The Walk and Talk

I love to give students time to talk to one another during class in order to develop their ideas and learn more about what others are thinking. I also love to give students time to walk around during class, because we spend too much time sitting!

This is why I do the walk and talk. Here's  a video of the talk stage:


Here are the steps:

• introduce the topic, concepts, or ideas we are talking about. This may be an upcoming project, a unit we completed, favourite methods for doing multiplication, whether Romeo and Juliet were in 'true love', or any other topic of interest.
• (optional) talk about the idea in table groups -when students are sitting in groups they feel particularly safe with, this can be an important stage of idea development
• (optional) briefly Google, journal, doodle, or think about the topic 
• put on some music and walk (or dance) around
• pause the music and get kids to talk to someone near them who is not in their table group. 
• in my classes I sometimes need to also get kids to mix on other levels -someone of a different gender, someone from a different country, someone of a different height...

What strategies do you have that help students think through talking and interact with different people on topics related to school learning?