its meat. (Insiders agree; outsiders disagree)

Robots

2s – Could a robot replace a pet? (Insiders yes; outsiders no)

4s – Could a robot replace a teacher? (Insiders no; outsiders yes.)

8s – Could a robot replace a friend? (Insiders no; outsiders yes)

Working scientifically

2s – Would you rather study outer space, or the darkest depths of the sea? (Insiders space; outsiders sea)

4s – If aliens did science at school, would the answers be the same as ours? (Insiders yes; outsiders no)

8s – Can everything be explained by science? (insiders no; outsiders yes)

Extending the talk

You can rotate your outside people so as to form new groups of 8, and ask them to continue their discussion in a new 8, but this time saying what they really think (Sides then Selves).  Then carry the question through to a whole class discussion (Talk Three Times).