Make Friends With The Chat

Teaching live online is scary, but it looks like a necessity for the immediate future. Sure, there are teachers who are wonderfully comfortable setting up virtual classrooms, sharing screens, juggling multiple windows, and pasting links, all while appearing calm, composed, and charming on the webcam. Meanwhile, others struggle with multitasking. They cringe when they catch a glimpse of their resting Zoom face. They share their screen to present yet panic when the familiar screen layout disappears. They are flummoxed by multiple tabs and layers upon layers of windows. Their colleagues' talk of apps, extensions, and add-ons is a foreign language. Though they spent the summer immersed in training to build up their online instruction prowess, they freeze when the pressure is on because their new learning is still new, and they can't yet navigate everything fluently. If you are an educator in this second group, please know you are not alone. You are in a silent majority, I suspect.  

If the thought of teaching online is giving you nightmares, it's time to make friends with The Chat. Every synchronous learning platform I know has a feature that allows participants to post text into a stream that everyone else in the session can read. Different platforms have different bells and whistles, but a standard chat feature is constant in all. With the goal of engaging students in mind, the chat can be your best friend and not-so-secret weapon to get learners to respond without having to execute any fancy online maneuvers. 

When you are teaching online, the chat may be the only tool you need for synchronous engagement. Once you give it a try, you'll discover that the chat feature is a simple yet effective tool to meet a multiplicity of teacher needs. 

Getting to Know Your Students:  The first few minutes of an online session is a great time to pose a question for students to answer so you and their classmates can get to know them. As a "bell ringer," have students add their responses to the chat:  What's your favorite food (or animal, team, place, YouTuber, thing to watch or listen to, blog)? What is something everyone should know about you? What was something embarrassing you did that you're willing to share with others? What makes you laugh? What's a quality you admire in others? in yourself? Be sure to share your own answer so others can get to know you, too. You get teacher bonus points as an educator if you can devise an opening question that also provides an engaging focus to build students' interest in the day's lesson. As the year goes on, invite students to submit their own ideas for opening questions.  

Taking a Temperature Check:  Social-emotional learning is especially important in a remote learning environments where teachers can't pick up on nonverbal cues and body language as they greet their students each day. Part of your daily routine can involve checking in with students to see how they are doing emotionally. Post a number in the chat from 1 to 5 to let me know how you're feeling today. 5 means fantastic; 1 means lousy. As you get to know your students better, you can ask them to elaborate on or explain their responses if they choose. Another option is to ask students to post an emoji that tells how they're doing. To access emojis in Google Meets, students can right click (or two-finger click on a touchpad)  and select "Emoji" from the menu.  

Assessing Prior Knowledge: Have you ever been in a class where the teacher didn't realize that all the students already knew everything they were teaching that day? Or have you, as a teacher, ever discovered midway through a unit that one of your students is an expert on the topic being covered? The chat can be a great place to ascertain what your students may already know before you teach a lesson. You can ask students to rate their own knowledge of a subject or proficiency of a skill with a simple numeric or letter-grade scale. You could also pose an open-ended prompt or question:  What is everything you know or think you know about reptiles? List as many US politicians as you can. When I say the word "Renaissance," what names, places, or ideas come to mind? In the chat, give me examples of adjectives. Take notice of who is responding and the accuracy of their responses to give you an idea of how to proceed. 

Checking for Attention: Sometimes you just want to know if your students are still awake or paying attention or if they are flipping through Tik Tok videos as you teach to an empty e-classroom. Asking students to provide a quick response in the chat every few minutes encourages them to stay mentally online during instruction. This is the virtual learning equivalent of "Can I get an 'amen'?" Try using some check-ins like these:  Type yes or no to tell us whether you agree or disagree with that. If you're following what I am saying, type, "Got it" in the chat. Give me an LOL if you thought that dad joke was at least a little bit funny and a NLOL if you are not laughing. Put that definition into your own words. What are some qualities of a good friend? Keeping the pace lively with lots of opportunities to respond in the chat will promote active attention and engagement and will keep your students on their toes (or at least their fingertips on their keyboards).   

Building Community: When your students celebrate one another's contributions and affirm one another, they grow closer as a community of learners. Many great AVID teachers I know incorporate a variety of claps, cheers, and chants to create group celebrations in live classrooms. The chat can be a channel for similar affirmations. When a student gives a well-reasoned response, invite your students to add some words of praise or encouragement into the chat. Develop some class traditions. I like the Power Wooosh, where everyone types the word "Woooosh!"(spelling is not standardized in onomatopoeia world, so spell it however you think it is spelled) into the chat but doesn't press send until I give the signal. Then, on the count of three, we all press send and overwhelm the chat with simultaneous explosions of positive energy directed toward the student(s) who did something praiseworthy. Ask your students to come up with ways to affirm one another, to celebrate accomplishments, to acknowledge birthdays, etc. Pretty soon, your virtual classroom will feel more and more like an in-person community. 

Encouraging Curiosity:  What questions do you have about. . . ? What do you want to know about this topic? Post one thing you wonder about this topic. Questions like these can turn your chat into a wonderland of wonderment. Ask students to add a question to their notes and then add it to the chat. These questions can form the basis for future instruction or for a class research assignment. Using students' questions as the basis for later research assignments and activities can build buy-in. 

Taking a Brain Break: For a fun one-minute activity each day, play a quick round of Truth or Falsehood. You can start by stating one true or untrue statement about yourself and then asking students to put in the chat to indicate whether they think the statement is a truth or a falsehood. Did my teacher really meet Cher in an elevator in Vegas? Did my teacher really once live in a house previously owned by a murderer? Has my teacher really never eaten broccoli? Once the votes are cast, reveal the answer and see how many students you stumped (BTW, only one of those is true about me). A different student can be assigned each day to try to stump the class. 

Formative Assessment: Use the chat as a quick check to see how well students are understanding what you are teaching. A 1-5 self-score about level of comprehension, a multiple choice question, or a one-sentence summary of what you've learned can be a speedy way to take a snapshot of how students are doing. It's not the most accurate since students are self reporting and could just copy the answer of the people who posted more quickly, but it's better than not checking in at all. When you don't have the time or the expertise to do a Google Form or use another tool, the chat can provide some data to help you know whether to keep teaching, slow down, or speed ahead. Consider saving the chat at the end of your class session to have more time to peruse student responses. 

Developing Language:  Providing students with language stems or with sentence frames can help students build confidence in putting words together using correct English syntax (or another language if you're a LOTE teacher). Create intentional moments where you ask students to compose a complete sentence in the chat, and give them a frame to help the reluctant ones start. A compare or contrast lesson can turn into a writing skill builder with a frames like these: Although many mammals __________, humans are among the only ones that ________.  The Great Depression and the Recession of 2020 were both characterized by ___________; however, the Great Depression ________.  As students write complex sentences and receive praise for their efforts, they will begin transfer that skill to other writing and to speaking. Another way the chat can be a language learner's friend is to use it to generate academic vocabulary prior to writing. Before having students summarize their learning, ask the class to add to the chat any academic words they think should appear in most good summaries of the content. Ask students to incorporate a specified number of words from the community word bank into their summaries. 

Building Writing Fluency: The more students write, the better they will get and the more easily they will put words together. Operating a classroom where the chat feature is in heavy use can increase the amount of linguistic output of your students significantly. Find opportunities to encourage increasingly lengthy and elaborate responses using correct sentence structure and conventions, but don't correct aggressively. It's better to praise what you want to see than shame students for taking unsuccessful risks.  

Synthesizing and Summarizing Learning: Asking students to sum up their learning or pull everything together from a series of lessons can be an effective exit ticket in an online classroom. Write one great sentence that captures the gist of what we learned today. In exactly 25 words, summarize what you want to remember about insects after today's lesson. Add to the chat the most important thing you learned in class today. Write your prediction about what you think will happen to the main character when we resume this story next time. Summarizing is an essential life skill that will make students more effective note-takers, create better writers, reinforce the learning for long-term retention, and prevent them from boring others with long-winded stories at dinner parties in their future. 

Speaking of becoming long-winded and boring, I've probably maxed out your attention span with these ideas. I'd love to hear some of yours, though, so if you have other thoughts about how to use the chat to improve instruction online, add them to the comments (the asynchronous chat, if you will) below.  

In Defense of Turn and Talk

Several weeks ago at a literacy conference in Waco, I heard an impressive set of speakers talk for three days about reading and writing. If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed a barrage of tweets detailing many of my takeaways from this rich learning experience. My tweets and retweets were digital-age “Amens” as these literacy gurus preached about the importance of student choice in reading, providing authentic reading and writing experiences, ways teachers can support and promote reading, and growing students to become more literate, discerning citizens.

One thing I didn’t tweet was an offhand comment made by one of the presenters. Just before he asked us to turn and talk with a neighbor about a question he posed, the speaker said, “Don’t you think we’ve kind of overdone ‘Turn and Talk’ in schools?” He said it as if the pair-share were some sort of plague spreading maliciously though classrooms, killing learning by forcing students to interact with one another. According to him, America’s teachers are Turn-and-Talking their students to death. Turn and Talk, he seemed to believe, is as passé as bottle flipping and fidget spinners.

As an educator who spends hours each week in classrooms, I have to respectfully disagree with the notion that we are asking students to talk with a neighbor too frequently or that the strategy is losing its power. The undisputed truth about classroom talk is that in most classrooms, teachers still do the majority of the talking. Full-class discussions usually involve only a fraction of the students and don’t give every kid the chance to work through the ideas on their own. The idea that we are asking our students to share too frequently seems absurd to me, but, having spent several days listening and agreeing with this particular literacy expert, I am trying to figure out where his opinion is coming from.

I’ve identified several ways Turn and Talk might go bad; let’s call them Turn and Talk Traps. Perhaps this student talk naysayer has experienced these pitfalls and is objecting based on his observations.

Making Turn and Talk a Thing: There’s a danger when using any learning strategy that the strategy itself may become something bigger than it ought to be. We make it a “thing” rather than just providing a topic, question, or prompt and asking our kids to talk with one another about it. When this happens, we risk the danger of making our strategies bigger than the learning they are supposed to facilitate. We turn them into elaborate productions.  We say things like, “Okay, kids, we are about to do a Turn and Talk,” as if we are saying, “Now it’s time to do a triple axel followed by a double lutz and a quadruple salchow.” Students don’t necessarily need to know the terminology behind every teacher move we make. Turning to a neighbor and talking about your learning can (and probably should) be a seamless part of our daily lessons, a habit we get into because we know that all our students—not just a few—deserve the opportunity to talk through and test out their ideas so they can develop complex understandings of their own and the learning will stick. Instead of “doing a Turn and Talk,” simply ask students to turn to a neighbor and talk. It’s really simple and effective.      

Nebulous Talk:  Another misstep is asking students to turn and talk without giving them direction or parameters for their discussion. This leaves them with uncertainty: What am I supposed to talk about? How long? When am I supposed to talk, and when am I supposed to listen? Who talks first? I’ve been guilty of stopping my lesson at what seems to be an appropriate spot and asking my students to discuss the content with their table neighbor. A handful of students talk while the others visit about their weekend or simply stare at one another, unsure of exactly what they are expected to say. Sometimes I’ve provided way too much time for my nebulous classroom talk so there is no sense of urgency about getting to the discussion. Student talk should be focused, succinct, and accompanied by clear expectations. Carefully planned questions can provide a spark for meaningful talk. Sentence frames and stems offer some structure and help students develop more sophisticated academic language. Talk can be timed; roles of each partner can be clarified. When the teacher has a clear plan for what is supposed to happen during this talk time, students don’t see this as an arduous add-on to their day.    

Turn and Talk Without a Follow Up: Paired student talk probably shouldn’t be an end in itself, but it can be meaningful as a lead-in to something else. For instance, posing a question to the entire class and allowing students to discuss it with a partner before opening it up to the full class gives students confidence to respond because they’ve tried their ideas out on a partner. Turn and Talk can precede student writing, aid students in summarizing and clarifying information in the midst of a lecture or video, serve as closure to a lesson (followed by a share-out of key takeaways), allow students to refine their own notes through comparison with another student’s, assist students in figuring out how to approach a problem, or help students set a personal goal or objective for the day. The way to make student talk worthwhile is to show students that it’s an integral part to their learning process and will improve their chances of success in our classrooms.

I’m sticking to my original stance. We haven’t done Turn and Talk to death. Perhaps we’ve done it poorly from time to time. When it’s done well—which isn’t that difficult to pull off with a little planning—paired student talk can be one of the most powerful tools for empowering students to make their learning meaningful, grow in their understanding, and clarify and reinforce their thinking. We could do a whole lot worse than making Turn and Talk our go-to strategy in the classroom.

What are your thoughts about incorporating student talk in your classroom? Turn to someone nearby and discuss that question for a minute. Afterwards, you can put some of these ideas into practice.      

11 Reasons to Love Sentence Frames and Stems

Sentence frames and stems are versatile, adaptable, and powerful. In case you are unfamiliar with the concept, here are some examples:

Sentence frames are _____ because they not only ______ but they also _______.

One reason I think sentence stems are useful is. . .

Although I usually use sentence frames for _______, I could also use them for ______.

You may not love these like I do. . . yet. I hope you will after you read this list of 11 reasons to love sentence frames and stems:

1.  Sentence stems can turn a question into a complete answer. You can ask a question, flip it into a statement, and give it to your students as a prompt to get them accustomed to providing complete responses to your questions. (Ex.  Why are sentence frames helpful?  Sentence frames are helpful because. . .).

2.  Sentence frames encourage students to write increasingly complicated sentences. By providing students with a framework for linking several ideas together like mature writers do, students can see their ideas come to life in sophisticated ways. With repeated practice, these patterns will become more natural.

3.  English language learners and native speakers with developing language skills can see how the words they know fit together in sentences. Learning a bunch of vocabulary words isn’t useful until you can use those words in grammatically correct sentences. If I were learning Spanish, a sentence frame such as “Me gustan _______ pero no me gusta ______” could help me like and dislike all kinds of things until I could form sentences of my own without support. .

4.  Teachers can build their students’ academic vocabulary by providing stems and frames that use words they want their students to use. A stem like “The thing I like best about the book is. . . “ can be beefed up with spicier vocabulary: “The most outstanding aspect of the novel is. .  .” or “A noteworthy characteristic of this novel is. . . .”

5.  Sentence frames are phenomenal discussion starters. Students who might be reluctant to speak in a group or in front of the class may have more courage to try if they have a frame or stem to guide their speaking, and they’ll be impressed at how smart they sound.

6.  Using stems and frames for speaking improves academic language usage, and when students become more adept at using words they see across content areas and discipline-specific vocabulary, they begin writing and speaking like scholars.

7. Students who are more comfortable using academic language (see #6 above) know and can use the words they see on standardized tests without having to take mind-numbing practice tests or doing tedious test-prep packets.

8. Writing, reading, and speaking are inextricably linked. As students practice writing and speaking using stems, they acquire building blocks of language that will help them be more skilled readers.

9.  Students will quit speaking and writing in fragments and simple sentences.

10.  They are a technique for differentiation. Sentence frames are like training wheels for writing and speaking. Students who need them can use them to practice, and once they can communicate effectively without them, they no longer have to use them.

11. Agreeing, disagreeing, asking a follow-up question, introducing a new idea, offering an alternative perspective, and building on another’s idea are all important aspects of college- and career communication that are challenging for students. Having a handy list of stems categorized by their function gives students the framework they need to incorporate these elements into class discussions. You may even find that students start linking ideas together more smoothly in their writing.

Whatever level of learners you work with, sentence frames and stems can be useful in jump-starting conversation, upping the quality of language usage, and helping people express their ideas. If you haven’t used them, give them a try. It doesn’t have to be a big production or ordeal; simply put the stem or frame you want students to learn on the screen or board for all to see. Consider giving students several options of stems to choose from.

Pretty soon, you’ll discover that sentence stems and frames have made your students _________  ____________, ___________  _________, and _______  _______!

Face-to-Face (or Side-by-Side) in a One-to-One World

Kids today (I say in my crotchety old man voice) are really good at staring at screens. I guess that’s not a totally new thing. I have photos of me and my brother sitting slack-jawed in front of the television watching Scooby Doo cartoons in our pajamas. My brother spent countless hours playing Atari games while I tuned into every game show our rabbit-ears antenna picked up (Big bucks, no whammies! ... I”ll take Paul Lynde to block.... Survey says…!). 

Screens today are ubiquitous, though. You can’t escape them. Now they fit in your pocket, so there’s no excuse to be away from your electronic device. Teens no longer phone one another; the hours spent tying up the family landline while switching back and forth between two friends on call waiting have been replaced with chats, snaps, tweets, and insta-whatevers with numerous friends and acquaintances around the globe. In many ways, young people are more social now than they ever were. 

But they don’t do a lot of speaking. 

In fact, when given the opportunity to have free time, I’ve found that groups of high schoolers will sit in a circle staring at their phones in silence rather than engage in live, in-person conversation. 

There’s a tiny part of my English teacher self that is pleased that teens are spending more time than ever composing written text for others to read. So much written communication has to have some positive impact on writing skills, right? There’s probably something to that theory, though the flipside is probably just as valid: students’ abilities to write a “correct” sentence are declining. (Incidentally, I recently learned that it’s now considered rude and offensive in the world of teenage electronic communication to punctuate the ends of sentences. A colleague’s fifteen-year-old son informed her that every time she put a period at the end of text it was like she was stabbing him, and another friend’s college-aged son asked her why she was angry when she sent a reply of “Yes.” This is completely off the topic, but I wanted my readers who communicate with their offspring to be aware of their unintentional electronic microaggressions.)  

More alarming to me than the decline in traditional conventions of written English is the dip in spoken interactions among screencentric people. As education moves to an increase in instructional technology in classrooms, teachers need to be mindful not to forget the importance of face-to-face verbal communication. 

Before you dismiss this as the angry rant of a technophobe, let me assure you that I’m no Luddite. Technology opens up so many possibilities to transform the factory model of traditional education by engaging students in authentic writing and inquiry in ways we never would have imagined several decades ago. Collaboration can occur within a classroom, across class periods, and even across the globe. Teachers who know AVID strategies can WICORize traditional lessons with thoughtful technology applications. As many campuses shift to one-to-one environments where every student has a laptop, Chromebook, or other device handy at all times, teachers can harness the power of technology to extend student learning to new frontiers. 

At the same time, teachers run the risk of creating classrooms where digital communication completely replaces speaking. On a technology-rich campus, students could conceivably spend their entire school day sitting in chairs and staring at screens, with all communication occurring electronically. 

I don’t think this is ideal. Students still need to talk to one another. Students still need to get up and out of their seats. Teachers need to plan deliberately to include both of those. 

I’ve often said that the ability to write well gives a person an edge in life. A well-written essay can get you into college. An effective cover letter can land you an interview for a competitive job. A compelling persuasive e-mail can get others to listen to what you have to say. 

It’s also true that the ability to speak clearly gives a person an advantage. Someone who can speak articulately and powerfully can ace an interview, move a crowd to action, convince coworkers to listen to a new idea, and get what they want. A person who is comfortable speaking to another, who makes eye contact, who employs effective body language, and who has a command of spoken language can succeed in higher education and in the workplace. As educators, we have the responsibility to provide our students with every opportunity to hone oral language skills as one of the “basics” along with reading and writing. 

If you’re working on a campus with abundant access to technology, please embrace those powerful tools for reaching students and helping them learn in 21st century ways. At the same time, intentionally build in opportunities for students to talk to one another—in pairs, in small groups, and in more formal larger groupings. Allow them to collaborate as they work on their devices, and not just by sharing a document and typing away in silence. Provide turn-and-talk breaks for students to share what they are learning, strategize about their next moves, offer constructive feedback, and question one another. Explore options for having students communicate orally using technology applications such as video chats and recordings (both video and audio). Don’t forget, though, that speaking at a camera isn’t the same thing as learning to express oneself in front of another human being who can respond in the moment. Developing comfort, poise, and fluency in oral communication will serve our students in so many ways. 

Medical experts have become especially vocal recently about the dangers of sitting. Combining speaking and movement—like asking students to walk and talk with a partner about something they are learning—keeps our classrooms from becoming silent deathtraps. An abundance of  technology in the classroom makes it easy for students to sit; teachers, too, can sit at their desks and monitor student work from their own screens. Be aware that though this may be a learning preference for some, others need to process orally, interact with others, and get their blood flowing through movement. 

Technology is wonderful. So are speaking and movement. Making room for all three turns the 21st century classroom into a brain-based happy place where students can thrive and develop the skills they need to succeed wherever the road of life takes them. 

A Common Language

All I wanted was a washcloth.

After a 19-hour flight from Dallas followed by a full day of sightseeing in the summer Sydney sun, I checked into my hotel, thinking only of how wonderful it would be to wash the layers of sunscreen off my travel-weary face.

My hotel bathroom was well equipped with hand towels, bath towels, tiny soaps and shampoos, but nary a washcloth was to be found. I called down to the front desk, and asked if housekeeping could please bring me a washcloth. The person on the phone, who spoke Australian English, seemed a little flummoxed by my request but said she would take care of it.

About 45 minutes later, there was a knock on my door. When I answered, a hotel staff member handed me a tall pile of hand towels, smiled, and walked off. At this point, I was too tired to think, so I simply assumed that perhaps washcloths aren’t a thing Australians use. After all, it’s surrounded by ocean. Maybe everyone just brings their own loofah with them when they travel.

The next day, I mentioned this confusing incident to some Australian friends at lunch. At my mention of the word “washcloth,” they looked at each other with perplexity. So I did a little charades while describing the item I was looking for. In unison, my friends replied, “Oh, you mean a face washer!”

That night, back at the hotel, I called to request a face washer and within 15 minutes had a supply to last me the rest of my stay.

Sometimes, even in a place where everyone speaks a common language, knowing the preferred terminology for something can make all the difference.   

The same is true in schools. When there isn’t some standardization across the school, we risk confusing, frustrating, or completely losing the students. If a student goes to five different academic classes and several electives in the course of the day and each teacher has a different tardy policy, a different term for the activity the students are expected to be working on as the bell rings, a different policy for late work, a different test makeup policy, a different idea of what note-taking should look like, and a different organizational scheme for notebooks, the student has to juggle six or seven separate sets of guidelines throughout the day.

The power of AVID Schoolwide is that schools establish a common language and present instruction with a unified voice across the school. If the entire faculty of a school shares some basic understandings and terminology—about what the note-taking process entails, how students should organize their materials, where and how students should keep track of assignments and due dates, what a Socratic Seminar or Philosophical Chairs discussion looks like, how students are expected to use academic language, what students should be doing when they read critically in all classes, and how collaborative structures can enhance instruction and deepen student learning—students succeed with fewer impediments.

Imagine a student who experiences three so-called Socratic Seminars in one month of school in three different classes. In one class, the students and teacher arrange chairs in a circle, and the teacher introduces various topics for discussion and debate. The subjects for discussion range from school dress code to the winners of the MTV Music Awards. There is no grade, nor is there any follow-up activity. In another class, the students circle up and discuss a teacher-generated topic about a novel they had been reading. During the discussion, the teacher tallies the number of times each student speaks and assigns a grade determined by “participation and quality of discussion.” In the third class, the teacher gives students an article to read and annotate for homework. At the beginning of class the next day, students in triads generate questions for discussion. Students form a circle of desks and engage in 30 minutes of discussion to deepen the class’s understanding of the article. The teacher only interrupts to remind and encourage students to use the academic language stems they have been practicing in class. The following day, the students begin writing an essay about the article using the notes they took during the discussion to help them.

At the end of that month, if you asked that student to explain Socratic Seminars to you, you’d probably get a muddled answer since the student had three disparate experiences that were all called by the same name. If the faculty at that campus had only had  a shared understanding of the purpose and procedures of Socratic Seminars, students could focus on deepening their skills for rigorous academic discussion rather than learning to navigate the rules in multiple environments.

The AVID Site Team is a powerful force for maximizing the impact of AVID for all students on campus. With members from many content areas, the Site Team can determine what best practices should be disseminated across the campus and provide staff development to help establish a common understanding among the faculty. Having high-impact instructional practices in place for critical reading, note-taking, academic language, content area writing, collaboration, and organization is the passport students need to transfer learning and build overall academic skills throughout the instructional day.  

With a common language for instruction, we can keep students from driving on the wrong side of the road academically. When the academic language barrier is removed, everyone can work toward shared goals that will open doors down the road for success in college and careers.

What Student-Focused Talk Looks Like

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.

Academically Speaking

I’ve never been very good at keeping up with the slanguage of the youngsters. My conversational skills are hardly on fleek when I realize I’m not sufficiently jiggy wit’ it to tell the difference between someone who’s your bae and someone who’s basic. Clearly, I’m not fly or legit. My bad.  

Slang and colloquial expressions fall under the broad communicative category of the “casual register.” We speak in the casual register when we’re hanging out with friends and perhaps family. It’s language that doesn’t have to abide by the formal rules of grammar and sometimes consists of short bursts that aren’t “complete” sentences.

For many of our students, the casual register is the only register. Even when they write in school, they reproduce strings of words and not-words that defy traditional grammar rules and don’t approximate standard English.

As teachers who are preparing our students for the post-high-school world--whether it be college or career--we have the responsibility to introduce our students to a new mode of communication:  the formal or academic register.

This doesn’t mean that we devalue the casual register that may be many students’ preferred (or only) method of discourse. While honoring this aspect of the students’ language, we need to make students aware of when it’s appropriate and inappropriate to use.

Speaking in casual register is probably not a good idea when you visit a bank to talk to a loan officer about securing funds for your startup business.

I wouldn’t advise trying to schmooze a judge or woo a jury with your mastery of the casual register.

There’s probably a study somewhere that shows that the casual register doesn’t get you too far in job interviews.

And if you’re trying to impress a college professor with a bright idea you’ve thought up, expressing it in the casual register is likely to lessen the idea’s impact.

In our classrooms, we should teach students how to use a new register--the academic register--so they can use it skillfully when the situation is right. Not only do we need to introduce the academic register; we also need to practice it. Simply talking about it is not enough. Students need to be able to shift smoothly into the academic register when the situation calls for it.

Last week, I attended an ESL symposium where Dr. Kate Kinsella talked about this very topic. If Dr. Kinsella had her way, teachers would never slip into the casual register with their students and classrooms would become linguistic sanctuaries where the academic register could flourish. Some teachers who like to make students feel comfortable by interacting more colloquially with them may find this a bit extreme. I think, though, that even the most casual among us will concede that it’s our responsibility to teach students how to speak in a way that will increase their odds of future success in a world dominated by those who have attained some advanced education.

So how do we teach our students how to employ the academic register? Here’s a brief list of strategies, many of which I learned from Dr. Kinsella’s presentation:

Model academic register in your classroom discussions. Provide written examples of statements in the academic register, allow students to follow along as you read them aloud, and then ask students to repeat them chorally as a class. This gives your students a chance to hear how scholars put words together and practice hearing themselves do the same.

Make the students speak, and require them to speak in academic register, even in small-group discussions and pair-shares. Don’t accept one-word answers to discussion questions. People who speak in the academic register speak in complete sentences. Before a discussion, remind your students to practice speaking in complete thoughts.  

One way to reinforce responding in complete sentences is to teach students to flip the question. For instance, if the teacher’s question is, “What is one way we can reduce our carbon footprint?”, students can begin their academic-register response with, “One way we can reduce our carbon footprint is….” Depending on the skills and abilities of your students, you may find it useful to display the question and the flipped response so your students have it handy.

Sentence stems and word banks can provide guidelines for academic-register language in discussions. If a student has a handout or card to use, he can refer to the sentence starters and replace “Nuh-uh” with something more appropriate, like, “While I see your point, I think…” or “I understand you think…; however, I believe….”  Giving students lists of transitions to use in various discussion situations provides them with the scaffolding they need to construct increasingly thoughtful contributions to conversations that will sound more scholarly than before.

Noticing academic register in the speaking of others is an ideal way to raise awareness. Using a short video clip of an interview or a TED Talk can provide fodder for discussion about how the speaker communicates as well as about the content conveyed. Let your students see how experts speak and how their method of speaking adds to their credibility.

These are just a few ideas to get you started. Imagine the impact you could have if you were the adult who unlocked this simple secret, one that will open so many doors for your students. It’s, like, totally awesome. It’s wicked.  It’s phat.  Word!

Thanks for all you do to keep your students’ futures full of possibilities.

Craig