- Ed Week Article - Children Learn from Explaining
- Video about reading makes you heard...not a nerd!
- Articulation and Reflection - necessary to learning. This is a great article about these topics.
- Talk or activities in school shouldn't be what is exciting, LEARNING should be exciting. Talk, writing, reading, activities are all a way to get at learning. What is we do is not exciting, it's simply what we do to get to what is exciting.
- .... part of my job as a teacher is to teach people how to articulate and be heard."
- Hoyt, "In order to be effective in this world, you must be able to communicate. If you can't speak up for yourself, if you can't muster the courage to tell the person you love that you love them, if you can't advocate for your own safety, the world will be a very intimidating and frightening place. I don't want my kids to be intimidated by the world."
- When a parent tells me that his or her child is simply not capable of communicating educational and emotional needs, I see a child even more in need of mastering interpersonal communication. I'm not talking about the value of communication as it relates to grades here; I am talking about the value of communication as it relates to personal health, happiness, and safety. A student who is unwilling to stand up for herself and tell me that she does not understand the difference between an adverb and a verb is also less likely to stand up for herself if she is being harassed or pressured in other areas of her life.
- Listening is important, too!
My learning this week from my Standford University MOOC (Constructive Conversations) by Jeff Zwiers, Sara Rutherford-Quach, and Kenji Hakuta. (I would highly recommend.)
- Students learn best when they are participating with peers.
- Students learn best when they are using language to support knowledge and learning.
- Why Paired Student Conversations?
- Forced to think in real time
- Forced to clarify and adjust thinking.
- Forced to learn from others.
- How to facilitate paired student conversations:
- FA - what do we see/hear/learn via talk?
- Use CAT (conversation Analysis Tool)
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tN6zqpQAwA
- 2 Diminsions:
- Build on and Build up ideas until you have a clear, complete idea (explain, clarify, justify, support)
- Focus on the learning objective (show, grow, and clarify learning)
- 4 conversation skills - create, clarify, fortify, negotiate
- Teaching practice - model, scaffold, strategic
- What makes a conversation constructive?
- Constructive conversations activate learners as instructional resources for each other.
- Overlay thinking and speaking
- Students:
- Know the norms (take turns, listen, add on...)
- Figure out VS Share
- academic vocabulary and syntax
- because... this means...
- When they use PK and NK throughout
- When they communicate what is going on in their minds (take time to think OR use talk to clarify thinking OR think while talking - make thinking visible) - persist
- Add opinions and justify with evidence using academic vocabulary and syntax
- Use the text that is in front of them
- Find the language to say what they want to say
- Consider why
- Teachers:
- Consider the prompt (Quality Questions) and topic
- Consider roles students can play/assume
- Remember that engagement may not equal constructive
- Give time to prep, write about topic, create personal connections/passion
- facilitate discussions instead of engage in them
- Engage all students when "deep thoughts" come up.
- Create a safe environment where everyone can/will participate
- make sure that all voices are heard
- get used to the noise and loss of control
TALK MOVES:
Have a student studio where students watch what you do during a classroom conversation and lists those as "talk moves" students can do:
For example, teachers may press for clarification and explanation, require justifications of proposals and challenges, recognize and challenge misconceptions, demand evidence for claims and arguments, or interpret and "revoice" students' statements. Over time, students can be expected to carry out each of these conversational "moves" themselves in peer discussions. Once the norms for conversation within the classroom have been established, academically productive talk is jointly constructed by teachers and students, working together towards rigorous academic purposes in a thinking curriculum.
The process of Socializing Intelligence takes place in and through talk. Intelligence is much more than an innate ability to think quickly and stockpile bits of information. Intelligence is a set of problem-solving and reasoning capabilities along with the habits of mind that lead one to use those capabilities regularly. It is also a set of beliefs about one’s right and obligation to understand and make sense of the world and one’s capacity to figure things out over time. Intelligent habits of mind are learned through daily expectations placed on the learner. By calling on students to use the skills of intelligent thinking—and by holding them responsible for doing so— educators can teach intelligence.
When classroom talk is accountable to the learning community, students listen to one another, not just obediently keeping quiet until it is their turn to take the floor, but attending carefully so that they can use and build on one another's ideas. Students and teachers paraphrase and expand upon one another's contributions. If speakers aren't sure they understood what someone else said, they make an effort to clarify. They disagree respectfully, challenging a claim, not the person who made it. Students move the
"#$%&'()*!+!,-.-!/0'12&3'*%!#4!5'**367&()! ,!!
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argument forward, sometimes with the teacher's help, sometimes on their own.
Obviously, this kind of talk calls for a certain amount of patience, restraint, and focused effort on the part of students and teachers alike. A youngster who experiences a blinding insight in the middle of a discussion may need to be reminded not to trample all over her classmates' talk in her eagerness to express her thoughts. An adolescent trying out a new idea in front of his peers may need encouragement to articulate his position. And educators, with limited time to help their students reach the standards, must skillfully balance unwavering attention to their learning goals with moments where a discussion “takes a detour.” There are times when something unplanned but significant happens: an unusual comment by a student, evidence of divergent understandings of a particular term, an unexpected outcome of an experiment. Teachers must make on-the-spot judgments about whether to maintain the focus and coherence of the lesson as planned, or to take advantage of a "teachable moment." They must weigh the costs and benefits of shifting course in mid-stream. They must find ways to balance the challenge of keeping the talk focused and academically rigorous with the challenge of including all members of the classroom community as valued, engaged participants, attending to differences in students’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds, previous academic preparation, and interests. Often, those who do not teach fail to realize the complexity of what goes on in the classroom, and thus underestimate the accomplishments of teachers who skillfully establish and maintain Accountable Talk classrooms.
How can we tell whether the talk in a classroom is accountable to the community? There are consistent signs in such classrooms that one can easily spot. Over the course of a few classes we would see students actively participating in talk together. We would probably notice that each student is able to participate in several different kinds of talk activities using appropriate tone and content. We would notice students listening attentively to one another, with a minimum of interruptions. While students would consistently pay attention to other students' contributions, there would be a climate of respect, trust, and risk-taking, with challenges, criticism, or disagreements directed at ideas, not at individuals. We would see students making sure that they understand the previous contributions, asking for clarification where necessary, and willingly clarifying their own contributions for others, building up an argument or complex idea together.
In classrooms where students engage in this kind of talk, we can be sure that we will find a teacher who has carefully laid the groundwork for classroom norms that support it. We are likely to observe a wide array of teacher moves that support accountability to the community, moves that help students and teachers jointly create talk that is responsive to the community.
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