IB ENGLISH B SKILLS SUPPORT: Speak Circles SPEAKING Lesson

Looking for a fun and engaging way to improve your students’ speaking skills? Look no further than Speak Circles! My ready-made lesson includes everything you need to get started, including 6 speaking card sets (with 18 speaking frames each) and a complete just-click lesson slideshow. By the end of the lesson, your students will have learned the ground rules for respectful listening, the rules for Speak Circles, and practised using a variety of sentence starters and frames through rounds based on each of the IB Learner Themes. Your students will have the opportunity to question, to share opinions, to agree, to disagree, and to extend each other’s ideas. Plus, the plenary and homework activities ensure that the learning continues even after the lesson is over. Don’t miss out on this valuable speaking lesson!

SPEAK CIRCLES: SPEAKING LESSON
(60 minutes)
RESOURCES:

1. Speaking Cards Sets 1-6
2. Speak Circles Lesson Slideshow

LESSON OUTCOME: To practise speaking skills using a range of sentence starters and sentence frames.

By the end of this lesson, your students will have provided the ground rules for respectful listening, learned the rules for Speak Circles, and used a variety of speaking cards to develop different ways to question, share opinions, agree, disagree and extend each other’s ideas through rounds based on each of the IB Learner Themes.

Activities:

1. STARTER: To appreciate the concept of respectful listening
   • Students establish the meaning of respectful listening and discuss how it looks, sounds and feels. (5 mins)
2. Activity 2: To become familiar with Speak Circle Activities
   • Students learn the rules for Speak Circles
   • Round One: The Question Round: Students generate a series of questions based on a picture of a littered beach.
   • Round Two: The Opinion Round: Students share their opinions of AI after watching a brief video.
   • Round Three: The Ask to Clarify: Students listen to a song, share their opinions, and are asked to clarify their opinions about social media.
   • Round Four: The Politely Disagree Round: Students watch a video about culture and identity and practise learning to politely disagree with each other’s views and opinions.
   • Round Five: The Agree and Develop Round: Students watch a video poem, share their ideas about the impact of devices on experiences and are challenged to develop each other’s points. (5 x 10 mins = 50 mins)
3. PLENARY: To share responses to Speak Circles as a learning tool
   • Students discuss how they feel about the Speak Circle process (5 mins)
4. HOMEWORK: To think of 3 different ways that Speak Circles can be used
   • Students must think of other ways that rounds can be used in Speak Circles