"Turn to your partner..."

I will close out the month with another post to encourage academic discourse in classes.  I have talked about the benefits of turn and talk, embedded a video of it in action, and provided sentence starters so you can try them in your own classes. (Shout out to Mrs. Watson and Mrs. Phillips at NAMS for making and hanging posters of the sentence starters from last week!)  Now, I want you to think about fostering an environment that promotes quality discussions.  For example, when students physically move their desks to a circle shape, they are more apt to go deeper with discussion and begin to take ownership of the talking task.  Having students sit "knees to knees" when in partner talk time does the same thing.  Here are some ideas:

• If you are a teacher who has always had students sitting in rows, I challenge you to move the individual desks to pods of 3-4 students or at least pairs.  I know the high school has new furniture that was made for collaboration and not isolation!
• Take some time to model what partner talk should look like.  Using a student volunteer, have the class analyze posture and position.  It will help them to really understand why you want them to sit a certain way.

Here is a video that highlights the importance of position and also shows how partner talk can help students talk difficult tasks.  The students in this video are analyzing historical documents.