Teacher: What does la lune mean?

Student: The moon.

Teacher: The moon, good.

Teacher: How did people escape from the Fire of London?

Student: They left on boats.

Teacher: Yes, they left on boats.

Teacher: What's the holiday we learned people celebrate in America?
Student: Thanksgiving.

Teacher: Thanksgiving.

What is happening in these interactions? Do adults speak to each other this way? Why do teachers (and I know I've done this too) repeat the exact same words a kid says? How often does this happen? Is it a problem?

In each of these dialogues (if you can call it that), a teacher is saying the exact same words a child has just said. To be as general as possible, in most classrooms teachers parrot students' responses most of the time. I can't think of any authentic speech situation that that resembles, which makes me think it's problematic. I'm not completely sure why, but I have a few hypotheses:

1. Teachers have louder voices than students and want to make sure everyone has heard what a classmate has said.

2. Teachers want to reinforce the correct answer by doubling the amount of times it's been spoken.

3. Teachers use this as a quick way of positively evaluating student learning.

If #1 is true, then it comes from a legitimate concern. We want to make sure all students hear what their classmates have said because an individual student's response contributes to the shared knowledge base that the whole class can use to access new learning. But by repeating student answers, we give them the insidious message that they don't really need to listen to their peers because they'll hear the same thing again from the teacher. The next time we think the rest of the class might not have heard what someone has said, let's think about some alternatives to parroting: 1. If the student's voice was so quiet that some students may have missed what was said, then encourage that student to say it again at a louder volume (and if this is an issue for enough students, then do some explicit instruction on how to speak in class). 2. If other students were looking away from the student answering, or talking at the same time, then remind them of the expectation that they have to listen to and look at the speaker and have the student try answering again.

If #2 is true, then why not have the whole class repeat the answer together? And maybe this can be a reminder that if we ask too many questions that prompt answers short enough to be quickly repeated, we need to vary our question types so that students can engage with learning at a deeper level.

If #3 is true, then let's think of alternatives. Maybe we can get students to be metacognitive by asking them how they knew, or how they figured out, the answer. Did they use a classroom resource? Did they just remember what they learned yesterday? Did they know the answer from having read a book or having seen a website? Or maybe we don't need to say anything at all? After a correct answer to a closed question, maybe we can build pace by moving to the next question or maybe we can take a few seconds to think of a more interesting, open-ended question to ask next.

Let's just stop parroting our kids. Let's just stop...oh, wait.