I received some positive responses to last week’s article explaining my beliefs about student talk. I also heard some questions about what this kind of talk looks like and how to make it happen in a classroom. As a follow-up, this week I am providing several scenarios to help you identify some of the ways you can shift your instructional focus to incorporate more conversation into your teaching practice.
Scenario 1:
Teacher-Talk Approach: The students are reading the Prologue of Romeo and Juliet. The teacher reads the text aloud and asks students to read along. Then, the teacher rereads the passage line by line, explaining what each line means. At the end, the teacher asks, “Does everybody get it?” The students dutifully reply, “Yes.” “Any questions?” Silence.
Student-Talk Approach: The teacher reads the 14 lines of the Prologue silently as the students follow along. Then, she asks the students to read it along with her in unison. Students then read back through the passage silently, underlining all the phrases they understand. Then, the teacher asks them to discuss with a partner, first talking about the things they understand. Then, she asks them to identify the places they are confused and talk about why, specifically, these places are difficult, formulating questions about their points of confusion. Each pair of students joins with another pair and discusses the points of confusion, clarifying where possible. The remaining questions then go to the entire class and teacher for discussion and explanation.
Craig’s notes: In this scenario, the students read aloud in unison, which allows all to practice fluent oral reading with a safety net (and without subjecting the students to having to listen to befuddled peers butcher Shakespeare). Then, students are doing the comprehension work with a partner, modeling the things that good readers do as they decipher difficult text. Allowing the students to struggle reinforces a growth mindset and helps dispel the idea that the teacher will swoop in to provide correct answers at the slightest sign of difficulty.
Scenario 2:
Teacher-Talk Approach: Government students read a chapter explaining the three branches of the U.S. government. They individually complete a study guide with questions that highlight the most important points in the chapter. Students may use the study guides on an open-note quiz to check for understanding.
Student-Talk Approach: Prior to reading an explanation of the three branches of the U.S. government, students talk in four-person table groups about the following: “What would happen if the U.S. legislature passed a law that violated the Constitution? What would happen if the President tried to overstep his or her power?” After students discuss, the teacher encourages them to look for the answers as they read the chapter. Then, students complete a two-minute quickwrite and talk in pairs about this question: “What is the difference between the separation of powers and checks and balances?” The teacher asks students to answer the question individually in writing on a notecard as a ticket out the door.
Craig’s notes: The teacher in the student-talk scenario follows a variation of Nancy Motley’s Talk Read Talk Write strategy. Students first talk about the topic in order to activate prior knowledge and give a focus for their reading. The second talk involves a common misunderstanding of students and provides students the opportunity to wrestle verbally with this potentially confusing distinction between two related topics. The teacher’s question requires complex thinking rather than a simple regurgitation of facts or definitions. Allowing students to complete the quickwrite before discussing helps them clarify their thoughts. Finally, the exit card allows the teacher to monitor individual students’ understanding and to use that to guide the next day’s instruction.
Scenario 3:
Teacher-Talk Approach: A teacher gives a lecture with accompanying PowerPoint slideshow. Students take notes from the slides to use to study for the upcoming test.
Student-Talk Approach: The teacher delivers the lecture while students take notes on the right column of a page of Cornell Notes. The PowerPoint (if one is used) contains only images and occasionally important words, so students have to take their own notes based on what the teacher says. Every ten minutes, the teacher stops to allow students to work with a partner to compare notes. The partners verbally recreate the preceding portion of the lecture using their notes--adding to, clarifying, or correcting their notes, as needed. For homework, students review and revise their notes--circling key terms, underlining important ideas, adding symbols, charts, pictures, or other marginalia to process what they learned. The next day in class, students work in pairs to review their notes and create higher-level questions about the topics in the left column of the Cornell Notes. These questions can be used for small-group discussion over the notes. For homework, students review their notes and questions and write a summary of the notes at the bottom of their Cornell Notes. At the beginning of the next class period, students share their summaries with a partner before moving on.
Craig’s notes: Welcome to my high school education, except back in the day we used an overhead instead of PowerPoint. Sadly, lecturing is still a frequently overused (and largely ineffective) teaching method. When lecturing must occur, best practice says that teachers should stop and allow students to process approximately every 10 minutes. This provides a state change (which wakes up the brain) and helps the students digest the material. The student-talk approach above takes the class through the multiple stages of the Focused Note-Taking process in which students revisit the material collaboratively in multiple ways--review and revision, questioning, summarizing. This models the necessary repetitions to move the students toward long-term understanding of the content. Yes, it takes longer, but the students will actually understand and remember what they learned. For more on Cornell Notes, read this.
Scenario 4:
Teacher-Talk Approach: A math teacher works a problem that many students missed on a test to show the class how to solve it correctly.
Student-Talk Approach: The math teacher displays the attempt of a fictional student who solved the problematic problem incorrectly. In pairs, students look at what the student did and try to explain where the student went wrong. What was this student’s misunderstanding or mistake? After students discuss, the teacher calls upon a student to share what he and his partner discussed.
Craig’s notes: Teacher talk usually involves passive students. In the student-talk approach, the onus of the learning is on the kids as they wrangle with the problem and try to explain the thought processes of the solver. Practicing this sort of discussion can help the students become more adept at diagnosing their own missteps as they solve problems individually later. Another effective approach is to have one student explain to another how she solved a problem and to allow the other student to verify whether the student’s explanation and solution are correct. Often, students can explain concepts to one another in language that is more accessible than the teacher’s attempts.
Scenario Five:
Teacher-Talk Approach: Students have been working for several days on an essay in class, and, as she did the day before, the teacher begins the period by asking students to take out the assignment sheet and the rubric and follow along as she reminds them of the most important points.
Student-Talk Approach: Since students have heard this once already, the teacher asks the students to take out their assignment sheet and rubrics and to talk with a partner. Partner A explains the assignment to Partner B for 30 seconds. Partner B responds using a sentence stem the teacher has put on the board, “What I heard you saying is…and I also want to point out...” and then re-summarizes what Partner A originally said, adding some additional important information. The teacher asks the pairs to look at the rubric. Partner B begins with the stem, “In order to do well on this essay…” and explains the criteria for an outstanding essay according to the rubric. Partner A responds using this teacher-provided stem: “Some things you should avoid doing are…” and uses the rubric to elaborate. Students then begin work on their essays individually.
Craig’s notes: When teachers “go over” assignment sheets and rubrics, students often hear the “waah waaah waaa-wah waaaah” of Charlie Brown’s teacher. Just because we said it, doesn’t mean they got it. One way to prompt students to look more closely at instructions and rubrics is by asking them to explain things to one another in their own words. The sentence stems provided by the teacher give students a guide for how to use academic register in summarization. These are especially effective for English language learners but work well for all students. Nearly every teenager can use a little practice in how classroom talk differs from informal talk among peers in non-academic settings. As the students are explaining the rubric and assignment sheet to one another, the teacher can monitor the discussions to identify points that require clarification for the entire class.
I could keep writing these scenarios for days, but I’d rather let you do some of the thinking yourselves. I encourage you to find a colleague and have some productive talk as you brainstorm ways to get your students to do more of the talking in your own classes. I think you’ll be pleased at the level of student engagement that will occur after the students grow accustomed to talking--and thinking--about what they are learning.
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