INCREASING RIGOR THROUGH
COLLABORATIVE CONVERSATIONS
“Do Now”
• Review the Final Word protocol
(bottom of 2nd pg.).
• Read the article excerpt at the top.
• Record your thoughts in preparation
for discussion.
March, 2014
Rachel Porter, PhD
OUR ESSENTIAL QUESTION:
How can teachers increase the rigor of
instruction through collaborative classroom
conversations?
Copyright QTL
SESSION OUTLINE
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Connecting to standards
Norms and protocols
Quality of questions/evidence
Seminars, debates and other conversation structures
Accountability and assessment
WHY ALL THE TALK?
College and Career Ready
Students
 They demonstrate independence
 They build strong content knowledge
 They respond to the varying demands of audience, task,
purpose, and discipline
 They comprehend as well as critique
 They value evidence
 They use technology and digital media strategically and
capably
 They come to understand other perspectives and cultures
TEACHING SPEAKING AND LISTENING
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2xt3G6bevo
STRUCTURED CONVERSATIONS
Guidelines
 Norms
 Protocols
 Balancing student and
teacher talk
 Scaffolding

http://www.readwritethink.org/
http://www.nsrfharmony.org/protocols.html
PROMPTS AND STARTERS
From Practical Strategies to Improve Academic Discussions in Mixed Ability Secondary
Content Area Classrooms Kevin Feldman, Ed.D. Kate Kinsella, Ed.D.
USING PROTOCOLS TO COLLABORATE
 In
groups of 3-4, follow the Final Word
protocol to process what you read.
 Be sure that each person has been able to
share the passage they chose and why.
INDEPENDENT REFLECTION
Think about how the protocol and/or group
discussion impacted your experience of the
text.
 On your blank piece of paper, write one thing
you got from the Final Word discussion that
you would not have gotten by reading alone.

SNOWBALL FIGHT!

Crumple up the paper to create a “snowball”.
 Throw
your snowball!
Pick up one snowball that lands on or near you.
 In groups of 3-4, take turns sharing your collected snowballs.

As you share what was written – follow it with a comparison or
connection to what you wrote on your original snowball.
Ex: “That was similar to what I wrote because….” or,
“My experience was different; I felt that….”
PROTOCOLS CAN BE FORMAL OR INFORMAL
Final Word
 Prompt-driven
 Time limits
 Defined roles
 One person speaking at a
time
 Rounds
Snowball Fight
 Prompt-driven
 Loose conversation structure
 2-way talk permitted
 Concrete/active
THE ROLE OF QUESTIONS
Teacher and Student Thinking Cycle
QUESTIONING TOOLS
http://ifps-msd.wikispaces.com/***+Q-CHART+***
QUALITY OF QUESTIONS – AND NOT OR
Lower Level
 Finite set of right answers
 DOK 1, 2
 RBT Remember, Understand
 Convergent
 Accuracy
Higher Level
 Multiple
approaches/answers
 DOK 3, 4
 RBT Evaluate, Create
 Divergent
 Creativity, critical thinking
Good discussions have a mix of both!
QUESTIONING TOOLS
http://ifps-msd.wikispaces.com/***+Q-CHART+***
QUESTIONING TOOLS

Select a piece of content from the following:






Ecosystems
George Washington
Surface Area
Vincent Van Gogh
Food safety
Your choice
Use the Q Chart to generate 3 questions around that content of
varying complexity.
 Share with a partner.

QUESTIONS AND RIGOR
USE OF EVIDENCE
Quality of questions over quantity of questions
 Wait time
 Engage everyone
 Require students to back up their answers.

WHY?
HOW DO YOU KNOW?
WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THAT?
WHERE IN THE TEXT….

PAIDEIA AND SOCRATIC SEMINAR
PAIDEIA IN ACTION
As you watch the video, reflect on the following:
What
do you notice the students doing/
saying?
What do you notice the teacher doing/
saying?
What makes it work?
SOCRATIC SEMINAR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pGVR6ZF_2M
REFLECTION – THINK/PAIR/SHARE
What
did you notice in the video –
what jumped out at you?
What made it work?
What is your experience with
Paideia/Socratic seminars?
Teacher and Student Thinking Cycle
ACCOUNTABILITY & ASSESSMENT
Roles and responsibilities
 Clear expectations
 Self, peer and teacher assessment
 Rubrics
 Observable and measurable participation

http://www.gpb.org/files/handout-2-class-discussion-teaching-learning-_rubric.pdf
OBSERVING CLASSROOM CONVERSATIONS

Student-led Writing Critique Discussion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Jeo79t9nkY

Flannery O’Connor Class Discussion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxTuPVtayOI
SESSION OUTLINE
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Connecting to standards
Norms and protocols
Quality of questions/evidence
Seminars, debates and other conversation structures
Accountability and assessment
OUR ESSENTIAL QUESTION:
How can teachers increase the rigor of
instruction through collaborative
classroom conversations?
Copyright QTL
TIPS AND TRICKS
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Set the stage.
Know yourself.
Recognize the diversity of your students.
Set a framework and objective for the discussion.
Provide a common base for understanding.
Be an active facilitator.
Foster civility.
Be prepared to deal with tense or emotional moments.
Summarize.
Reflect.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzRHaxy5b3w
THANK YOU!
Please provide feedback @
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/275QYBK
Increasing Rigor
Through Collaborative Conversations
Rachel Porter, PhD
QTL Programs Director
rporter@qtlcenters.org
919-368-7029
The Centers for Quality Teaching and Learning
4009 Barrett Dr., Suite 102 Raleigh, NC 27609
www.qtlcenters.org 919-878-0540
The Final Word
Read the following article excerpt and respond to the prompts at the bottom of the page.
Listening well, like speaking well, is also a thoughtful act. When you listen closely to someone
else’s statement, you first “hear” what he or she says, simply breaking down and decoding
the surface meaning of the words, phrases, and sentences. There is also a deeper level to
listening, a level that we might call listening as thinking. In the case of more complex
statements, you must analyze what you’ve been told, struggling with a kind of listening for
comprehension not unlike the reading for comprehension that gets so much attention in
middle and high school language arts classes. Further, if you hope to truly share your
partner’s thoughts, you have to work at listening empathetically with as few of your own
prejudices at work as possible. Thankfully, in conversation, unlike reading, you can check for
understanding almost immediately by paraphrasing what you think you’ve heard or by
asking a follow-up question, something that good listeners do constantly as they work toward
understanding.
Obviously, when done well, speaking and listening are more immediately collaborative than
reading and writing and require a kind of proactive partnership, even when those involved
discover that they disagree with each other. Thus, in the give and take of conversation,
simple thoughts become more complex through the interaction of one mind with another.
And when two or more minds cooperate in shared dialogue, a more sophisticated
understanding of curricular concepts is almost always the result. In order to teach the
fundamental ideas in math, science, social studies, and the arts, we have to teach students
how to converse about math, science, social studies, and the arts. The simple lesson that
teachers sometimes forget is that learning to communicate is learning to think.
Excerpted from Speak Up and Listen, 2009 by Terry Roberts
and Laura Billings of the National Paideia Center
Processing for “The Final Word”
The portion of this text that struck me the most was the sentence (record the first few words) _______________________
____________ in paragraph ____. This struck me because __________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________________.
My second choice would be ____________________ in paragraph ___ . It also struck me because ___________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________________.
The Final Word Protocol – Procedures:
Round 1: (6-8 minutes)



One person begins by reading, “The passage that struck me the most is ___, paragraph ___.” After all group members have
found the passage, read it for them. Then, tell why you selected the passage. (No more than 2 minutes)
Proceeding around the circle, each person RESPONDS to the passage shared by the first person (no more than 1 minute
each). No dialogue, no discussion! Each person responds only to the first person’s topic.
After hearing each person’s response, the person who started the round has 1 minute to present their Final Word on the
selection. This can be a summary and/or a summation of new learning.
ROUND 2…and continuing, until all members start a round and have a chance to have The Final Word.
Taken from Murphy’s Whole-Faculty Study Groups®
©COPYRIGHT, 2005, WFSG Institute
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Rigorous Classroom Conversations Evidence Collection
Teacher Behaviors
Student Behaviors
Interpretation
(According to CCSS Speaking and Listening Standards)
©QTL 2014
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The Centers for Quality Teaching and Learning
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COLLABORATIVE CONVERSATIONS
Topic
My Take-Aways
1. Connecting to standards
2. Norms and protocols
3. Quality of
questions/evidence
4. Seminars, debates and
other conversation
structures
5. Accountability and
assessment
Questions I still have:
©QTL 2014
www.qtlcenters.org
The Centers for Quality Teaching and Learning
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