Talking Chips

AITSL STANDARD :3.3 – Use teaching strategies

Select and use relevant teaching strategies to develop knowledge, skills, problem solving and critical and creative thinking.

The Situation

You want your students to share ideas equally and respectfully.

You want your students to develop speaking and listening skills.

The Solution

Not all students have the confidence to talk and not all students know how to share discussions. Some students have such an amount of confidence that they forget that other people like to talk. Enter Talking Chips, a cooperative learning activity that you may not be familiar with.

Here are the instructions for Talking Chips:

1. Teacher provides topic and provides time for discussion.
2. One student places ‘chip’ in centre and begins talking. All students must remain silent and listen.
3. Another students uses chips and continues discussion. All students must remain silent and listen.
4. The process continues, students can only use two chips in total.
5. All chips used: students collect their chips and continue discussion.

Students learn to share the discussion and focus on listening. You might even say that you cannot repeat the ideas of others and therefore create a need for new ideas.

Jump over to the Speaking and Listening section for more ideas.