Clear communication is an essential part of our toolkit as teachers.
It’s also a powerful means of keeping students going about their school day safely, calmly and – hopefully – cheerfully. 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 from South 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 think Miss 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.
Laying the groundwork
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.
Five steps to clarity
1. Begin with the student’s name
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
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.”
3. Dual coding and body language
Dual coding is the act of combining something verbal with something visual, which can do much help with understanding. If you say, “Put your book there”, make that instruction clearer still through your use of body language. Point to the place you mean – it’s a gesture that will reinforce your verbal instruction, and vice versa.
4. Pronouns and prepositions
Be very aware of these two word types and how you deploy them.
If, for example, you say, “Put it there,” how sure are you that the students know what ‘it’ is, and what you mean by ‘there’? Use nouns, not pronouns, and be as precise as possible when specifying time and space.
In place of, “We’ll take it and lay it on top,” we can instead say, “Take the ruler. Lay it horizontally along the x axis on the graph.”
5. Direct versus questions
I’m not sure that overburdening children with questions and choices is particularly helpful – at least, not all the time.
I’m all for agency, but don’t use questions when they’re not needed. Not least because the syntax of how questions are formulated in English can often be tricky.
Instead of, “Would you like to get the netballs out?” say, “Jordan, get the netballs out.” Don’t say, “Right then – if we’re all ready, shall we take ourselves over there?” Remove the question: “We’re going over there now.”
Embedding this approach
Stage 1: Hearts and Minds
You need your staff to believe you, as many will have never previously struggled with language.
There will be some who need to make an empathetic leap to recognise that the language they use can make life hard for certain people – students and staff alike. They must then agree that working on it will improve the workings of the school.
Ask someone whose first language isn’t English to describe what it was like when they first arrived in this country. With colleagues, watch a film wherein autistic people describe what it’s like to grapple with the complexities of language. Ambitious About Autism has some excellent films like this on its YouTube page.
Stage 2: Psychological safety
Enjoy talking as a staff about how we can all get it wrong sometimes.
If you’re a leader, model humility and share how you’re aware that you need to work on something, particularly yourself. If you can establish a culture whereby people are happy to help each other and call each other out (respectfully), then you will have a self-moderating and selfimproving system.
Stage 3: One step at a time
Small, incremental changes embedded properly, so that they become habit, is an especially effective way of embedding new practice.
Choose one improvement – like the ‘name first’ approach – and work on this first. Adopt it as your focus for a number of weeks, until everyone can report that it’s happening habitually.
Once you hear names appearing in instructions first – everywhere, throughout every corridor and classroom – it’ll then be time to add in the next step.
This is pretty much how the intervention approach of precision teaching works. Children will only add in new spellings once they’ve fully mastered previous ones. So when it comes to the language you and your staff use, be sure to always keep things precise – both in how you use your existing language, and when layering in new strategies. And take things one step at a time.
Rebecca Leek has been a primary and secondary teacher, SENCo. headteacher and MAT CEO; she is currently the Executive Director of the Suffolk Primary Headteacher’s Association.
