Timed Team Talk is particularly useful as a group discussion structure to analyse indepth concepts. It can also be used for reviewing indepth concepts already explored, developing team cohesiveness and determining students' pre-knowledge.
Timed TeamTalk
Literacy
Describe a character in you novel
Explain what you have done on your project to date
Argue your point of view
Science
Explain what happened in your experient
Explain what oyu think will happen is oyu mix your two chemicals together
Cohesion
Holiday activities
A hobby you enjoy
Favourite meal
Simplified STEP BY STEP - Timed Team TalK
(Team Structure)
(1) The class is given a content topic. (see below for examples)
(2) Each student in a team has a specificied time limit to talk about the topic
(usually 30 seconds or one minute).
(3) A student number from each team is chosen to go first (Eg. Student 2)
(4) Give the first student (and the group) 10 seconds think time before beginning.
(5) The first student begins and talk for the specified time, then the next student talks
(in a clockwise direction).
(6) Once all students have talked, the teacher calls time and may call a student from
each team to summarise what they, or another member of the team said.
Hints for Effective Timed Team Talks
If you are wanting more in depth discussion, you can extend the time and have students talk multiple times. If you want any student to respond to discussions, try the Chips In (Kagan,2009) structure instead. You should always start with content - what you want to teach and then choose your structure. If Time Team Talk doesn't fit your content, find another structure.
Make sure you discuss why the students are doing the Timed Team Talk structure (ie to learn to investigate a topic and present oyur findings to a team for integration into a project).
Aways introduce the Timed Team Talk structure with a fun topic that has no"wrong" answers so that students understand how it works without feeling threatened.