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Productive Classroom Conversations

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SED 577 Ron Gray Discourse: language in use Why is this important? Talking is the primary mode of sense-making in human beings. (Vygotsky!!) Hearing kids talk ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Productive Classroom Conversations


1
Productive Classroom Conversations
  • SED 577
  • Ron Gray

2
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.

3
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?

4
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?

5
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).

6
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

7
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?

8
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

9
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

10
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.

11
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.

12
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

13
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.

14
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?

15
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