Types of Teacher Talk

Watch the video which introduces this topic before completing the task below.

The Task
Use an audio recording device, such as a smartphone, to record your lesson. The audio quality doesnt have to be very high but good enough so you can clearly hear what you say.

After the lesson, think about a short 3 or 4 minute part of the lesson where you feel that you may have talked a lot. Did you use your teacher talk effectively? Listen to the recording at that point of the lesson. Whilst listening, make notes. At 20 second intervals, identify your teacher talk at that point of the classroom discussion as either

Useful and effective so it is relevant to learners and appropriately graded OK but some aspects of it feel unsuitable and could be improved Problematic as there were either too many or too few words, and it was too complex and too fast for learners to understand

After listening to this lesson clip, look back over your notes. Are there any conclusions you can draw from this short study? What do you need to work on to improve your teacher talk?

Having identified these issues, make an action plan for your next lesson by completing these sentences: In my next lessons I will try to (say what you are going to do) I will do this by (say how you will do it) I will be able to decide if I have succeeded because (say what evidence will show if it worked)

Using this process should help to clarify the issues which may be present in your teacher talk. It may be that these are problems of which you were unaware till listening to a recording of your lesson in this way.