During exploratory talk in small groups, or dialogue in larger groups, how can we ensure everyone gets a chance to speak? How can we help pupils remember how many turns they have taken, and how many turns their peers have taken?
One way is to give out ‘talk tokens’ or ‘contribution counters’. For example, each person gets two tokens which they ‘spend’ as they contribute to the discussion (they can only take a turn to speak if they have a token).
When everyone has spent all their counters, if you want the discussion to continue, everyone gets two more tokens.
Role tokens
Variation: Assign roles to the counters, for example:
green = ask a question
orange = refer back to an earlier point
and so on.
More on turn-taking
