“Turn to your partner. You have two minutes to talk about...” The National Literacy Strategy increasingly recommends paired work, providing every child with the opportunity to engage with a question, not just the usual three who put their hands up.
Indeed, paired work is fast becoming NLS’s answer to the vexed question of “speaking and listening”, ensuring plenty of opportunities for focused talk based in reading, writing, even spelling. The technique also links to the holy grail of “thinking skills”, because talking about one’s learning develops reflective thought.
However, strategies that look wonderful on NLS training videos may be less successful in practice.
Getting children to work collaboratively without messing about, making a row, or falling out with their partner involves training. One excellent suggestion I heard from a teacher was to show the class the training video too, so they know exactly what is expected of them (“This is how children behave!”). Another way is to consult someone with enormous expertise in the field of paired learning.
Keith Topping, director of the Centre for Paired Learning at the University of Dundee, has written a timely book called Thinking Reading Writing: a practical guide to paired learning with peers, parents and volunteers (Continuum pound;15.99).
Based on decades of work in hundreds of schools, it provides specific methods for paired work in reading, writing, spelling and “thinking” (this is a new development and at present is firmly rooted in higher order reading skills).
One tends to think of the paired reading technique as being for parent and child, but Keith Topping shows here how the methods may also be used by pairs of children.
Though the book is rather dusty and academic in style, teachers should not be put off. It is extremely practical and contains much helpful advice on organisation and training for paired learning techniques. For paired writing, for instance, there is a flowchart involving six steps, 10 questions (ideas), five stages (drafting) and four levels (editing). Pupils learn the technique from the flow-chart, then keep it by them for reference as they write.
However, the flowchart is not provided in the book: along with other practical materials, it must be downloaded from a linked website. So do make sure you have internet access before you start to read.
Sue Palmer is an independent literacy in-service training provider and writer
