PIP Report

Inquiry Question

To what extent does the promotion of student talk enhance learning in ELA? And/or How

can I develop my teaching practice to promote student talk in the subject of English

Language Arts to enhance learning?

When considering ideas for my professional inquiry project, I thought about questions

within my areas of involvement at D.A. Ferguson Middle School. In this school, I taught

mainly English Language Arts as well as an exploratory Speech and Debate course. The idea

for my project arose after I observed how students lacked engagement in ELA, compared to

my exploratory. I considered that it may be because students have signed up for a course that

is of particular interest to them. But I also considered my own teaching approaches and its

influence on student engagement. This has become the focus of my project. When I was

given Speech and Debate, I was a bit apprehensive in teaching it, as I was still gaining

confidence in public speaking myself and felt unqualified to teach in that area. Pushing my

own anxieties aside, I worked to create a Speech and Debate curriculum from scratch,

drawing from resources such as Alberta Speech and Debate Association and 4-H Canada. I

was pleasantly surprised to discover that I really enjoyed teaching this course and saw it as an

opportunity to learn alongside students. I believe a large part of this was that it was not rooted

in an assigned curriculum and was instead, one that I had created and have linked back to

different curriculums. In teaching it, I felt a lot less pressure about teaching content and I was

more present and focused on student learning.

My approach to this exploratory course was different from my approach to ELA.

Since I was still learning myself, the course involved less direct teaching and more ‘student

doing’. My lessons in Speech and Debate were more centred around questioning and active

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learning strategies. Because of this, I saw that students were able to take a more active role in

their learning and were engaged in the learning process. I saw students gain more confidence

in speaking as they progressed through the course and they seemed more willing to express

their ideas and explore different areas of thought, especially as we got into debates.

In seeing this, I considered how I could get students in my English Language Arts to take a

more active role in their learning. At the start of my PSII, I was overly focused on the content

I was presenting in ELA, and on making sure I was saying the ‘right’ things. In doing this, I

was taking away from meaningful student learning. I felt a decline in student engagement and

struggled more with classroom management. Upon realising this, I began to change my

teaching approach so that it focused more on questioning and class discussion and less on

direct instruction. I wanted to step away from information telling and worksheets, and step

closer to experimental learning. I wanted to create a more student-centred classroom in ELA,

and what better way than increasing opportunities for student talk.

When I was connecting my Speech and Debate curriculum back to the assigned

Alberta curriculum, I was surprised to see how many English Language Arts outcomes

involved oral speaking. I have thought about the English Language Arts courses from my

own school experience and the ones I have observed and considered how these particular

outcomes and rich opportunities for learning might often be relatively neglected compared to

other streams. The six language arts of reading, writing, listening, viewing, representing, and

speaking, are all closely related and interrelated and all are mutually supportive. In ELA,

students are taught to read and are taught how to write. It is important that we as teachers

make the space for student speech and weave it throughout, as oral language is the foundation

of literacy. Talking, I know, is fundamentally connected to thinking, exploring, and creating

meaning. It brings our thoughts to conscious awareness and enables us to reflect on and

analyze them. Classroom discussion is important, as engaging with others helps students

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make sense of new information. While they may sometimes construct meaning alone, they

more often do so through collaboration. Students benefit from having many opportunities to

rehearse their ideas orally. So, the classroom should be an inviting setting to promote student

talk. This was my motivation for this project, and I was interested in seeing how it would

promote learning and increase the likelihood of students engaging with content and ideas.

At the start of my teaching, I was hesitant to give students the ground or space for

speaking because I was worried about where my lesson would go and if students would take

anything away from these discussions. However, I have found that this is where the most

learning happens. In trusting my students more, I have allowed them to take a more active

role in their own learning and in discussing topics that are of interest to them. In each of my

lessons, I began to incorporate more opportunities for discussion, whether that be in small or

large groups and framed these through prompting questions. For the purpose of creating more

meaningful discussion, I moved away from simple, yes or no questions, and instead, practised

using a combination of closed and open questioning to help frame the discussions. I found

that closed questions, or those that prompt simple responses, were useful for checking

students' comprehension and understanding and helped in moving the lesson forward.

However, using more open-ended questioning allowed students the opportunities to expand

on their ideas and give reasoning and detail to their responses.

By incorporating more open-ended questioning in my lesson plans, I found that I was

enriching the learning experience of my students a lot more. In doing so, I pushed students to

engage in a deeper level of thinking that would get them reflecting, providing opinions, and

taking control of the conversation being had. I was able to cut down the amount of ‘teacher

talk’ dominating the discussion and function as the discussion facilitator in many of my

classes. Rather than giving students the answers or giving the content, as I have previously

done, I have tried to lead students in the direction of discovering on their own. Through

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practice, I have learned how to gauge the discussion through follow up questioning so that

students are able to get to the meanings that I want them to discover. I have found that in my

attempts to engage students with deeper level thinking, more enriching and thought

provoking conversations have emerged. I felt that this has helped to engage learners as it has

created a classroom environment where students are encouraged to make meaningful

connections by thinking critically and reflecting on their experiences. In framing discussions

through open-ended questions, students learned that there is no perceived ‘right’ or ‘wrong’

answer, and therefore they seem more apt to engage, knowing they will not ‘embarrass’

themselves in getting a wrong answer. I have found that many more hands go up in our class

discussion when I am eliciting responses that detail ‘how’ and ‘why’, opposed to answers that

detail ‘what’.

One challenge for me in facilitating class discussions was in coming up with effective

questioning that opens conversations and inspires deeper intellectual thought, however this I

believe is a practice that can be improved upon with experience. Another challenge that arose

when it came to full class discussions was in having every student participate in the

conversation. One strategy I thought of was having students create their own discussion

questions. After reading a chapter in our novel study, I had students formulate their own

questions that they would like to discuss in relation to the chapter that we would take up the

following day. After modelling how to come up with discussion questions to students, they

wrote their own down in the form of an exit slip. The next day, I used the questions that they

had created to formulate the discussion based on the reading. I saw that students who were

typically reluctant to participate in class discussions, were more willing to contribute to the

discussion they have helped to create. In doing this, I saw that students were more engaged as

they were exploring ideas and understandings that hold relevance to them. One thing I have

learned about class discussion is that it is a skill students have to build upon, since they are

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newcomers to academic discourse. I found students do better with short discussions that are

focused and specific to start off with. Much like I did in my speech and debate curriculum, I

had to ease students slowly into class discourse. I tried to build up confidence early on in

smaller group discussions such as think-pair-shares, so they could feel increasingly

comfortable in expressing and sharing their ideas. In my ELA class, the majority of students

seemed to enjoy sharing their ideas and seemed genuinely eager to take up opportunities to

partake in discussion. Students have impressed me with their diverse insights and often

express alternative ideas that I have not considered myself. This has created an environment

where we are engaging in the learning process together.

In my English Language Arts class, I thought about more ways that I would get

students to collaborate and extend learning through interaction with others. Along with large

group discussions, I have also tried to engage students with smaller group discussions to

enhance learning. Small group discussion is a student-centred methodology that allows

students to actively involve and be partners in the teaching learning process. I would often

have students turn to their table groups and discuss concepts to gain new meanings and

understandings. As a lead up to our novel study for example, I had each individual student

come up with their definition for community and relate it to their group. Together, students

would combine ideas and use consensus to form their best definition for ‘community’. Each

table group then shared their groups’ definition. As a class, students came up with some very

diverse meanings for the term. This made for a rich conversation about what makes a

‘community' and brought up various themes that would later be discussed in the novel study.

Students also developed their ability to build consensus in a group and cooperated

within groups in their utopia project. This project was also in the lead up to their novel study

on The Giver where pairs worked together to create their own ideal societies and created a

visual and written response. In this project, students would have to communicate and

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negotiate to come to agreements with their partner in order to effectively complete the task.

Students had to first identify problems in the world and had to work together to correct them.

Students had to come to a mutual agreement before adding things on their project. During our

Remembrance Day mini unit, I had my students bring first hand experience to life using a

reader's theatre activity. I selected first hand accounts through diaries and added them to slips

for students to take turns reading aloud. Each represented different aspects of conflict (i.e.,

love, loss), roles (soldier, spouse), or times (beginning, middle, end) of war. I have not done a

reader’s theatre before, and this activity was an effective way to help students engage with

primary text. Through this, students processed dilemmas experienced by individuals in a text.

When asking them how they felt after this activity, students expressed that it “felt more real”

in hearing real accounts being read in different voices. I also did this activity with the idea

that it would help in developing oral reading fluency.

Another reader’s theatre I did with students got them reenacting a scene in The Giver.

In this activity, students were given a script for the scene with the apple. In groups, they were

to record themselves reading and acting out the scene from the novel while also incorporating

a prediction. Students were to first discuss in their groups and come up with a theory as a

group to how the apple in the story changed. They had to try and come up with ways to

incorporate their prediction into their scenes. I liked this activity and students showed a lot of

excitement in it. Most of the groups were efficient and engaged in the task. They were able to

practise their oral reading skills in a low pressure setting and talk with groups to make

predictions. One challenge that arose in this activity was that not all students used their time

effectively to complete the task, so the intended outcome of prediction making was not

achieved. More firmer expectations would have helped with this as well as more

consideration in group pairings.

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 One thing I inquired about in my practicum was how I could introduce the skills of

debate to students in core curriculum, specifically in ELA. In teaching an exploratory course

on debate, I found it to be a form of oral communication that is a powerful tool for

discussion. It got students comparing ideas, encouraging critical thinking, oral fluency and

research. I discovered debate to be an inherently cross-disciplinary activity that employs the

literacies of reading, writing, speaking, and listening through a high level of critical thinking.

Therefore, it was a classroom tool that could easily be transferred into my English Language

Arts class. By having my ELA students engage with debate, my goal was to have them

develop oral literacy as well as have practice in argumentation Debate focuses on topics that

are undecided and students are required to speak for and listen to both sides. Through this

process, students were encouraged to think critically and become more deeply engaged in

understanding their own ideas and the ideas of others around them.

As a lead up to our first persuasive writing task in ELA, I had students participate in a

class debate before assigning the task. After reading the short story Rikki Tikki Tavi, I had

students debate on who the “true” hero was in the story. This was an effective topic for

debate as students were pretty evenly split on each side, and it got them thinking critically

about the characters and plot. Students expressed their different perceptions of the story and

engaged with the text in a new way. I found that this activity helped to scaffold the persuasive

writing assignment for students as they were able to practise with forming arguments and

were able to verbally make sense of their ideas and organising and presenting them in a

logical order before engaging with the writing. Students were able to build off the ideas of

others, so when it came to the writing task, students were able to pull from what was

mentioned in the debate to help them construct arguments and formulate ideas. It was

interesting to see how this first attempt at debate worked out in different classes. In one class,

students had a very rich, structured discussion about the story. In the other class, it was more

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challenging to keep some students on topic. I attempted to correct this by enforcing stronger

expectations for the next debate and this seemed to work.

Our next couple debates in ELA got students considering the emerging themes in their

novel study on The Giver. This dystopian novel by Lois Lowry describes a life that is strange

and different. In this story, conformity unites a society and makes it a safer place to live while

individualism weakens it. I thought that this novel would make for some very powerful, deep

discussions and debates and I was right. In my ELA class, students participated in two

debates on The Giver. The first topic was on the importance of memories. Students were

asked to assign a side of the topic “all memories are important, even the bad ones.”. In this

discussion, students brought up powerful arguments such as “we need all our memories so

that we can learn from our mistakes” and “if we could forget some memories, dealing with

past trauma would be easier to get over.”. Through these debates, students were able to think

critically about emerging themes in the story and make relevant connections to their own

lives and societies.

Our final debate focused on the topic of pain. In The Giver, students discover that

community members are sheltered from any physical or emotional pain. While this

theoretically seems like a peaceful way to live, the main character Jonas discovers how it

desensitises people and keeps them from experiencing positive emotions. Students had a bit

more time to prepare and research for this debate so it seemed to make ideas flow more

easily. They read articles about people who have congenital insensitivity, which is a rare

condition in which a person cannot feel physical pain before working with their groups to

brainstorm advantages and disadvantages in living a life free of physical and emotional pain.

This got students to think critically about emerging topics in the story and make relevant real

life connections. The debate was conducted in a fishbowl style debate, which gave all

students the opportunity to “tap into” the speaking cycle and share their ideas. Students

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expressed very diverse ideas to the debate and it made for another rich discussion about the

book. Students argued that we need pain as it is a defence mechanism that helps us survive.

Some said that pain is a good thing to have because it brings people together in their shared

experiences. Ultimately, students were able to uncover a prominent theme in the book in

arguing that without pain and suffering, we do not know and appreciate the good in life.

Afterwards, I had students reflect on the debate and state their position on living in a world

without physical and emotional pain. They were asked if their positions changed before and

after the debate, and for many it did. I found debate to be quite useful in this novel study as it

helped students in the conceptualising of diverse ideas around complex themes. In this

process, students became more engaged in their learning process and in more control of their

learning. I collected feedback from my students on their feelings towards class debates in

ELA and many were in favour of this learning tool. One student wrote, “I think I did well in

the debate, but the rest of my team got off topic. I like having debates and I wanna do more

debates/presentations or just more all together activities because it helps me learn more and it

sucks just sitting at my desk listening because I forget most of the things. But when we do

activities I don’t forget because I participated in it.”. Another student wrote, “I think that the

debate was fun and that it was a good way to express everyone’s opinions and talk on

things.”. This feedback was valuable for me in seeing that my students were able to take

meaningful learning away from these activities.

Throughout ELA, students were increasingly able to express themselves and bring in

new perspectives. In my teaching, I was interested in how I can increase opportunities for

student speaking to get students engaged with learned concepts while fostering the

development of oracy and fluency. I was interested in how learning could be enhanced by

such activities. When asking students if they feel they have enough opportunities for speaking

in ELA and other core subjects, one student wrote, “I think we should speak more so we

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could have different perspectives to learn.”. Another student wrote, “I think we should have

more opportunities for speech, but choice in doing so and interesting topics.”. Most of my

students expressed that they would like to do more talking. A few of my students even said

that they wanted to improve their oral skills. One of my students said, “I think we should do

more speaking in ELA cause I need to be better. When I was younger, I had to go to speech

lessons. But I am still bad at speech.”.

In our ELA term two goal setting, many of my students set the goal to participate

more in class discussions and speak more in class. I thought it was interesting that when

asked what skill they would like to work on most in LA, one student responded with, “class

discussions and debates. I know that there isn’t a lot about this but it is a wonderful skill to

have. I might need to work on confidence and language to achieve this.”. In talking and

listening, students learn to understand who they are in relation to others and the world around

them. The ability to form and maintain relationships and to collaborate and extend learning

through interaction with others is closely tied to listening and speaking skills. Students’

fluency and confidence in speaking, listening, and responding is integral to their identity and

place in the community. Talk plays a major role in all language learning and is our main form

of communication. It is a skill to life. In classrooms, student talk (conversing, discussing,

debating, questioning, and answering) is the foundation upon which teachers will build

community and achieve progress in all curriculums, especially ELA. I felt that I have done

this to an extent and it is something that I plan to continue throughout my practice.

Speaking and listening should be woven through all learning and teaching activities in

writing, reading, viewing and representing. I am interested in how I can bring this out even

more than I already have. I would have liked to inquire more about how my approaches have

influenced student achievement. However, I think that more speaking opportunities have

enhanced student learning by engaging students more and has made it more relevant to them.

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I was able to have a better understanding of where students were at in their reading and

comprehension as those students who do not typically score high in their written work were

able to express themselves and express their higher level thinking in a way that is more

suitable for them. When it came to report cards and assigning grades in comprehension, I was

able to give my students a deserving grade and specify whether that has come from their

verbal or written responses. The topic of giving students more opportunities for speaking in

ELA and other core areas is not something innovative or new knowledge, but it is something

that I think of as having the greatest influence in my own approach to teaching. Through

talking, students will not only verify understanding but realise their ability to take ownership

of their learning through active learning. They will be motivated to engage in higher level

critical thinking.

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