This week, an idea I developed last week on a visit to Belmont Prep School, Mill Hill, which I call “Ask the Audience”.
What it looks like
For any question where there could be multiple possible answers:
1. Get everyone out of their seat and challenge each pupil to ask the question to at least five others.
2. Then get them sat back down, turning to a partner to recount what they’ve heard others say.
3. Finally, let them express their answer – whether that’s contributing it in front of the whole class or writing it down.
Why it works
This activity combines several principles from our book Help Me Find My Voice.
First, getting them stood up and moving around replicates the playground, therefore helping children who are Playground Confident but Classroom Shy.
Second, it’s an example of Talk Three Times. We can be mistaken for thinking that it’s important to get through as many questions as possible in a lesson to stretch the pupils’ brains in many different ways. However, research by our friend and fellow P4C’er Joe Oyler and his colleagues proves that thinking becomes deeper when more time is spent on one particular question. In this instance, they’re exploring lots of multiple perspectives on the question, then recalling these with their partner, and then finally expressing them for themselves.
Thirdly, it provides plenty of opportunities for students to rehearse their thinking under the cover of paired talk the before the Exposure of talking in front of the class. Our strategies on exposurerelates to the social side of speaking fear (“how bad will this be if I get it wrong?”) This is particularly good if the question contains a lot of Stretch – what we see as the cognitive side of speaking fear (“how hard is this question?”). If students genuinely have nothing to say for themselves, get them to Speak without Thinking by allowing them to borrow ideas that they’ve heard from others. And their own thinking will hopefully become a lot more informed thanks to hearing multiple perspectives, in a “wisdom of the crowd” way.
When can I use this?
This activity is very good for those questions with no agreed right or wrong answer, such as a historical debate, or a question about a fictional character in English Literature, but it’s equally effective for challenges in those subjects where links to oracy may be less obvious:
- a maths puzzler where there are multiple ways to get the answerÂ
- planning a science experiment that could take many different forms
- peer-assessing each other’s art homework (if that’s still a thing? I used to dread it myself!)
- accurately translating a sentence from one foreign language to another
- deciding upon the tactics for a PE/sports gameÂ
You could also get the pupils acting as roving reporters with a notebook in their hand, scribing down what they hear. For a ready-made template of this, see our previous bulletin on Scribble Sheets.
It’s designed so that nobody feels they have an audience, as everybody is mixing and talking to everyone else, but for a bit more of an exposure challenge/theatre, you could combine it with a hot seating activity, a bit more akin to what you see on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire!
What have we been up to?
The first half of October has been almost as busy as September with school visits.
As well as running the oracy workshop day at Belmont Prep, I (Tom) returned to The Cottesloe School with our long-time colleague Charlie Sturgeon to run a Sixth-Form Communications Day. See us looking rather proud of Charlie’s notes for his “Story Exchange” listening game. Simpler than it looks, honest!
I was also delighted to begin a collaboration with Belmore School in Middlesex. Big thanks to the hugely inspirational Katriona and Caitlin for organising a day of oracy action planning and staff training.
Jason, Tom and Charlie were also at Colchester County High School for Girls to deliver an oracy day for Year 7. And Jason has been delivering workshops at a conference organised by the PTI in Harlow, returned to Stivichall School (headteacher Karen has been booking us for her schools since 2013!), and today he’s at Hatfield Heath School in Essex, delivering one of the final workshop days as part of our collaboration with Essex County Council. More about that project in a future bulletin, as we will outline the model to see if other trusts, networks, or local authorities want to reap similar benefits.
Our school visits calendar is fully booked for the rest of October but a few gaps remain in November and early December and we are taking bookings for Spring 2027. We have visits to suit all budgets, so get in touch about how we can work with your school.