Gloucester
All teachers had introduced weekly random talk partners. The majority see it now as the norm and are more able to work with a wider range of children. It gives more ownership and responsibility for the learning to the child and for each other.
SEND – children are gaining in personal development by working with SEND children.
Using named lollysticks to ask what they thought or what did their partner think has led to great improvement in their listening.
At the beginning of the project some children had negative experiences with their talk partner for that first week and I received e mails from parents requesting their child is not paired with a certain child again. I explained the reasoning for the randomised partners to both parents and children and now the same parent is very positive about the system. Their child has now had time to work with a range of different pupils and at parents’ evening they were able to recognise the benefits of the process.Mitchell Stone – Watermoor C of E Primary