“Without wanting to sound too hyperbolic, there’s been a war on teacher talk [over the past decade],” says English teacher and author Andy Tharby.

“There are times when teachers need to shut up. But I felt it was time to go back to those teachers of old who would stand at the front and weave together these incredible stories and the children would learn lots.”

Tharby is on a mission to raise the profile of teacher talk in our classrooms. Speaking on the latest episode of the Tes English teaching podcast, he discusses his book How to Explain Absolutely Anything to Absolutely Anyone: The art and science of teacher explanation and questions the view that teacher input should be reduced in lessons.

“I’ve heard the stories of teachers being timed: you mustn’t speak for longer than 10 minutes, otherwise you’re breaking the rules of the school,” Tharby says.

Building relationships with students

Yet he believes that teacher talk is “completely necessary”, not only to support students’ understanding, but to build relationships with the class and to demonstrate your passion for a subject.

“It’s where you communicate not just the joy, but the purpose of your subject and why it’s a valuable gateway into study, into truth, and everything that is important about education,” he says.

Tapping into this joy is essential, Tharby adds, to counteract the effects of increasing accountability.

“It feels that too many subjects have become not gateways into something fascinating, but gateways towards getting your exam grades. That’s where I worry and I think we need to redress the balance,” he says.

Better teacher talk

How can teachers make sure that they are getting classroom talk right? In the podcast, Tharby offers some tips, including: not assuming too much pre-existing knowledge of your students, making sure that your own subject knowledge is up to scratch and avoiding cognitive overload.

Tharby suggests using “uncluttered slideshows” displaying just a few key words to act as prompts for the teacher to explain around, rather than projecting lots of text to support your talk.

“Often you see teachers having an explanation written up on the board, then talking over that explanation, explaining it slightly differently, and so the children don’t know whether to read the thing on the board or to listen to you, or to do a bit of both or to do none of them at all.”

You can listen for free by downloading the podcast from iTunes or listening below.

Jamie Thom is an English teacher at Cramlington Learning Village and the author of Slow Teaching: a guide to finding calm, organisation and impact in the classroom. He tweets @teachgratitude1