Teach-Secondary-14.1

Do you know WHAT I MEAN? THIS WAY! Encouraging teachers to use clear, unambiguous language at all times can give a significant boost to your whole school inclusion efforts, observes Rebecca Leek... Schools are full of talk – instructions, explanations, anecdotes, requests, questions, answers and everything in between. Apparently, the average human speaks around 16,000 words every day. Multiply that by the students in your school, not to mention the adults, and that’s a lot of words! Words used precisely are what teaching is all about. At very least, clear communication is an essential part of our toolkit as teachers, as well as a powerful means of keeping students going about their school day safely, calmly and – hopefully – cheerfully. At the same time, however, the spoken language we employ can also create problems if it’s too ambiguous or overcomplicated. Blind panic I’ve previously witnessed the blind panic of a young man, not long arrived in this country fromSouth America, being shouted at by his head of year after having taken the wrong route out of the hall after assembly. He was not only unaware of the rules surrounding the door system, but couldn’t understand the reprimand he was receiving for the very thing he’d misunderstood. I’d been teaching the student English for a couple of weeks at that point, and knew he was only just mastering some basic vocabulary. There was no way he could have understood, ‘ What do you thinkMiss felt when you thought you could just go across the front? ’ That’s a complicated sentence to even read, let alone understand when spoken out loud. Every school leader, teacher, governor, student and family wants their school to be harmonious and ordered. In terms of behaviour and discipline, we’re less dichotomous than some people on social media would have us believe. We want smooth days, with minimal confrontation and more time for all the lovely stuff – the explaining, listening, learning and creating. One of the best ways to establish this kind of well-ordered, low stress environment is for adults to pay greater attention to how they talk. For the aforementioned student, English was an additional language. He was already working hard, aged 15, to access a pretty indecipherable education system. Verbal discipline Be aware that others in your school community will be similarly having to put in additional effort, all of the time, to process what’s being said to them. They might be on the SEND register as having a ‘communication and interaction’ difference. They may have an autism diagnosis and find language sticky, the multifarious meanings of words and phrases potentially clagging up their thinking. If a teacher says, ‘ We’re in the hall today, ’ it can prompt intensive speculation: ‘ Does that mean we’re in the hall now ? Because we’re in the classroom... Are we going to be in the hall? Should I go there now...? ’ Regardless of EAL status or the categories in your SEND register, verbal discipline within a school helps everyone, and is really good for embedding workplace etiquette. Here, then, are five ways of tidying up the oral language quagmire for the benefit of all, and some advice on how to embed this approach at your school. 5 steps to clarity 1. Name first We all know this is better, but do we actually do it? ‘ Can you help me hand out the books please, Jordan? ’ If Jordan wasn’t listening at the start of the instruction (maybe because he was getting on with his work), he’ll have missed the message. He’s now looking at you, perplexed. Having already had a bad morning, you sigh again. That negativity might be just enough of a nudge to send Jordan’s day on a downward spiral. So, name first . 2. Thornless sentences TheWaldo is a type of blackberry cultivated to have no barbs. Similarly, we can smooth out our sentences so that they’re less ‘thorny’. By removing unnecessary verbiage from your speech, your students will stand a better chance of understanding precisely what it is you need them to do. Instead of, ‘ If you pop it over there, then we’ll be all set to do the next thing, ’ go with ‘ Put your book there. ’ Rather than, ‘ Take care on the stairs, because they’re slippery and we don’t want any accidents, so can we make sure we walk on the left? ’ opt for, ‘ Walk on the left. ’ SEND | INCLUSION | INSTRUCTION School improvement advice for headteachers and SLT 45 teachwire.net/secondary L E A D E R S H I P