"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  The students in this video are analyzing historical documents.

Discussion Stems

Last week I posted on "the basics" for incorporating turn and talk.  Hopefully you have tried it out or at least reflected on how much you provide talk time in your classes.  Tori Mazur, ESL teacher at NAMS, brought up some great points on the benefits of talk time for English Language Learners.  In her comment, Tori noted how providing talk time:

• helps ELLs "rehearse", which is especially good before writing down ideas.
• provides social safety for students who feel more confident sharing with one than a large group.
• allows for peers to "coach" one another.

Many students will not be successful with turn and talk without instruction and guidance from you.  Sentence frames and question stems are a great way to help students begin to use academic language during class discussions.  I have collected some great sentence starters and/or question stems for different content areas. 

>>General Sentence Starters<<

>>Math Talk Stems<<

>>Social Studies Sentence Frames<<

>>Rich Questioning in Science<<

You want these to be in students' hands, not yours!  Post on the wall, tape to students desks, or provide copies for your students so they can regularly use these.  Good luck!

The Basics of Turn and Talk

One of the goals of the Common Core State Standards writers was to build natural collaboration among students.  "Turn and talk" opportunities are imperative in all classrooms.  Peer conversations give students an active role in learning.  It enables students to take their thinking and articulate it into words, which allows their brains to build and make connections that would typically not occur.  Also, the listening component allows students to hear the thinking of their peers, which helps them to clarify their own thoughts.

Here are 5 steps that will help to ensure that effective buddy talking is occurring in your classroom:

• Plan:  Write questions ahead of time to ensure that they are higher level and build on one another.
• Pose:  Have students sit knee to knee so they can see eye to eye.  Also give students indicators of who's talking first.
• Wait:  Students need 10-15 seconds, or more, to formulate an answer.  During the wait time, repeat the question, as well as provide supporting quesitons and scaffolds where appropriate.
• Monitor & Feedback:  The teacher should be listening to students as they are responding to check for understanding.  This is also a time to identify students whose thinking will benefit the entire group.
• WRITE!:  In the final steps, students should have an opportunity to solidify their understanding by piecing together their original thoughts with their new understanding from the turn and talk session through written expression.  

Here is a clip of Turn and Talk in action.  

NS632.GR12.Taubman.Reading.Turn and Talk from Uncommon Schools on Vimeo.

Here are some things to note from the video:

• Discussion is not about the obvious.  Students are responding to a rigorous prompt.
• This discussion is not an ending point, but it is a starting point for their lesson.  This discussion leads somewhere.

I will add more to supplement this topic of accountable talk in future posts.

~Chandra

What's a ThingLink?

My September 4, 2013 "Graphic Organizers" post used a web 2.0 tool called ThingLink.  ThinkLink helps images come alive by embedding video, links, and information within an image.  It is a great way for teachers to give information to students and also a fantastic way for students to show learning by creating their own.

If you want more examples of how you can use ThingLink in your classroom, read the links below:

1. Read "10 Innovative Ways to Use ThinkLing in the Classroom" on Edudemic
2. Check out the tutorials and CCSS aligned samples in the ThingLink Toolkit

Smore Literacy Development Resources

Here is a Smore that contains lots of literacy resources, courtesy of Carla Shinn, Media Specialist at AHS.  Enjoy!

The F Word

Hopefully my title got your attention.
The F word I'm referring to is not something you'll see etched in a bathroom stall.  It's FAILURE.

I just read an online article on Edutopia called "Making Friends with Failure" by Ainissa Ramirez.  In the article, Ramirez says, "Failure makes you a better, stronger, and wiser human being." I think you should take some time and read the full article to learn the author's thoughts on encouraging our students to take academic risks in order for them to become better students.  Ramirez is a proponent of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) focused tasks to help in that process.  

-->>Click here to read the article<<-- 

Graphic Organizers

Graphic organizers help to make abstract ideas and relationships clear.

• Graphic organizers show students how to think about the information they are learning.
• They make new information manageable by enabling students to chunk it to fit into their existing memory.
• They help students build connections and explore relationships to what they already know.
• Organizers also help students recall information more readily.

There are so many ways they can be used...here are just a few:  structure the note taking; generate ideas; record key text information; guide reading; select, sequence, restructure, and store information; organize ideas as a pre-writing tool; focus on what is important; and summarize  learning.

Hover your cursor over the the small circles within my Graphic Organizer ThingLink to discover many resources you can use.

Be sure there is an intended purpose for the graphic organizer you provide AND that the students understand that they will be using the completed organizer for a specific purpose.