Productive Classroom Conversations

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Productive Classroom Conversations

• SED 577
• Ron Gray

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What is classroom discourse?

• Discourse language in use
• Why is this important?
• Talking is the primary mode of sense-making in
  human beings. (Vygotsky!!)
• Hearing kids talk gives you access to their
  thinking and allows you to adapt instruction to
  their current understandings.

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Idea 1 Maintaining a safe classroom for student
conversation

• Discourse requires taking risks
• If students do not feel safe, they will not take
  risks
• Classrooms need norms for civil discussions
• You create, teach, and enforce these norms!
• Activity
• What norms did you see in the Fall? Were they
  explicit or implicit?
• For Spring, what norms are important to you? How
  will you introduce, reinforce, and enforce them?

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Idea 2 Priming yourself for classroom
conversations

• Importance of pre-thinking where youd like to
  end up at the finish of the conversation.
• Include this in lesson plans
• Impossible for new teachers to improvise
  effectively. Must plan!
• We will focus on 3 specific discourse strategies
  for the science classroom later.
• Activity Examples of conversations in which you
  were prepared with questions vs. when you were
  not?

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Idea 3 The cognitive demand of questions/tasks

• Sense-making has a lot to do with the types of
  questions that get asked in class.
• Questions and tasks in classrooms can be thought
  of in terms of what they require learners to do
  intellectually.
• Low cognitive demand memorization (recall),
  vocabulary-level understanding, procedural tasks.
• High cognitive demand sense-making (rarely have
  discrete answers).

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Idea 3 The cognitive demand of questions/tasks
(cont.)

• Relation to Blooms taxonomy
• Activity
• Review examples from text.
• Think of example of high cognitive demand
  question youve asked while teaching.
• Scenario Imploding can demo
• 2 low cognitive demand questions/tasks
• 2 high cognitive demand questions/tasks

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Idea 4 Using wait time

• Inequity of rapid-fire questions
• Average wait time 1 sec.
• Fewer respondents, brief responses
• Increased wait time (3-30 seconds)
• More respondents, longer and more thoughtful
  responses.
• Activity Have you experimented with wait time?

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Idea 5 Using different discourse moves

• Specific strategies to improve discourse (thus
  learning) in the classroom.
• Probing Prompts students to make thinking
  public, go beyond first response
• Can you tell me more about
• How did you come up with that?
• Re-voicing Teacher repeats or paraphrases a
  students response
• Marking/amplifying emphasizing one part
• Repairing/classifying corrects an aspect
• Connecting to academic language

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Idea 5 Using different discourse moves (cont.)

• Pressing pressing for more elaborate response,
  evidence, etc.
• Can you finish your thought
• Do you have evidence
• Putting an idea on hold removing an off-topic
  comment from the conversation
• Thats interesting and I think well have time to
  talk about that later, but for now
• Bonus Redirecting.
• So Jake, what do you think?
• Activity Dialogue each of these discourse moves
  in the context of a science lesson

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Idea 6 Scaffolding academic language

• Helping students transition from conversational
  English to academic (scientific) language
• Necessary to identify forms and structure of
  language needed in the lesson (similar to Gunns
  class!)
• It truly is like learning a second language.
• Learning science language learning science
• Activity Brainstorm 3 ways of scaffolding for
  scientific language.

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Idea 7 Modeling peer-to-peer talk for students

• Helping students talk to one-another in the
  science classroom
• Q How do you get your students to take over some
  of the work during discussions?
• Tip Provide example statements and responses.
• This takes a long time, but its worth it.
• Activity Ss are presenting findings of lab in
  small groups. Design list of prompts.

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Idea 8 Avoiding I-R-E patterns of talk

• I-R-E Invitation-Response-Evaluation
• Most common and least effective form of talk in
  classrooms
• Guess-whats-in-my-head dialogue
• T
• S1 S2 S3
• Every time a S talks, the T talks twice

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Idea 8 Avoiding I-R-E patterns of talk (cont.)

• How to move away from it?
• Raising cognitive demand (no easy answers)
• Instead of evaluation, building upon answers
• Add Wait Time 2 instead of evaluation
• T S1
• S2 S3
• Activity Brainstorm ways to decrease your
  voice in classroom discussions.

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Avoiding why questions?

• Why are why questions a problem?
• They often suggest there is an ultimate and
  correct answer.
• Why is the sun important to us? doesnt
  invite speculation but suggests a definitive
  answer.
• In everyday language why requires someone to
  justify his or her behavior.
• why are you running in the hall? managerial
  questions, often used in discipline.
• Solution Replace why with do you think
• Do you think the sun is important to us?

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