People spend their most important time of their personality formation at school. During that period of time many of their skills and habits develop and originate. Many of these stay with people for the rest of their lives.
Teachers as well as parents want every school lesson to maximally facilitate children’s development, and not have any negative effects. Obviously it is only possible to achieve by making the lesson more correspondent to children’s nature and each of their abilities.
That is why it is necessary to point out the fact that the basic, endless source of joy for a child is his own educational and working practice. Neither an interesting story of a teacher, nor a video demonstration can be more useful for pupils, than their own serious as well as interesting and for each student successful practice. A dull and unattractive educational process causes passivity and reception of mental activity and work in general.
Children’s intellectual and verbal development is without question one of the first aims for school education. Speech and intellect are interrelated, because speech is not only a form but also it is the way of thinking. By expressing our ideas through complex verbal formulations we contribute to success of our mental activity. In these cases we notice that some things we used to considered as evident and comprehensive actually are in need of clarification. Describing something different to somebody is often the best way to understand your own thought and think through it’s content.
It is necessary to point out that in psychology the process of understanding is regarded as the translation of information from the teacher’s language into the pupils’. Therefore, speech, both the outward and inner form of it, is the basis for educational activity. And speech development is the most effective, stimulable and controllable way of students intellectual development.
It’s quite obvious that a human being is a creature, that likes to talk and to be heard. Look at these numerous talk shows where everybody tries to shut down each other. At school, the teacher often turns the lesson into his own show, and keeps talking without a stop, while the students only have to keep silent and listen.
Modern schools in most countries all over the world don’t give students the opportunity to speak on the studied topics in the lesson for more than three minutes a day. During the lesson the teacher can question six to seven students at most, and each of them have about two to three minutes to answer. When there are thirty pupils in one class, then in six lessons of a usual school day even the most active students talk about a topic for no more than three minutes on average. The rest of school time students have to remain silent, in order to not interfere with the teacher and other pupils. But three minutes a day are absolutely insufficient for the speech development of children. This especially affects primary school students. Speech delay is prejudicial for children’s mental development.
It’s not a secret that even the most talented teachers have to dictate in relations with students, in order to keep discipline in class. Most often they don’t have an opportunity to create a lesson, in which all the children would be constantly busy with an educational activity adequate for every student, while not interfering each other. As a result, a lot of students bore in silence during lessons, so that they do not infringe the discipline and don’t invoke the teacher’s anger and corresponding punishment onto themselves.
This suggested method of simultaneous verbal questioning of pupils in the lesson gives every student an opportunity to speak freely and to reason during every lesson for fifteen minutes. It will contribute to childrens’ speech and intellectual development, help kids to understand and to memorize the topic of the lessons better, and decreases the students’ stress, make teachers’ work easier, improve students discipline, and transform the often dull lessons into a vivid and effective process of understanding and learning.
The essence of this method is to enable all students to retell the lesson’s topic, reason aloud, and answer question simultaneously, while not interfering with each other with the help of an uncomplicated equipment that is installed in the classroom. And the teacher being able to selectively listen to retellings and reasonings, or answer students’ questions and comment on them, evaluate them and point out mistakes.
For this purpose at the desk of every student in a classroom a microphone and noise-eliminating headphones are installed. On the teacher’s desk is a console which is used by the teacher to connect to any of the students’ microphones and listen to his answer, without letting the student know.
The method’s main aim – increase the time during which a student speaks about a studied topic during the lesson.
«SPEAK & LEARN» OU company offers you free customer advice as well as free workshop sessions on the Simultaneous Verbal Questioning Method ® at your school . If you choose to use our Method®, our company will install all the necessary equipment in one or several classrooms on a turnkey basis. Our company will also provide you with staff training – your teachers will learn how to use the equipment and how to apply this Method® in their work. Within a year our company offers you a guaranty maintenance of the installed equipment. Your school will be also be receiving Method® development updates and you will get necessary contacts of schools which also use our Method®.