Engaging Minds through Games: Using Gamified Strategies to Teach Geography
Contributed by Chua Wan Yu from Temasek Secondary School and Dr Tricia Seow from the National Institute of Education, for SingTeach Virtual […]
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- How is Productive Talk Useful for the Geography Classroom?
- Why Talk Moves for Geographical Data?
- How Was the Research Carried Out?
- What are the Talk Moves for Geographical Data?
- How Can Teachers Use the Talk Moves?
- Classroom Resources
- Useful Links & References
- Research Projects
- Research Team
Secondary school
Geography
- 231 students
- 6 teachers
- 3 secondary schools
“…using Talk Moves really helped them to develop their answers a bit more fully. So, I thought that was useful. And actually I thought that this questioning technique is very suitable for this group of [shy students].”
– Teacher 1
“[The students] are getting used to the fact I want them to say certain things in a certain manner…maybe they’re conscious like ‘I’m supposed to say this in a more geographical way, I’m supposed to say this a certain way that I’ve been taught.’”
– Teacher 2
Classroom Resources
- Talk Moves for Geographical Data Brochure
- Importance & Benefits of Productive Classroom Talk
- Talk Moves Part 1: Making Sense of Geographical Data
- Talk Moves Part 2: Deepening Reasoning for Effective Explanation of Geographical Data
- Talk Moves Part 3: Building Effective Written Explanation from Classroom Talk
- Worksheet to accompany Talk Moves for Geographical Data Videos
Videos
Principal Investigator
Knowledge Resource Bank
Talk Moves for Geographical Data
Talk Moves for Geographical Data: Thinking and Talking like a Geographer
How is Productive Talk Useful for the Geography Classroom?
Key Benefits
Productive talk can help students in Geography classroom to:
- play an active role in discovering and constructing knowledge about the world around them through inquiry-based learning;
- engage in a dialogic environment where teacher use structured talk and strategic questioning – Talk Moves to enhance students’ engagement.
- have more opportunities for students’ talk and encourage them to take ownership of their learning
Refer to Classroom resources:
Why Talk Moves for Geographical Data?
- Acquiring skills relevant to how geographers see, think, and interpret multimodal data is central to geography learning.
- Helping students build data analysis routines.
- Need to develop Talk Moves that reflect the characteristics of the knowledge construction process in geography.
How Was the Research Carried Out?
3 local secondary schools and 6 geography teachers participated in this project. The research team observed and video-recorded 6 lesson observations with each teacher. Pre- Mid- and Post-project teacher interviews were conducted with each teacher. Mid- and Post-project focus group discussions and questionnaire surveys were conducted with students. In total, there are 36 lesson videos, 16 teacher interviews, 12 FGDs and 260 survey forms collected.
The research team then conducted analyses of the data in order to develop Talk Moves for classroom discussion around geographical data. This also helped us understand how geography teachers used Talk Moves to foster students’ classroom engagement and enhance their language use.
What are the Talk Moves for Geographical Data?
There is an important interplay between Talk Moves that foster student engagement and sharpen language use in general, and those that focus on constructing disciplinary routines.
Talk Moves used for Geographical Data:
- provide students support in constructing disciplinary routines:
– understanding the data, connecting data to prior knowledge, and consolidating data- to help students understand the data, teachers use the Talk Moves: Decode, Specify and Analyze
- to connect data to geographical content or concepts, teachers invite students to Classify, Reason and Evaluate
- summarize the data in a coherent manner
– building data analysis routines in geography through strategic, open questioning with Talk Moves
- foster students’ engagement and sharpen their language use in geography with Recast move
How Can Teachers Use the Talk Moves?
Talk Moves for Geographical Data are demonstrated in this 3-part video series which aims to provide examples of how to help students make sense of data, build an explanation and construct a written response:
Title | Overview | Video |
Part 1: Making Sense of Geographical Data | How to use Talk Moves strategically to encourage students to actively engage in the data analysis |
|
Part 2: Deepening Reasoning for Effective Explanation of Geographical Data | How Talk Moves can help students account for a phenomenon and provide a well-supported answer |
|
Part 3: Building Effective Written Explanation from Classroom Talk | How Talk Moves encourage students to construct a written response using appropriate disciplinary language |
|
Related Links
- Lin, Y. (2020). Where literacy meets geography: Using talk moves to engage students in geographical data. HSSE Online, 9(1), 50–65.
- NIEWS June Issue (2021) – Talk Moves: Unearthing Stories In Data
Further Readings
For educators interested in the Productive Talk, you may refer to:
- Alexander, R. (2008). Towards dialogic teaching: Rethinking classroom talk (3rd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Dialogos.
- Alexander, R. (2008). Culture, dialogue and learning: Notes on an emerging pedagogy. In N. Mercer & S. Hodgkinson, eds. Exploring talk in school. Los Angeles: Sage
- Chapin, S., O’Connor, C., & Anderson, N. (2013). Classroom discussions in Math: A teacher’s guide for using talk moves to support the common core and more, grades K–6 (3rd ed). Sausalito, CA: Math Solutions Publications.
- Michaels, S., & O’Connor, C. (2012). Talk science primer. Cambridge, MA: TERC.
- Zwiers, J., & Crawford, M. (2011). Academic conversations: Classroom talk that fosters critical thinking and content understandings. Stenhouse Publishers.
Research Projects
- Developing Disciplinary Literacy Pedagogy in the Sciences [Note: This science project is not directly related to AFD 04/17 TS but has a similar starting point which is Disciplinary Literacy.]
Research Team
To learn more about this research, please contact Principal Investigator Dr Tricia Seow at tricia.seow@nie.edu.sg.
Principal Investigator
Dr Tricia SEOW Ing Chin Dorothy, Humanities & Social Studies Education (HSSE), NIE
Co-Principal Investigator
Dr HO Mei Lin Caroline, English Language Institute of Singapore (ELIS), MOE
Collaborators
Mr CHANG Xiao Ping Julian, formerly of NIE
Ms TAN Hui Yu, formerly of English Language Institute of Singapore (ELIS)
Mrs Annie ANG, Curriculum Planning and Development Division (CPDD), MOE
Ms Elissa GOH, formerly of Curriculum Planning and Development Division (CPDD), MOE
Research Associate
- Ms LIN Yunqing (formerly of NIE)
Acknowledgments
The project (project no. AFD 04/17 TS) was supported by the National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and funded by the Ministry of Education (MOE) Academies Fund. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Singapore MOE and NIE.
This knowledge resource was written by Dr Tricia Seow, Ms Lin Yunqing with input from Ms Monica Lim as of 22 June 2021; updated by Ms Monica Lim on 4 January 2022.
