Turn and Talk -> DUD

I’ve been reflecting on student talk. Probably safe to say that many teachers are trying to increase student talk (while simultaneously decreasing teacher talk hopefully) in their classrooms. Over the past five years (at least) there has been an explosion in the use of the turn and talk strategy to get students talking.

Turn and talk is pretty straightforward, even though it involves turning. Two students face each other and talk about something. Teachers tell them to talk, and they talk. One of the problems with turn and talk is that the students are focused so much on the talk that they may not be listening! The last thing we need in our classrooms is to set up another structure that invites students to ignore what their classmates are saying.

This prompted me to rename the strategy in my graduate classes as “Turn and Listen.” This moniker stresses the listening portion instead of the talking portion. Many students are more adept at talking than they are at listening so the thinking was to be explicit about the need to listen. Teacher tells the students to listen and the students listen.

But even this label is missing something. Why do we have our students turn and talk or turn and listen? What is our purpose? What are we trying to scaffold them toward? If we are ultimately interested in approximating authentic social discourse in the form of discussion, then why not direct them to do that?

And so, DUD – Double Up and Discuss.

We still need to teach students the routine for this, a routine that is identical to turn and talk. The specific language that we are using may help students develop their discussion skills, even if only because it keeps our ultimate purpose front and center. I tried it not too long ago with a sixth grade class. They were used to turn and talk so they didn’t bat an eye when I directed them to Double Up and Discuss. If they were my own class, it might lead to some substantive discussion of what discussion looks like and sounds like. We also might eventually shorten the directions to DUD. The only change I made was to give them more time to DUD. If we want each person to have time to talk and respond then we probably need to extend the total amount of DUD time. Eventually we could double up our doubles and discuss in groups of four…DUD-D (pronounced duddy?) So many possibilities on our path to developing authentic peer-led discussions.

I am going to try it in my (graduate school methods) classes. Maybe you can try it too.

Still learning, Doc G.