When delivering oracy INSET in schools, teachers frequently ask us how our strategies and ideas can be communicated with parents.
So for this week’s bulletin, we’ve put together Talk at Home – a set of 5 ways to get children talking more at the kitchen table.
We’ve kept them short, sharp and easy to try.
We’d recommend putting it into your school newsletter or on your school website.
Click below to get all 5, but you can read the first in this email.
Talk at Home Idea 1: Strategic Stupidity
Put your child in the position of being the sensible, knowledgeable one while you take on the role of being a complete idiot!
- Use a colander as a hat, and have them talk you out of it.
- Make a preposterous proposal, such as, “Schools should open at night instead of during the day” and have them prove you wrong.
- Ask them why you shouldn’t spend hours reading the Terms and Conditions of the video game they want to download.
By reversing the normal position of the adult being the one with the grown-up ideas, you inject a lot of humour and give your child some extra power behhind their talk.
For teachers – if you like this principle, take a look at the whole bulletin we wrote on Facilitator-in-Role from 2018.
What’s On in the Philosoverse?
Jason was at a primary school in Sussex on Monday, following up Tom’s recent online session for staff – a good way of splitting a day with us over a couple of days. He’s also gearing up for his next international trip – this time to Guangzhou, China to share oracy ideas for use in bilingual learning communities. He’s also found time to write what is probably the first sea shanty inspired by a philosophical paper, Clifford’s Ethics of Belief – you can hear a Suno arrangement of the tune here and here are the lyrics.
Tom’s next work is slightly closer to home – running training for RSE teachers in Essex, and then working with Trinity College Oxford for a day that combines storytelling and storywriting in the college’s “Magic Library”!