When we think of a ‘teacher’s toolkit’ we may assume that we’re examining our ability to use different teaching techniques to engage and challenge students.  That’s true, of course but there is one tool that is the most important - our words. 

 

The quantity of our words.   ”All you do with me is talk talk”. Talk Talk?

 

We need to acknowledge something.  Teachers generally talk too much.  We like talking.  I have worked with some very creative students over the years.  Their creativity was finding ways to work less hard in my lessons.  They skilfully got me talking about something that I was interested in (two of them were called Gary by the way).  Then I realised that conversations about music, politics and football were distracting me from the job of setting the class challenges to help them learn.  On other occasions I have probably over-explained a concept.

 

Be aware that our greatest strength - our ability to communicate with our words, can also be our greatest weakness.

 

By talking less we will unlock more student to teacher dialogue and students to student dialogue.  We will also create more active learning experiences and build powerful oral communication skills.

 

Try - appointing a class monitor to measure how much you talk.  Two stopwatches can be used - one timing your talk and one timing the collective class talk.  Alternatively, use a kitchen timer every time you are going to explain something.  The results at the end may be interesting.