2. All Great Ideas Begin by Talking Out Loud:
Redesigning Classroom Conversations

3. Carol
Take a minute and introduce yourselves to the people around you -- in groups of 4-5 – how does this cartoon relate to what you see in classrooms?

4. Outcomes for this Session
Understand the importance of academic conversation
Experience strategies that promote academic conversation
Reflect on next steps for increasing academic conversation in your school
Karen
This session is all about Academic Conversations as researched by Jeff Zwiers and others.
We would like to emphasize the importance of conversation – that is talk – with students, share strategies that promote purposeful conversation, and provide time for you to reflect on how you might support academic conversation structures with your teachers.

5. Conversation Cube Work with one to two others and toss the cube.
Read the quote on top of the cube
Reflect on quote & discuss:
How does this relate to teaching and learning in your school?
Carol
To get everyone started with conversation, please use the die and follow the directions on slide.
Identify individuals to share some group thinking and conversation.

6. What is Academic Language?
Phonology
Vocabulary
Academic & Technical
Grammar
Sentence Frames
Sociolinguistics
Cooperative Learning Structures
Discourse
Language of Product - Genre
Darina
So what is Academic LANGUAGE? More than conversation – and we need to build stamina for academic discourse.
Discourse: The way a discipline talks and writes; How to talk like a scientist, historian, author or mathematician
Organization
Text Structure
Register (formal v. informal)
Academic Language is the language students use to describe complex ideas, abstract concepts & higher order thinking

7. Learner Identity
Builds self-efficacy by valuing experience, learning styles, and language
Language
Identify language and academic discourse of the content area
Learning Community
Promote student to student communication in the classroom through cooperative learning structures
Schema Building
Facilitate knowledge construction around conceptual understanding by building on background knowledge and making connections
Metacognition
Darina
So, what exactly is academic conversation? They are broader than just “talk” or the conversation - important is that the student understands their role, part of a community, part of a schema -- a framework in your mind for the conversation – turn taking, responding to questions, etc. Together, this will collectively construct content knowledge and give students the capacity to understand their own thinking and ultimately, learning.

8. Students listen and may answer 1 question at a time
Unsupported opportunities: group discussions, pair-shares
Scaffolded oral output: sentence frames, cooperative learning structures
Darina
Moving from Talk to Discourse
Extended academic discourse: quantity, quality, meaning creating
ACADEMIC Discourse

9. “Academic discourse not only describes knowledge, it sustains the creation of it.”
Darina

10. Integrating Critical and Creative Thinking Strategies
Carol

11. Three types of argument: Social Arguments Literacy Argument
It is not about whose viewpoint is “right” it is getting to deeper understandings with new and broader perspectives
Three types of argument:
Social Arguments
Literacy Argument
Nonfiction Topic
Carol

12. Social Arguments Should chocolate milk be allowed in schools?
Should soda be sold in school vending machines?
Carol

13. Literary Arguments Giving Tree – is tree weak or strong?
Children learn to be more
nuanced
Lead to deeper understandings
of abstract ideas
Example: Socratic Seminar,
Carol

14. The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
In Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken” is the poet ambivalent, self-assured, regretful, or adventuresome?
How does this poem connect to the focus on increasing academic conversations in your school?
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Carol’s example Socratic Dialogue

15. Nonfiction Argument What they know comes from the text
Requires student to sort, weigh, and evaluate evidence
Reasoning coupled with evidence
Examples: Structured Academic Controversy, Debate
Carol

16. Academic Controversy
Have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you?
Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed passage with you?
Walt Whitman, 1860
Darina
Another instructional strategy that involves conversations around divergent ideas –
Structure

17. Scaffolding Academic Controversy
It was the __________’s opinion that barbed wire led to _______.
While ________ felt that barbed wire was _________, ________ felt that it ___________..
Darina
Example from 7th grade Social Studies
According to ______ barbed wire is _______ because____________.

18. Academic Controversy exists when one student’s idea, information, conclusions, theories, and opinions are incompatible with those of another, and the two seek to reach an agreement. (Johnson & Johnson, 1995)
Aristotle called this deliberate discourse - the discussion of advantages and disadvantages of proposed actions aimed at synthesizing novel solutions.
Darina
So take a look at this quote and how might it relate to the previous examples –
The Walt Whitman quote
Pictures of the use of barbed wire
How, in structuring and scaffolding conversation, has student knowledge and learning been impacted?
Both examples show perspectives and controversies…

19. Darina

20. Student Talk vs. Teacher Talk
ACADEMIC CONVERSATIONS
TRADITIONAL CLASS DISCUSSIONS
97% student talk
97% teacher talk
Average student response – 8-12 seconds
Average student response – 2-3 seconds
No teacher approval or disapproval
Teacher judgment; emphasis on correctness
Thinking is paramount, backed up with textual evidence
Rightness is paramount; thinking ends when someone is right
Students listen primarily to peers
Students listen primarily to teacher
Student ownership for “flow”
Teacher ownership for “flow”
Karen
Take a look at this data comparing the traditional format for teacher led classes and discussions vs. teacher facilitating student conversation.???
Think of the teachers in your school – which do you see as academic v. traditional

21. What is happening in the brain?
Reading words or looking at a picture (Visual cortex)
Understanding words (Wernicke’s area)
Karen
Doing PET (positron emission tomography) scans on the brain can show which areas of the brain “light up” or fire when different specific acts are occurring.

22. Putting thoughts into words (Broca’s Area)
Explaining thinking to a partner (Widespread activity)
Karen
Listening to spoken words automatically activates understanding the meaning, so Wernicke's area is activated. Saying words depends on controlling precisely the muscles of the face and mouth. so these areas area activated. Generating words depends on finding words and getting them ready to say, so Broca's area is activated.
So having students engage in explaining their thinking (not merely social talk) they are firing off many more neurons and more synapses are connecting.

23. Academic Conversation
Journey to Student Driven
Academic Conversation 4
Leadership 3
Listening
Learn how to share leadership with the teacher.
Learn how to lead the group.
2 Cooperation 1
Participation
Work together to listen to each other and the text.
Examine their assumptions and perspectives and how they differ from those of the text and one another.
Begin to change their opinions because of what others say.
Become aware of problems like factions and dominance.
Work together to enable all members to speak.
Karen
Learn to speak to each other with minimal mediation by facilitator. Learn discussion skills Invest in process through sharing experience.

24. Stand Up, Hand Up, Pair Up
What is the purpose of using academic conversations?
Describe how you could support moving from talk to discourse in your building.
Conversation prompts:
Can you elaborate on that?
Please give an example.
I was wondering what you meant by…
To build on what you said…
Karen – Stand Up, Hand Up, Pair up
Conversation starters:
I would ____ in order to ______.
If ___, I would use _____.

25. Academic Conversation Skills Placematx
Karen
© Jeff Zwiers

26. To succeed in life, students should be able to write and speak with clarity, and to read and listen with comprehension. Language and thought are inextricably connected, and as students develop their linguistic skills, they hone the quality of their thinking and become intellectually and socially empowered.
- Ernest Boyer, Carnegie Foundation
Carol

27. How might I apply this information in my school?
Karen
How might I apply this information in my school?
What resources and support might I need?
What professional development might my teachers need?
Who at my school can help lead the way?