FIFTH READING

The reading of this week was called 'How dialogue with a teacher helps children learn', the 4th chapter of the book Dialogue and the Development of Children's Thinking, by N. Mercer and K. Littleton.

5 words

- Ground rules of conversation.

- Dialogic spells.

- Dialogic teaching.

- Communicative approach.

- Intermental Development Zone (IDZ).

3 main ideas

- Questions come naturally and necessarily in the interaction among teachers and students, although they can serve for many different functions, such as checking students' prior knowledge or understanding of the topic, as well as encouraging them to make contributions. These functions can only be judged in dialogic context. 

- In dialogic teaching teachers have the chance to encourage students to articulate, think about and modify their own understanding through extended dialogues in which both teachers and students participate.

- The contributions made by teachers in dialogic teaching include questions, repetitions, reformulations or 'reasoning words'. In the process of learning a good teacher is the intellectual guide of the students, encouraging them to 'take active and reflective roles in the development of their own understanding'.

1 idea that touches me

- In dialogic teaching children are demonstrated 'how effective collaboration can be an integral element of intellectual activity'. They are engaged in the discussion and have some influence on it. That means that all points of view are taken into account, so they are encouraged and motivated to keep on participating. Besides, a dialogue is built in order to achieve an aim, to understand something, so children realize that by speaking and exchanging points of view, they all can learn from each other. Therefore, students can take as an example the dialogue established among them and the teachers, in order to use it with their classmates in other group works.

Have I seen dialogic teaching during the Practicum?

The teacher usually encourages children to remember what they have done in order to introduce new contents, so she makes questions to elicit their prior knowledge. Unfortunately, due to the kind of exercises that students are doing in these days, there haven't been many chances to see dialogic teaching, as their work is more autonomous. Anyway, this school takes seriously the fact that children have to think and reflect upon their knowledge, so they do different activities in which students are the ones who speak and discuss among them to achieve an aim and learn together, such as projects, group activities or workshops. Actually, I have seen some of this activities, and in the progress of them pupils are the ones who speak, being the teacher a guide in case they need it.

Have I seen some critical event this week?

In the school the children of fourth grade wanted to play with videogames. They had an afternoon in which they could decide what they wanted to do, as long as it was approved by the school. When the teacher knew that the pupils really wanted to do that activity, she made an effort so that the school let them do that. They didn't refuse to it, so the other day they finally could play. It could be thought that it was not so educative, but in fact they were working all the time with values such as sharing and collaborating.