Neil Alexander Dialogic Research

Teaching and learning is a two-way process and as teachers we can gain an extraordinary amount by listening to feedback from others, by evaluating our own performance regularly and by reflecting on our own practice. We should see areas for development not as negative features of our own teaching but as an opportunity to make teaching even more effective. It is particularly important to listen to our learners – their voice must be heard and their comments taken account of at all levels in an organisation.

Learners can communicate with each other with simple phrases and sentences. They are able to understand longer content, such as stories read with pictures. They can read stories, answer questions, match vocabulary words to definitions, and compose brief stories. Aside from tasks above, Haynes mentions that students can write dialogue journals. Dialogue journals are that students can write any topics they want and proceed at their own level and pace. In short, students can complete some simple tasks on their own or with teachers’ help and are able to express their own ideas by writing a “short

range of contexts, purposes and audiences use discussion in order to learn; they should be able to elaborate and explain clearly

Many times in my life I believed I could feel someone watching me and had a slight panic attack, I had no idea that at one point in my life I would willingly subject myself to a “Fish Bowl” and volunteer to be watched and evaluated by my peers and a professor. But it happened to myself and my classmates as we endeavored to use our newly practice communication skills to the test. Using Rothwell’s Standard Agenda for problem solving and group discussion, our Fish Bowl groups were able to use group communication skills and critical thinking to arrive at viable solutions for the problems placed before them.

Education may be the mold of our future, but the mold behind education is teachers. Behind all intelligent students lays a common factor, teachers. This paper will be focused on the discourse community which lays within the walls of James Bowie Elementary in Richardson, Texas. From interviews and observations to external research, I have been able to find and understand the most important aspect of this chosen community, communication. Communication is a vital role in this community because not only is it the way that they communicate with their peers, but when teachers communicate with each other they are showing their students how to do it. To begin, I brainstormed about my knowledge of this community. From the time I was a child to now,

Ray Bacchetti believes public schools support conversations with differing viewpoints that further a student’s support for an ideal or challenges it (Koonce, 2015).

The comparison between a primary school classroom and the Ragged school museum is that they both promote Auditory/verbal Learning. Similarly within the primary classroom where the teacher is talking at the children giving out information and instructions this approach is also used at the ragged school museum where the tour guide comes in to talk about the history of Victorian children. According to Donohue and Mototsune, (2012) “Talk is not only beneficial, but also essential for certain skills to develop”. This relates to children's learning at both these settings, when the teacher and the tour guide are verbally talking, the children are able to take in and absorb this knowledge. If children are unsure about anything they can ask questions

The speech by Debra Hawhee describes a scenario, called the Unending Conversation, in which a continuous conversation is occuring in the world. She argues that these types of conversations occur everywhere and will continue throughout the student’s four years of college and into the future. Throughout her speech she describes that through the college experience and education, these students will learn how to engage in the conversation and respond. She encourages the idea not to stray away from disagreement because it allows for people to listen to other people which leads to critical thinking, more thoughtful response and an overall better conversation. David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech describes the importance of the way people think

Good communication is a criterion that sets many students apart in terms of traits. This is useful when building any form of rapport between them and the lecture or tutor. A student that respectfully communicates has also come out as self-motivated and is more likely to get more help from the teacher since their problems are aired out effectively. Students that do not communicate can be misjudged and mistaken for lack of motivation and self-confidence. In addition, students who are good communicators are made, not born (Floyd, 2013).

In the education world of today, it is understood that one can only be effective in teaching by taking into consideration the different learning styles of students. In a classroom, it is expected that teachers would want their students to acquire a meaningful knowledge base, become proficient problem solvers and learn how to work productively with others (Biehler and Snowman, 2006, p. 370). If this is the case, teachers need to know how to be able to develop this situation in the classroom and make it more conducive to learning. Therefore, it would seem that they need to encourage students to converse with each other with group discussions and assignments, to make sure they are active in

By talking to colleagues about what happened in the classroom, not only may we find solutions to problems but also share and broaden our teaching experience. (Brookfield, 1995; p.31-36).

This constitutes a dialogue on the contrary to a monologue. It allowed teachers and students to be able to discuss matters, rather than it being a one way teaching process

In terms of education, talk can be defined as everyday uses of spoken language and it refers to the act of both speaking and listening (Bearne, 1998). (Mercer, 1995)categorised talk in three ways; cumulative, disputational and exploratory. Cumulative talk is when pupils work together in pairs to gain a shared knowledge about a subject, disputational talk is mostly short controversial utterances in the form of a debate and exploratory helps people work together by using each other’s ideas critically. Mercer’s three categories of talk are examples of the types of talk that can be found in the classroom environment. This essay will consider will examine the importance of the talk in the classroom and the challenges of it, with specific reference to storytelling.

There have been many times in my life I believed I could feel someone watching me, but I had no idea that at one point in my life I would willingly subject myself to a “Fish Bowl” and volunteer to be watched and evaluated by my peers and a professor. However, this is exactly happened to me and my classmates as we endeavored to put our newly learned communication skills to the test. Using Rothwell’s Standard Agenda for problem solving and group discussion, our Fish Bowl groups were able to use group communication skills and critical thinking to arrive at viable solutions for the problems placed before them.

The first stragtey to discuss is her use of effective groupings arrangements. For instance, students are part of a whole group lesson, small group, cooperative activity, and partner work. First, Ms. Sullivan starts the lesson with the whole group seated on the carpet. This is when she introduces both the content and language objectives, discusses the target vocabulary, and explicitly reviews the lesson targets using visuals and modeling. Next, students work in partner groups using a “think, pair, share” strategy. To illustrate, students work together in partner work to discuss how they solve problems. At the end of the lesson, students also work collaboratively in a small group to complete a graphic organizer to reflect on what they learned. These grouping strategies are supported by Lev Vygotsky’s Constructivism theory. According to Vygotsky, discourse and interaction are channels for learning