Dear TOT readers. Merry Christmas!

The engagement with these weekly takeaways has grown and grown, from 95 email subscribers to TOT last December to 950 now (if you haven't signed up yet you can do so here), and it's been wonderful to have emails and tweets from educators all around the world expressing how much they enjoy these weekly digests of edu-reading. As much as anything else, it's been wonderful to see engagement with these resources grow within my own school. I was delighted the other day when, out of the blue, a colleague said ‘I downloaded MARGE yesterday, looking forward to reading it over the holidays!' Thank you to all of you for continuing to read, engage, and question.

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Now, to this week's TOT.

T1 is an unrolled twitter thread, summarising a paper that I read about teaching Oracy to school-aged learners. The role of speech in the classroom is something that I'm becoming more and more interested. The Feb ERRR podcast will include some discussion of ‘talk moves', and PD to help teachers develop this, and I look forward to exploring especially Cambridge University's ‘Thinking Together‘ resources in the 2019 school year.

T2 is a cool resource from Jo Morgan, the queen of maths teaching resources, which I came across via @mrbartonmaths' podcast discussion with Jo.

T3 is a really interesting set of ‘weekly writing challenges' that seem to be an excellent way to support deliberate practices of writing strategies (keep an eye out for explorations of ‘The Writing Revolution‘ through this blog and perhaps a podcast next year too).

T4 is a must read, challenging our assumptions about ‘digital natives' and giving tips about how to be a critical consumer online.

T5 is a stimulating framework, T6 a PD approach very similar to the one taken by my own school this year, and T7 an interesting study ($$$)

T8 is five of my most popular posts from 2018. And if you haven't as yet read Effect Sizes, Robust or Bogus? Reflections from my discussions with Hattie and Simpson, I hope you enjoy it. It captures one of my deepest dives yet into ed-research, and reflections on how that exploration changed my mind on the important topic of effect sizes.

T9 is a Christmas themed article sharing some different perspectives on Santa, and lying!

Today is the last day before the Aussie summer holidays, and I haven't decided whether or not I'll do some TOTs over the next month or so, but first week back commences Jan 29th, so you'll be sure to hear from me around then if not before.

Enjoy : )

(all past TOTs here), sign up to get these articles emailed to you each week here.

The development of Oracy skills in school-aged learners, via @profneilmercer and @LynDawesMaercer

Original Tweet here.
Just finished, and thoroughly enjoyed, reading the @OracyCambridge paper ‘The development of Oracy skills in school-aged learners' by @profneilmercer and @LynDawesMercer (ht @RethinkingJames). It outlines the ‘why' of Oracy, breaks down skills, and… languageresearch.cambridge.org/images/Languag…
touches on teaching. It begins with an argument that explicit Oracy instruction provides a crucial ‘second chance' for students. And relates the development of speech to the development of thought.
Then breaks Oracy skills down into four categories, as presented in the Cambridge Oracy Skills Framework below. A clearer explication of the skills of Oracy I've not yet seen.
It touches upon talk-focussed pedagogy for collaborative group work and public speaking, with a particular emphasis on ‘Exploratory Talk' as a tool for interthinking (@cpaterso, this Exploratory Talk is what I mentioned at the conference earlier in the year).
We then see some classroom transcripts, and are reminded of some of the questions that it's helpful for students to learn to ask.
Here are some ground rules.

A section that I found particularly interesting was on developing listening skills. This is something I touched upon (in that I need to work on this) in thought shrapnel a few weeks ago (

).

And it was demonstrated to me how very little I know about how to teach students these skills.
I also have questions. For example, to what extent does the content domain impact the scope for the use of Exploratory Talk as a learning tool? Here are ‘Talking Points' from the paper, but to me, it seems the English ones lend themselves much better to this than Science.
And I'm keen to know more about assessment. E.g., where to I find these assessment tools???

This paper was a great primer. Can't wait to delve into this stuff more in 2019! What's the best resource for building my capacity to teach Oracy @profneilmercer ?

Here's the link again for anyone interested: languageresearch.cambridge.org/images/Languag…

Maths teachers: Topics in depth. History and insight, via @mathsjem

English teachers: Weekly Writing Challenges, via @TLPMsF

The best, quick, article I've seen on how to tell real news from fake on the internet

Categories of teacher: Elitist, romantic, radical, egalitarian, etc, via @mfordhamhistory

An interesting approach to teacher performance review

The 8-hour sleep challenge, giving credit for extra sleep, results increased

Five of my most popular posts from 2018

ps: Most popular ERRR podcasts were with Dylan Wiliam, Craig Barton, Adrian Simpson, and John Hattie.

Should I lie to my children about Santa?

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