Coaching for Student Talk
One of the most common complaints by leaders and coaches that I support is that their teachers just do too much of the talking during class time. Are you coaching any teachers like that?
I understand why teachers do so much talking. They feel an immense pressure to cover content. Or they fear losing control in their classrooms. Or they were taught in a similar way as students, and it worked well enough for them. But the “stand and deliver” approach to teaching is not working for most students, especially for our most marginalized students, and we need to support teachers in disrupting the status quo of what Paulo Friere called the banking model of education.
There are so many interconnected concepts with increasing student talk time, and I can’t unpack them all here. But I will share what I have found most helpful in terms of coaching to support teachers with increasing the amount of time that their students are actively talking, engaging, writing, or creating.
5 Tips for Coaching for Increasing Student Talk
1. Model sharing the “talk time” in your coaching meetings
While one-on-one, your coaching meetings act as a model for teachers of what good teaching looks like. Ask yourself: Do I share the “airtime” in my coaching meetings, making sure that the teacher’s talk time is equal to or greater than my own? Ideally, coaching meetings should be split 50/50 teacher-to-coach talk time. Or even lean towards more time for the teacher to talk.
It’s important to consider not just how much teacher talk time happens in your coaching meeting, but the quality of that talk time. If teachers go down the path of beating themselves up, or talking negatively about a student, or just rambling, jump in with a “Let me pause you right there” and redirect with a different question or to the topic at hand. In addition to focused discussion and reflection, coaches should focus on time for teachers to practice new skills. My goal for a 30-minute coaching meeting is to include 12 - 15 minutes of teachers practicing their new learning, not just discussing.
2. Give a clear rationale
If you are coaching or facilitating a PLC on student talk, make sure to include a clear rationale as to why you are engaging in this work. What school-based data points you to doing this work? How does this connect personally with the teacher?
Additionally, there is a strong research base that shows that teachers are doing too much of the talking, and that increasing student talk is linked with increased student engagement and achievement. Here are a few to highlight:
The EdWeek article, How Much Should Teachers Talk in the Classroom? Much Less Some Say, notes that John Hattie’s synthesis of research found that teachers talk for 70 to 80 percent of the lesson, while his own research found they talk on average 89 percent of the lesson! The article notes that “researchers have found that students’ comprehension, engagement, and test scores improve when they get to discuss what they’re learning.”
In a Times Educational Supplement podcast episode, professor Neil Mercer shares research from two studies done in England, one that demonstrated that students made 2 months more progress when they were taught in a way that emphasized student talk.
3. Collect data on the student-teacher talk ratio
For most teachers, the main rationale they’ll need to shift how much talking they’re doing is just to see the concrete data from their own lessons. In order to prepare for a coaching meeting about increasing student talk, take a baseline of the current student-teacher talk ratio. You can do this by observing a lesson for 20 - 30 minutes, and recording which sections of the lesson the teacher is doing the bulk of the talking. Then add up the time the teacher did all the talking, and create a percentage for the observed lesson.
Share this data with the teacher in your coaching meeting. I find it helpful to share this visually, especially if you show the breakdown of the lesson by timing and who is doing the bulk of the talking at each point. Ask teachers to consider the impact: “What impact do you think that you doing 75% of the talking is having on student engagement (or comprehension, etc.)?”
4. Make concrete goals for increasing student talk
After sharing the data with teachers, name and agree upon a goal related to increasing student talk time. Sample concrete goals include:
Average of 50% of the lesson provides opportunities for all students to talk or write
In every lesson, include 3 opportunities where all students respond by talking with a partner or group
Neither of these goals are perfect, but they help put a very specific destination for teachers to work towards. These goals might be worked on over time. For example, if a teacher is currently doing 90% of the talking, you might expect her to bring it down to 80% by the next observation, decreasing by 10% each observation until she consistently meets a target of 50%. Having concrete goals helps you as the coach to hold teachers accountable and celebrate progress when teachers meet or progress towards these goals.
5. Work on one or two strategies at a time & model it for the teacher
Make sure that teachers walk away from your coaching meeting with one or two very clear strategies for how to increase the amount of student talk. There are so many resources and strategies available, but selecting just one or a few to focus on at a time helps teachers implement the focus of your coaching. I have found active student responses strategies particularly helpful, and have found that these strategies eliminate some of the inequities in classrooms simply because they require all students to respond. In your coaching meeting, explain the strategy to the teacher and then provide a model for what it looks like in action. This might be a video of the strategy, or you modeling in your “teacher voice” right in the meeting, or you modeling a lesson in the teacher’s class. After seeing your model, your teacher should practice with you in the coaching meeting so they know exactly what to do the next day with their students.
The journey towards classrooms where students are doing most of the talking seems long and sometimes impossible, but with clear strategies and goals in coaching, you can support teachers to quickly work towards this vision.