The Surprising Key to Student Talk

By Connie Hamilton

When learners need to improve their reading skills, we teach reading skills. When they need to develop their math strategies, we teach math strategies. If they need to refine their blending skills in art, we teach them to blend. So it’s obvious when students need to ramp up their speaking skills, we teach them to listen. 

Student conversations require both listening and speaking skills. Oftentimes teachers focus on the talking part of partner or group verbal exchanges by offering prompts, sentence stems, or relevant questions to spark dialogue. When those efforts still don’t produce quality discourse where students respond to others’ thoughts, build on the ideas shared by peers, and respectfully share alternate ways to think about an issue, it’s time to shift the focus from talking and ramp up the listening skills. 

Specific Listening Skills

Let’s be clear – teaching listening skills is not “one more thing”. In every state, there are standards that require students to have quality listening skills and they begin the very first year students enter our buildings. 

Standards that address listening skills begin in kindergarten. Look at these basic skills found in nearly every state’s expectations for our youngest learners: 

If you’re a K-2 teacher, these probably look familiar. They may be worded slightly different in your state, but these four expectations summarize what students in K-2 should be able to achieve. 

Teachers who teach older grades might find a bullet or two (or four) that their students haven’t fully grasped yet. Why is that? Well, in my experience, it’s because we expect these skills, but don’t always explicitly teach them. Then, as the grade level expectations become more complex, the focus is on the skill that is noticeable – speaking. 

Mini lessons are shared to target improvement of student conversations, when what students really need is to slow down before speaking and listen carefully to build a beautiful exchange of conversation. 

None of these can be met if students haven’t developed quality listening skills. The problem becomes compounded when we look at the expectations for older students in upper elementary that only gain in complexity of communication skills, shown below. 

Strategies to Teach Listening Skills

To make quick and big improvements on listening skills, focus on these strategies that require students to actively listen: 

Paraphrase

One way to check and support students’ listening skills is to incorporate paraphrasing into your lessons and within student talk. Teaching students to summarize what they heard in the form of a paraphrase accomplishes multiple goals. 

First, it ensures that the listener is actually listening and not simply waiting for his or her turn to talk. When a student knows their sole role is to listen and will not be asked to provide their own response, their mental attention isn’t split between listening and thinking about what they will say. Focusing on one task at a time allows students to give their full attention to their partner, the speaker. 

Second, it validates that what was heard was accurate. Recapping the speaker gives the initial speaker an opportunity to clarify any gaps and confirm the message was received as intended. Paraphrasing also helps keep the conversation on topic. Students are more likely to comment about what was said when they paraphrase it first as opposed to taking the group in a different direction. 

Finally, when the listener paraphrases what the first speaker said, the first speaker is interested. It helps to increase the amount of time students can focus on what another peer has to say, setting the stage for building stamina and lengthening the amount of time students can converse without your assistance. 

When introducing the idea of summarizing what a speaker said, make a note of these common pitfalls and avoid sloppy paraphrasing. 

Pitfall #1: The paraphrase is longer than what was originally said. A general rule of thumb is to take less than half the time to summarize what the speaker said. Sometimes a simple sentence is enough to sum up their partner’s thoughts. 

Pitfall #2: The listener paraphrases too frequently. It isn’t always clear to students when to offer a paraphrase. Initially, you might structure their talk to prompt a speaker, then pause and invite the listener to paraphrase. However, the goal is for students to find this ideal time on their own, pausing the speaker periodically to check for clarity and communicate that the speaker has been heard. 

Pitfall #3: The paraphrase is parroting exactly what was originally said. Putting the speaker’s words into your own words is the key to an effective paraphrase. Simply repeating the exact words that were said misses an opportunity for evidence that the listener accurately interpreted what the speaker said. For older students, it also feels shallow for a listener to just spew back the exact words and phrases that were spoken. 

Before students comment or share their thinking, set a norm that they must paraphrase what someone else said. It’s best to begin with partners and designate a speaker and a listener for a fun or silly conversation prompt like one of the following: 

• Convey your idea of a perfect day. 
• Explain your morning/evening routine. 
• Describe your favorite activity and why you love it. 
• Tell about a time you laughed so hard you almost cried. 
• Share a goal you have for your future. 

After the first partner provides the prompt, the second partner responds. After a set period of time (keep it short at first with 60-90 seconds). After partner 2 speaks, partner 1 paraphrases what partner 2 said. 

To continue to challenge students, increase the amount of time the partner is talking. When students have shown they can paraphrase, shift the questions or prompts to your content to spark conversation on the learning target using their newly developed skills to paraphrase one another. 

Connect Comments

It’s common that when a question or prompt is offered, students prepare their individual thoughts and get ready to share – AKA “talk”. Instead of launching a class, group, or partner discussion with a question or prompt, focus on a comment and invite students to paraphrase, then ABC their responses, connecting them to the comment previously shared by someone else. 

The goal in this exercise is to agree, build on, or challenge the comment – not to offer a different response. Not only does this help students focus on enriching conversation, but it deepens their discussion. The ABC skill transfers easily to partner, group, and whole class discussions. 

Remind students to offer a paraphrase before adding their ABC. Their reasoning should focus on why they agree, how they are building or deepening on the topic, and what they specifically challenge about the speaker’s comments. This is not a way to simply disagree, then state their own perspective. Keep the focus on the comment without opening it up to new comments too quickly. 

Using follow-up comments in this way connects ideas and concepts from one student to another without just a smorgasbord of isolated thoughts that begin with “I think…” 

Get students talking

Want vibrant, engaging student discussion? Eager to get your students talking about your content and your lessons? Remember the most important key to student talk: first, get them to listen. Teach them the skills, avoid the pitfalls, and inspire quality questions. Then, lend them your ear and hear the learning roar.

Share your thoughts in comments below.

More about Connie Hamilton

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