Speaking and Listening Anchor Standard 1

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL1
Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.

Last week, the 6-12 ELA Vertical Team met to discuss chapters from their book study on Teaching Students to Read Like Detectives.  We started by discussing the instructional implications of Speaking and Listening Anchor Standard 1:

• Students need time every day, in every class, to practice their collaborative conversations.
• Students will need to be held accountable for those interactions.
• It is important to provide students with instruction on how to engage in a collaborative conversation.
• Provide students with Sentence Starters
• Have students develop Rules of Conversation

Later we tried out two speaking and listening activities.  Try these in your classroom to build students up towards mastery of that first S&L anchor standard:

Facts in Five 

1. Have students individually generate a personal list of the five most important concepts or facts they have learned about the topic being studied or a list of five predictions, concerns, or areas of interest related to their learning.
2. Have student move into groups of five.
3. Have the group reach consensus on the five most important facts or concepts and clarify their rationale for selecting each.
4. Have each group present their selections and the rationale for each selection to the larger group.
5. Lead a discussion about the content identified, the similarities and differences and the process.
6. Post the choices on the bulletin board for later examination.

Another version of this activity is the 1-3-6 Protocol.

Inside-Outside Circle

It is a Kagan structure summarizing technique that gets students up and moving.  It provides a way to get students who normally would not talk to interact with others.

1. After students read a section of text, the teacher divides the group into two concentric circles containing the same number of students.  Students in the inside circle face a partner standing in the outside circle.
2. Students from the inside circle share something with their partner.
3. Students then reverse their role.
4. The teacher controls the timing, e.g. "Outside circle, it's your turn to share for one minute."
5. The inside circle needs to rotate and the students turn to face their new partner and share.

Inside-Outside Circle engages all students simultaneously and allows the teacher to increase or decrease the number of different pairings that occur. 

~Chandra