Developing Respectful Disagreement and Listening in Year 3 and 4

Background: I teach in a small rural village primary school in the Ribble Valley with 165 pupils on roll. Our inquiry took place in a mixed Year 3 and 4 class of children aged 7 to 9. Spoken language is present across the curriculum in our setting, but exploratory talk had not been consistently strong. I found that many children were keen to share ideas but less able to listen carefully, build on others’ views, disagree respectfully or articulate deeper reasoning. This affected group work, classroom relationships and the quality of written outcomes. Aims: With my head headteacher, we asked how we could help our pupils to disagree respectfully and with tolerance by developing listening and reasoning skills through talking stems, talking points, ground rules and active listening. We focused particularly on Religious Education (RE) and citizenship through philosophical enquiry, so that children could discuss more complex ideas, listen to each other more carefully and deepen their understanding through dialogue. This was in line with our Christian ethos at the school and helping the children flourish as individuals building life skills needed for adulthood. Methods: I taught a sequence of oracy sessions across January and February 2026, beginning with smaller group discussion and moving towards larger group and whole-class enquiry. I used stories, talking points, talk stems, talk tokens, talk detectives, evaluation tools and collaborative written responses. I tracked class progress, observed case learners, used learner interviews and discussed the lessons afterwards in order to refine the approach. Audio recording was initially planned, but this had to be adapted because not all children wanted to be recorded and the devices themselves affected behaviour and focus. Findings: I found that the class needed more foundation work in listening than I had first anticipated. This involved prior sessions on explicit teaching of listening and active listening skills with the whole class before any of the research sessions could take place. After these sessions had been completed, I was able to move onto the talk aspects of the sessions. Once talk ground rules were embedded and the structure of the sessions became familiar, children became more willing to contribute and more able to listen, agree, disagree and build on others’ ideas. Smaller-group work helped some quieter pupils to contribute, while larger-group work gave children more ideas to respond to. However, some children still needed adult facilitation, more modelling and smaller steps, especially around challenge, elaboration and justification. Implications for practice: This inquiry has shown us that oracy needs to be taught explicitly and slowly, beginning with the basic foundations of listening. I will continue to develop dedicated oracy sessions, use oracy strategies in RE, writing and reading, and build stronger opportunities for philosophical dialogue across school. We, as a school, also intend to keep developing whole-school practice around listening, respectful disagreement and pupil voice through targeted CPD sessions for all our teaching team.

Keywords

oracy, listening, mixed-age primary class, philosophy, discussion, respectful disagreement, research lesson study

Permanent link to cite this item

https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14069/1429
https://doi.org/10.71779/849

Collections

Leading Education Improvement Through Oracy-Oriented Inquiry