Based on a theoretical approach underpinned by classroom research, 'Creating a Speaking and Listening Classroom' offers classroom-tested strategies for engaging children in their own learning.

What do students think about Shakespeare? Classic, timeless and full of rich ideas; or difficult, impenetrable and completely uninteresting? We want young people to develop a real interest in Shakespeare, based on their understanding and engagement with the texts. This practical book enables teachers to organize, stimulate, and support group discussion that will help students to relate to the characters and develop their own ideas about the language and meaning.

Talking Points: Discussion Activities in the Primary Classroom encourages and supports classroom discussion on a range of topics, enabling children to develop the important life-skill of effective group communication. Children who can explain their own ideas and take account of the points of view and reasons of others are in the process of becoming truly educated. This book offers a straightforward way of teaching children discussion skills within the framework of a creative curriculum.

The book provides an introduction on how to help children learn the skills of group...

Providing children with opportunities to talk about their learning enables teachers to hear what children are thinking. Talking with one another allows children to question, elaborate, and reflect on a range of ideas. Classroom talk can be motivating and involving, and helps children to think and learn. And yet it is difficult to organise such talk in a classroom. Children unaware of the importance of talk for learning may think of talk as �just chat� � and learning falls away as they slip into social talk. This book provides teachers with strategies and resources to enable whole...