Teaching Academic Conversation To Improve Proficiency

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) require that all students, including English Language Learners (ELLs) be able to use academic language across all content areas. In order for this to occur, we need to provide ELLs the necessary tools to engage in academic conversations in all subject areas. These conversations can be powerful teachers that help ELLs learn academic vocabulary and the skills they need to improve communication as well as to produce high quality academic writing. Unfortunately, conversations which encourage ELLs to think more deeply and to communicate their ideas more clearly are not the norm in most classrooms. By not providing them the opportunities to refine these skills needed to succeed academically and professionally, we are doing these students a disservice. Jeff Zwiers has become a leading researcher in the field of classroom language and literacy an his work with academic conversations will be examined in this paper. His thoughts on cultivating the skills and language students need in order to interact effectively in the classroom as well as strategies for scaffolding academic conversations in pairs or groups and ideas for assessing academic language will be discussed and applies to the unit plan detailed at the end of this work. Particular focus will be placed on Zwiers' five core skills of academic conversation: elaborating and clarifying, supporting ideas with examples, challenging or building upon a partner's idea, paraphrasing, and synthesizing and how teaching those skills will help prepare all students, including ELLs, for academic success according to the CCSS.

Conversing with others has given insights to different perspectives, helped build ideas, and solve problems. Academic conversations push students to think and learn in lasting ways. Academic conversations are back-and-forth dialogues in which students focus on a topic and explore it by building, challenging, and negotiating relevant ideas. In Academic Conversations: Classroom Talk that Fosters Critical Thinking and Content Understandings authors Jeff Zwiers and Marie Crawford address the challenges teachers face when trying to bring thoughtful, respectful, and focused conversations into the classroom. They identify five core communications skills needed to help students hold productive academic conversation across content areas: Elaborating and Clarifying Supporting Ideas with Evidence Building On and/or Challenging Ideas Paraphrasing Synthesizing This book shows teachers how to weave the cultivation of academic conversation skills and conversations into current teaching approaches. More specifically, it describes how to use conversations to build the following: Academic vocabulary and grammar Critical thinking skills such as persuasion, interpretation, consideration of multiple perspectives, evaluation, and application Literacy skills such as questioning, predicting, connecting to prior knowledge, and summarizing An academic classroom environment brimming with respect for others' ideas, equity of voice, engagement, and mutual support The ideas in this book stem from many hours of classroom practice, research, and video analysis across grade levels and content areas. Readers will find numerous practical activities for working on each conversation skill, crafting conversation-worthy tasks, and using conversations to teach and assess. Academic Conversations offers an in-depth approach to helping students develop into the future parents, teachers, and leaders who will collaborate to build a better world.

"This title examines the benefits and practices of academic conversations and social discourse in grades 3-12. Builds on activities and why academic conversations are important"--

"For thousands of years people have been using the skills we describe in this book to engage in conversations with others. What isn’t as prevalent, however, is instruction--especially in primary grades—in which we engage students in productive conversations about academic ideas. This book fills that very big need." --Jeff Zwiers & Sara Hamerla Talk about content mastery . . . Primary teachers, you won’t want to miss this: if you’re looking for a single resource to foster purposeful content discussions and high-quality interpersonal engagement, then put Jeff Zwiers and Sara Hamerla’s K-3 Guide to Academic Conversations at the top of your reading list. Whether your students love to talk or not, all must be equipped with key conversation skills such as active listening, taking turns, posing, clarifying, supporting with examples, and arguing ideas. This ready resource comes packed with every imaginable tool you could need to make academic conversations part of your everyday teaching: Sample lesson plans and anchor charts Guidelines for creating effective prompts Applications across content areas, with corresponding assessments Rubrics and protocols for listening to student speech Transcripts of conversations and questions for reflection Companion website with video and downloadable resources Tens of thousands of students in the upper grades have reaped the benefits of academic conversations: high-quality face-to-face interactions, increased motivation, stronger collaborative argumentation skills, and better understanding and retention of content. The K-3 Guide to Academic Conversations is that resource for providing your primary students with the same powerful learning opportunities.

How do you take the passion and chatter that K–5 students bring to the classroom and turn it into conversation skills that make them better learners? Academic conversation can help hone speaking and listening, critical thinking, and social-emotional skills, as well as deepen content knowledge. But despite its effectiveness, this kind of purposeful, student-led discussion is rarely taught or used at the elementary level. The mystery for teachers is how to support students at various stages of development and build an environment of trust that lets them cultivate these skills. In Demystifying Discussion, veteran teacher Jennifer Orr gives elementary school teachers a primer on teaching students to engage in student-led academic conversation. The strategies, sample assessments, and example conversations in this book show you how to help young learners get better at sharing, exploring, and synthesizing their individual and collective thinking. You'll also learn how to manage different perspectives and disagreements among students. This is a book to use all year long to improve classroom discussion, hone students' skills (and your own), and enhance students' overall learning throughout their time in school and beyond.

"Based on a four-year research project funded by the U.S. Department of Education, this book is divided into four sections: Talk in the Mathematics Class (introducing five discussion strategies, or “moves,” that help teachers achieve their instructional goal of strengthening students’ mathematical thinking and learning), What Do We Talk About?, Implementing Talk in the Classroom, and Case Studies."--pub. desc.

A guide to fostering academic discourse in classrooms regardless of subject area, with a focus on English language learners at all levels.

The untold story of the root cause of America's education crisis--and the seemingly endless cycle of multigenerational poverty. It was only after years within the education reform movement that Natalie Wexler stumbled across a hidden explanation for our country's frustrating lack of progress when it comes to providing every child with a quality education. The problem wasn't one of the usual scapegoats: lazy teachers, shoddy facilities, lack of accountability. It was something no one was talking about: the elementary school curriculum's intense focus on decontextualized reading comprehension "skills" at the expense of actual knowledge. In the tradition of Dale Russakoff's The Prize and Dana Goldstein's The Teacher Wars, Wexler brings together history, research, and compelling characters to pull back the curtain on this fundamental flaw in our education system--one that fellow reformers, journalists, and policymakers have long overlooked, and of which the general public, including many parents, remains unaware. But The Knowledge Gap isn't just a story of what schools have gotten so wrong--it also follows innovative educators who are in the process of shedding their deeply ingrained habits, and describes the rewards that have come along: students who are not only excited to learn but are also acquiring the knowledge and vocabulary that will enable them to succeed. If we truly want to fix our education system and unlock the potential of our neediest children, we have no choice but to pay attention.

By now it's a given: if we're to help our ELLs and SELs access the rigorous demands of today's content standards, we must cultivate the "code" that drives school success: academic language. Look no further for assistance than this much-anticipated series from Ivannia Soto, in which she invites field authorities Jeff Zwiers, David and Yvonne Freeman, Margarita Calderon, and Noma LeMoine to share every teacher's need-to-know strategies on the four essential components of academic language. The subject of this volume is conversational discourse. Here, Jeff Zwiers reveals the power of academic conversation in helping students develop language, clarify concepts, comprehend complex texts, and fortify thinking and relational skills. With this book as your roadmap, you'll learn how to: •Foster the skills and language students must develop for productive interactions • Implement strategies for scaffolding paired conversations • Assess student's oral language development as you go It's imperative that our ELLs and SELs practice academic language in rich conversations with others in school, especially when our classrooms may be their only opportunities to receive modeling, scaffolding, and feedback focused on effective discourse. This book, in concert with the other three volumes in the series, can provide both a foundation and a framework for accelerating the learning of diverse students across grade levels and disciplines.