Lucy West
Education Consultant
phone:
212-766-2120
email: lucy@lucywestpd.com
http://lucywestpd.com
cell:
917-494-1606
Lucy West
lucy@lucywestpd.com
www.lucywestpd.com
Overview
 Acknowledging What You Have Been Experimenting
With
 Considering Some of Your Questions
 Diving Deeper into Classroom Discourse
 Research
 Examples from the Field
Developing Discourse
 People reported working on:
 Think alouds whether students are right or wrong
 Giving students opportunity to “show” us their thinking
 Explicitly teaching active listening
 Talk moves and proactive circles
 Substituting timely feedback for praise
 Staying with students through several exchanges
 Avoiding speaking for children and asking them to
rephrase for each other
 Getting students to explain, agree/disagree, determine
reasonableness
More examples
 People are working on:
 Using Dot Talks and Number Talks in HS classes
 Knowing what we want kids to know so we can highlight
student work/thinking
 Establishing norms for classroom talk
 Naming criteria for good questions
Your Questions
 How do you get deep thinking from reluctant learners?
 How do we invite all students—introverts/extroverts—
into classroom discussion?
 How do we know we (teachers/students) have moved
forward?
 How do we evaluate the thinking?
 What role might pedagogical documentation play?
 How to strengthen ESL student’s ability to actively
communicate in the classroom?
Reviewing Where We Left Off
 Discourse and Development of Thinking Go Hand In
Hand
 Three Basic Moves
 Examining episodes from actual classes
Discourse and Thinking Evolve Together
 Dialogue requires a climate where it is safe for
learners (adults and students) to:
 Come up with ideas (incomplete, way out)
 Think out loud (articulate partial
understanding, express confusion)
 Explain their reasoning (misconceptions)
 Explore their understanding (dive deeper)
3 Basic Essential Talk Moves
 Turn and Talk—has the potential to get 100% of the
students engaged and willing to take a stand
 Tell me more…OR Why do you think that?—puts the
emphasis on finding out what others think and how
they came to the conclusion they did. (Develops
awareness, capacity to think about one’s thinking,
reasoning, precision)
 Who can repeat/paraphrase what was just said?
(Establishes clear expectation to listen; hones capacity
to reflect on ideas, construct viable arguments)
Your Questions
 How do you get deep thinking from reluctant learners?
 How do we invite all students—introverts/extroverts—
into classroom discussion?
 How to strengthen ESL student’s ability to actively
communicate in the classroom?
Teachers improve their teaching
when they:
 Look at actual instances of teaching and learning and
we calibrate our lenses to identify effective instruction
 Identify, name and practice specific teaching moves that
make student thinking visible
 Collaboratively plan lessons informed by continual
inquiry into student responses
 Collectively explore how to engage students in ways that
are relevant and inviting in today’s world
The Case of Jose
 Jose is an ESL student, a former Sp. Ed. student,
extremely reluctant learner
 One Week Summer Program for Teachers
 Day 4
 Small Group Work—Groups of 4
 Growing Squares: Build consecutive square numbers
and find out what you can about how they grow.
Create a poster and use models, tables, graphs, and
language to express your ideas. Be prepared to share
your findings with the whole class.
Set Clear Expectations
 Everyone in your group needs to understand what is on
the poster and be able to explain it.
 Everyone in the the group needs to contribute to what
is on your chart paper.
 The chart must have examples of square numbers that
are labeled, and table that shows the various
dimensions and growth patterns of the square.
 The must include full sentences that describe the
patterns of growth that you noticed.
Reflecting on Jose Video
 Remember Kaizen (taking very small steps toward a
goal).
 What were the small steps Lucy was attempting to take
with Jose to encourage his participation and
understanding?
 Please find handout on right side of folder entitled:
 Cultivating Classroom Discourse to Reveal Student
Thinking
 Please read the document and consider the video again
through this lens.
Connecting Moves to Video
 Communicates through stance/affect: I know you can
do this and I will stick with you until you do. You
matter.
 Take a Non-Judgmental Stance
 You are seeing a different pattern.
 Re-voice, Ask Questions, and Scaffold
 Where is your pattern on the chart?
 Where is the 25, 64?
I Don’t Get It
 Not yet.
Doubt Management
The major difference between less skilled and more
productive learners is not their intelligence,
but their willingness to endure disorientation,
that feeling of being lost or confused.
Shifting Mindsets-From Fixed to Growth
 We believe in your potential and are committed to
helping everyone get smarter.
 We value taking on challenges, exerting effort, and
surmounting obstacles more than we value “natural”
talent and easy success.
 Working hard to learn new things makes you
smarter—it makes your brain grow new connections.
 School is not a place that judges you. It is a place
where people help your brain grow new connections.

Carol Dweck, Mindset and Equitable Education
Cat Food Problem
 12 cans for $15
 15 cans for $20
Towards Dialogic Teaching
 Please read subsection only:
 Seven Arguments for Talk
 Communicative
 Social
 Culture
 Neuroscientific
 Psychological
 Pedagogical
 Political
What questions might people who
think critically habitually ask?
 How do you know that?
 What is your source? What is the source of that
source?
 What evidence do you have? What further evidence do
we need?
 How might I be wrong about this?
 What other perspectives might be valid here?
 What are the possible pitfalls?
 What haven’t we yet considered?
Basic Repertoire of Kinds of Teaching Talk
 Rote
 Recitation
 Instruction/exposition
 Discussion
 Dialogue
 Please read this section. Ask yourself, “What is the
frequency of each of these kinds of talk in my
classroom or the classrooms of teachers I
supervise/coach?
Unpack and Take A Step
 What is the difference between discussion and
dialogue?
 If you agree that more discussion and/or dialogue
would be beneficial to students, what would you need
to learn and believe to increase the amount of
discussion and dialogue in your class(es)?
 Consider the Essential Features of A Dialogic
Classroom as you ponder the question.
Basic, Beginning, Turn and Talk
 The Teaching Channel
 HS History Class
Getting Students to Listen
 Video-Paint the Porch
Class Video
 It took 2/3 can of paint to paint 1/2 of the porch. How
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much paint will I need to paint the whole porch?
Fifth grade class
Heterogeneous group in Fl.
Lucy is the “visiting teacher”
Observing: teachers, coaches, administrators
Focus on increasing student understanding through
talk
Paint Porch-Segment 1
 Teacher: We’re thinking about the problem in similar
ways. I’m going to have someone share their way of
thinking about it. First I want you to think, “Do I
understand what this person is saying? Do I get their
thinking?” And if you don’t get her thinking you are
going to ask her a question. And if you do get her
thinking, I’m going to ask you to explain it or I might
ask you to explain the other person’s thinking. So your
job right now is to understand the picture that is on
the board and the explanation that is going to come
with it. Okay?
Paint the Porch—Segment 2
 Chelsea: Well, I was thinking half of the porch is two
thirds and…
 Teacher: What’s two thirds? How could half be two
thirds? [focus on meaning]
 Chelsea: Because…..I forgot.
 Teacher: What does this two thirds represent. What
was the two thirds meaning? What is the meaning of
the two thirds?
 Chelsea: two thirds…
Combing Through The
Transcript
 Please use the transcript.
 Compare it to the handout: Cultivating Classroom
Discourse to Reveal Student Thinking
 Work with a partner and identify the moves.
How do you get started?
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Clear, explicit, expectations
Naming the moves and practicing them
Slowing down the conversation
Valuing ideas--staying focused on one idea at a time
Unpacking confusion, mistakes, conjectures as a
community--everyone helps
 Staying with a student long enough to understand the
student’s thinking
 Coming back to students who are not fully engaging
with an idea
Know Your Purpose
 If your purpose is to increase student discourse, invent
ways to do that.
 Partner Talk

Face your Partner
 Fishbowl/Video Examples

Analyze and make anchor charts
 Small Group

Roles to play
 Whole class:
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Socratic circles
Inner and outer circles
Cultivating Classroom Discourse To Make Student
Thinking Visible: Operating Principles
 Please read over this document.
 Notice the questions offered in the example column
and characterize the kinds of questions listed there.
Effective Questions Depend on Purpose
 Why is it that we continue to talk about open and
closed questions, higher order thinking questions, and
so forth and the research shows very few teachers are
using these kinds of questions often or well?
Research Findings: Alexander
 Open questions made up 10% of the questioning
exchanges (in 500 classes across 5 countries)
 15% of the sample did NOT ask ANY open questions
 Probing the the teacher to encourage sustained and
extended dialogue occurred in 11% of classes
 Uptake questions occurred in only 4%
 43% of teachers did not use any such moves
 Pupils’ exchanges were very short—5 seconds on
average
 Pupil answers were limited to 3 words or less 70% of
the time
Learning from Research
 Questions are designed to encourage reasoning and
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speculation, not just elicit right answers
Oracy is regarded as no less important than literacy
Relationships between talking, reading and writing is
clearly articulated
Sustained oral work in most lessons
Purpose of classroom talk is mainly cognitive—focused on
developing thinking
Teachers model talk at its best
Talk between individual student and teacher is often
sustained over a sequence of several exchanges
Regina’s Logo: Assume the pattern continues to grow in the same
manner. Find a rule or formula to determine the number of tiles
in any size figure.
Size 1
Size 2
Size 3
Size 4
Randall Charles

Randall Charles
BIG IDEA-- EQUIVALENCE:
This word or phrase is a name for the Big Idea; it is not
the idea itself.
Rather the Big Ideas are statements like the following:
“Any number, measure, numerical expression,
algebraic expression, or equation can be
represented in an infinite number of ways that
have the same value.”
Homework from previous night
 Regina’s Logo: find a closed form and recursive
equation to determine the number of squares in a size
13 logo
 Determine what size a logo would be that had 53
squares.
Upon Entering the Class
 Work in Groups of 3 or 4
 Discuss Last Night’s Homework:
 Compare the closed and the recursive equations you
created
 Share how you came up with them
 Why they make sense
 Why you need them
 Then work on Schemel’s logo—pages 3 & 4, #5-9
The Video: Early Work on Talk
 The groups have completed their discussions
 Two students are at the board-one acting as scribe and
the other facilitator
 Teacher is off to the side of the room
 Two students have offered equations and one has
offered a table which have been recorded on the board
 We drop in when the teacher asks how the students
arrived at the equations
The Class has already established that
this is a linear equation and shared a couple of
different yet equivalent equations which are on
the board.
Giselle’s Video
 Write down what teacher is saying.
Day 2—Welcome Back!
 Connections between Achievement Chart and Talk
Moves
 Naming the repertoire of moves made by the teachers
in the videos in response to students
 Assessment for learning (Informal)
 In real time
 Descriptive and Objective
 Evaluation
 Addressing the tension between assessing and
evaluating
 Acknowledging Paradox and Misalignment
Repertoire of Responses
 Validation (You are seeing a different pattern.)
 Scaffold (So where does this pattern show up on the
chart?
 Inclusion (Are you following what he/she said?)
 Backtrack (Trace the thinking to develop selfawareness/self-monitoring.)
 Redirect (Let’s go back to…)
 Probe (Explain your idea.)
 Encourage effort (Try again. You can do it.)
Repertoire of Responses
 Invite discussion (Do you agree/disagree?)
 Return to the Key Ideas (How is this logo growing?)
 Ensuring Safety (You want to hear it again?)
 Make Connections (How is your equation connected to
his equation?)
 Chunking (Wait. Who followed this so far?)
 Careful Choice of Solutions/Perspectives to Discuss
(Ambiguous, faulty, sophisticated)
Achievement Chart/Talk Moves
 More talk time helps students process (think), dig
deeper (inquiry), communicate their ideas and apply
their growing understanding.
Is This Really an Either/Or?
 How is it possible to both cover the curriculum AND
have students engage in rich, robust dialogue
frequently?
 How might we need to think differently about the use
of time in and focus of a lesson in terms of ‘covering
the curriculum’ if we were to include substantial time
for substantive discussion/dialogue in our classrooms
to increase student understanding and application
capacities?
A Both/And Perspective
 Assessment can be enormously constructive in
teaching and learning and also enormously
destructive.

Pollard and Tann
 …assessment debate awash with hidden assumptions,
unstated views, partial truths, confusion, irrelevant
emphasis and jargon.

Derek Rowntree
When and How Do We Assess
 Assessment through conversation
 Assessment through the use of video
 Assessment through student work samples
 Assessment through stop and jot moments
 Assessment through exit tickets
 Self, peer, teacher, coach, authentic audience
assessment
 Before, during, at the end and after, through reflection
Stance of Assessor
 Visible listening—notes, slides, videos to understand
student’s path’s, processes, thinking
 Pedagogy of listening throughout a lesson (e.g.
classroom discourse, stop and jot, inviting questions)
 Inquisitive and responsive—tell me more, show us
what you mean, give an example, draw, write, describe,
explain, help me understand, convince me
Assessment for Learning
 Assessment can help all students to be more
motivated if teachers:
 Emphasize real progress and achievement rather than
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failure
Emphasize effort rather than ability
Emphasize progress against previous personal best
Avoid or play down comparison with others
Raise their awareness regarding the impact comments
and grades can have on confidence and self-esteem
Assessment for Learning
 Assessment can help all students learn if
teachers:
 Are clear with learners about what they are being asked
to learn and how they will know they have been
successful
 Help them become more aware of how, as well as what,
they’re learning
 Help them to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses
 Give them guidance/feedback on how to improve and
opportunities to do so
“The most powerful single influence
enhancing achievement is feedback”
 Quality feedback is needed, not more feedback
 Much of the feedback provided by the teacher to
the student is not valued and not acted on
 Students with a Growth Mindset welcome
feedback and are more likely to use it to improve
their performance
 Oral feedback is much more effective than
written
 The most powerful feedback is provided from
the student to the teacher
Revisiting the Turkey Problem
 It takes 15 minutes per pound to cook a 24 lb. turkey.
How long does it take to cook the turkey?
 Third grade class.
 Clip 1 from last session: 360 minutes = 6 hours, count
jumps of 15 minutes, circle every 4 jumps and get 6
hours
 Clip 2: A shortcut: count 12 jumps of 30 (halving and
doubling strategy)
 Are the students having a discussion or a a dialogue or
are there elements of both?
Work with a Partner
 Write down verbatim what different students say.
 You will use these notes to assess the students in the
class.
What is the evidence?
 What did each of the students who spoke understand?
 What confusions surfaced? Did any student work
through any aspect of the confusion? What is your
evidence?
 Based on what you observed, what might be your
response in terms of instructional moves in
subsequent lessons?
 Is it okay for students to leave the discussion not fully
understanding this new strategy? Why or why not?
Now What
 Learning is messy.
 Different students understand different aspects of
topics under discussion.
 How might continued dialogue begin to build
coherence across the varied types of understanding in
the whole group?
 What strategies can a teacher use once these
differences emerge to ensure that the varying levels of
understanding are being addressed?
From Assessing to Evaluating
 Assess everyday in every moment
 Find some way to document what you are noticing
 Find some way for students to document what they are
learning about their learning, progress, and next steps
How effective are the following
examples of commonly offered
feedback?
 Good Job or Excellent, or Well Done
 Smiley Face
 Think!
 Read the Problem!
 Careless Error—Do Over
 72% or 90% or 83%
 Grade: A, B, C, D, F
What is effective feedback?
 Feedback that results in the recipient’s desire and
capacity to take further action that improves the
product or skill the learner is developing.
 Who can provide effective feedback to students?
 Who can provide effective feedback to teachers?
Written Feedback
 Clear
 Focused on one important action or idea
 Usually in question form
 Requires action and resubmission
 The final product is the only product that matters—
not partial credit—reaching standard or above should
require effort and effort is more important than speed,
or “already knowing”
You and Your Colleagues Offer A New
Policy that Addresses the Following:
To what extent should:
1.students be compared to (a) a standard and (b) to each other
2.grades reflect (a) a students performance at the end of the
learning period or (b) a student’s progress during the learning
period
3.grades reflect academic enablers e.g. effort, attendance,
completion of assignments, participation
4.grades reflect the specific depth of knowledge ( e.g. discrete facts;
concepts; problem solving)
Beginning with the End in Mind
 The percent of a student’s final grade devoted to each of
the 4 dilemmas
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in the current policy
in the proposed policy
 The rationale for the change
 The expected impact on student performance – which
students will benefit from the change and which will not
 The expected responses from various stakeholders and
how to address those responses
Before you start, negotiate:
 How many people on a team at your table
 How many teams at your table
 How the teams will ensure that every voice is heard
 How each team will ensure that every team member is
listening to the ideas of others
 How team members will manage time and record
ideas
 Each team will be given 15 minutes to start.
Table Group
 At the end of 15 minutes the table group will reconvene
to hear from each team
 The table group will synthesize the ideas of the subteams
 Each table group posts on go-to meeting the
ideas/suggestions/questions at play at their table