LET’S TALK!
How Accountable Talk Read Aloud
can help our ELLs reach Common
Core
Linda Marshall
mostmarsh@bellsouth.net
South Grade
What I do (and love doing)
My Amazing Family
(and how we spent our summer vacation!)
Me and My Favorite Guy in My True
Home!
Spencer
Meanest Cat in the World
Secret Ambitions (What I want to be
when I grow up)
I believe in CELEBRATIONS!
“What we read to children should
have charm, magic, impact and
appeal.” Margaret Mooney
What school looked like when I was
young!
(ok maybe an exaggeration but close)
South Grade
Elementary 1962
My School now!
True Confessions
The Stages of Common Core
Resistance
1. Denial
• Maybe if I don’t pay attention they will just go
away!
• Lots of other things went away (like everyone
on grade level by 2014?)
2. Anger
• REALLY! Yet another idea about how to make
education better!
From those folks who brought us:
ESEA, IASA, Reading First, Blueprint 2000, NCLB,
Race to the Top, etc……
3. Bargaining – then the need to regain
control
• Ummm so if I get really good at teaching one
part of Common Core, I won’t have to worry
about the other parts?
• So maybe if I keep moving up grades I won’t
have to learn them so fast?
• They are not going to beat me down! I am
going to learn this junk! I’ll show them…
4. Depression/Fear
• I am old! How am I ever supposed to learn
this new stuff anyway?
• Everyone says Common Core is really hard,
what’s wrong with me, they don’t look so
hard!
• I am old!
5. Questions
• What are these new standards really about?
• What is at their foundation?
So I started reading my mentors: Lucy, Dick, The
Freemans, Cappelini, Fountas and Pinnell,
Owocki, Folks at IRA and others
My anti-mentors: David Coleman, ACT, Pearson,
Parcc, Timothy Shanahan
6. Acceptance
• Here I am! But it is Acceptance with
conditions. NOT JUST ACCEPTANCE – I AM
EMBRACING CC! They are “a vision of what it
means to be a literate person in the twentyfirst century”
• “The standards are designed to be robust and
relevant to the real world, reflecting the
knowledge and skills that our young people
need for success in college and careers.”
WHY ACCEPTANCE? Because…
“They actively seek the wide, deep, and thoughtful
engagement with high-quality literary and
informational texts that builds knowledge,
enlarges experience, and broadens worldviews.
They reflexively demonstrate the cogent
reasoning and use of evidence that is essential
to both private deliberation and responsible
citizenship in a democratic republic. In short,
students who meet the Standards develop the
skills in reading, writing, speaking, and listening
that are the foundation for any creative and
purposeful expression in language.
THEY ARE GOLD
• Who doesn’t want their students thinking,
reading, talking and understanding at high levels
of complexity?
• Who doesn’t want students inferring, thinking
BIG ideas and supporting those idea, naming
themes, synthesizing information, analyzing and
critiquing (all in standard English)?
• Who doesn’t want kids to have rich and exquisite
conversations to grow and build ideas?
Another reason I can accept the
Standards
“The Standards are intended to
be a living work: as new and
better evidence emerges, the
Standards will be revised
accordingly.”
What are my conditions?
• I will lobby for:
• A fair assessment of Common Core – one that
does not put ELLs, children in poverty, ESE
students at a disadvantage
• Assessment of CC that are not used to judge a
teacher’s body of work
• Negotiations about assessing at high text
complexity levels when even the architects of the
CC acknowledge there is not a lot of research to
support putting students in complex text without
scaffolding!
So To Common Core or Not to
Common Core?
• No matter what side of the philosophical
divide you are on – to Common Core or not to
Common Core – we are all on the same side.
We want students who:
“actively seek the wide, deep, and thoughtful
engagement with high-quality literary and
informational texts that builds knowledge,
enlarges experience, and broadens
worldviews. “
Why Accountable Talk Read Aloud with
Grand Conversation?
One methodology that aligns with my
beliefs and honors Common Core !
What is Accountable Talk Read
Aloud
•Accountable Talk or
Interactive Read-aloud
is a powerful, research
based, instructional
tool in which the
teacher not only reads
aloud, but has
predetermined
stopping points where
the teacher and
students “interact”
with the text
•There is always a clear
instructional focus
Purpose?
It gives :
• Teachers and students a variety of ways to think and
talk about text
• Teachers the opportunity to model and students to
practice planned reading strategies
• Students an opportunity to talk back to and build upon
each other’s thinking
• Students the scaffold to develop a theory, or a set of
ideas, this theory will drive student’s discussion
• Students a model of how to develop ways to track and
collect evidence in text around a theory
• Classrooms a way to engage in behaviors that elicit and
sustain meaningful conversations – a way to teach the
“art of conversation”
WHEN
• Accountable Talk Read Aloud
EVERYDAY about 15 minutes
• Whole Class Grand Conversation
about 3 times a week right after the
read aloud, takes anywhere from 3 15 minutes
Instructional Focus
Reading Skills and Strategies such as:
• Inferring
• Predicting
• Previewing and accumulating text
• Envisioning
• Determining main ideas and key details (text
evidence)
• Synthesizing
• Interpreting
• Analyzing
• AND MORE…
Instructional Focus is Determined by…
• Student’s needs (assessments)
• Common Core Standards
• Units or Genres being studied
What Accountable Talk Read Aloud Looks Like
Teacher
• Sitting with children in reading
area
• Reading a purposefully
selected and planned book
marked with post-its
• Models strategies by thinking
aloud
• Models explicit examples of
responding to text (content of
talk) AND also ways to
respond to partners (social
/academic context)
• Teacher “listening in” and
sometimes recording
partnership conversations
• Teacher ignoring raised hands
STUDENTS
•Sitting next to
partner in circle or
rows in reading area
•Observing how the
teacher stops at
strategic places in the
text to think
•Turning and Talking,
or Stopping and
Jotting with partners
at specified points
•Anchors ideas in the
text
What Accountable Talk Sounds Like
TEACHER
• Reading to students with great
expression and fluency,
including gestures
• Modeling comprehension and
explaining vocabulary through
“Think Alouds” while reading
• Prompting and voiceovers that
promote higher order thinking
• Facilitating and prompting
students thinking about
strategies and text
• Occasionally sharing
something she heard during
partnership talk
STUDENTS
•Students sharing their
thinking/ideas related
to what is being read
to their partners
•Students listening,
clarifying, elaborating,
and building upon
each others’ idea
•High engagement –
lots of talking at once
Nonfiction might sound like
Fiction might sound like
WHAT AN ACCOUNTABLE TALK
SOUNDS LIKE…
Why for ELL students?
• Engages students with texts that have more challenging
concepts and/or language than students can read
independently.
• The read-aloud strategy helps English-language learners
develop new vocabulary and syntactic awareness.
• Reading aloud builds good reading habits. It stimulates
imaginations and emotions; models good reading
processes; exposes students to a range of literature;
enriches vocabularies and rhetorical sensitivity;
elucidates difficult texts; helps to distinguish different
genres; supports independent reading; and encourages a
lifelong enjoyment of reading.
Other ways to make Accountable Talk
Accessible:
CAUTIONS
• Too many interruptions during reading can
break the flow of comprehension, making it
difficult for students to hold on to meaning
• Focus should not be too weighted on
strategies without thinking about
understanding the whole text
Reminders
• Accountable book talk is student talk that is
accountable to the learning, where the
students discuss what is being read.
• Community is vital – especially for ELLs.
Accountable talk requires that students take
risks among peers. It is critical that the
classroom has clear expectations about
sharing and responding to one another.
Followed by… Grand Conversation
What is it
• After the read aloud, students sometimes
engage in a conversation in which they share
their thinking about a text
• Time for students to talk, minimal teacher talk
• Students build on one another’s ideas and
thinking about a text using specific sentence
frames
• Talk takes stamina building, just like
independent reading
Purpose
• Engage in behaviors that elicit and
sustain meaningful conversations with
their peers
• Builds community, purpose and passion
around books, ideas, and talk
• Builds listening skills. Students
respectfully listen to one another so that
the direction and purpose of their
discussion is between each other, not
between teacher and student
What Grand Conversation Looks Like:
STUDENT
• Sits in circle next
to partner
• Shifts body toward
and makes eye
contact with
speaker
TEACHER
• Sits in or outside of circle
• Takes notes
• Will sometimes provide
ideas for the
conversation using clear
concise prompts
• Role is to facilitate
students’ talking to one
another and building on
each others thinking
Connection to Common Core?
• Exposes children to a variety of genres, literary
styles and high complexity, giving students
the opportunity to think and talk at high
levels.
Anchor Standards for Speaking
and Listening
Comprehension and Collaboration
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.SL.1 Prepare
for and participate effectively in a
range of conversations and
collaborations with diverse partners,
building on others’ ideas and
expressing their own clearly and
persuasively.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.SL.3
• Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning,
and use of evidence and rhetoric.
Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.SL.4 Present
information, findings, and supporting evidence
such that listeners can follow the line of
reasoning and the organization, development,
and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and
audience.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.SL.6 Adapt speech to a
variety of contexts and communicative tasks,
demonstrating command of formal English when
indicated or appropriate.
Note on range and content of student
speaking and listening
To build a foundation for college and career
readiness, students must have ample
opportunities to take part in a variety of rich,
structured conversations—as part of a whole
class, in small groups, and with a partner. Being
productive members of these conversations
requires that students contribute accurate,
relevant information; respond to and develop
what others have said; make comparisons and
contrasts; and analyze and synthesize a multitude
of ideas in various domains.
Language Anchor Standards
Vocabulary Acquisition and Use
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.L.6 Acquire and use
accurately a range of general academic and
domain-specific words and phrases sufficient
for reading, writing, speaking, and listening at
the college and career readiness level;
demonstrate independence in gathering
vocabulary knowledge when encountering an
unknown term important to comprehension
or expression.
Ways to Build Vocabulary
Academic Language for non-fiction could be:
• Various text features, example – this
photograph teaches me…
• Structures – the author is comparing…
• Main ideas supported with text evidence of
key details – One main idea is_____ I know
this because______
Domain Specific words:
• Photosynthesis, adaptations, etc.- these can
be introduced using word banks, note books
SAMPLE ACADEMIC VOCABULARY FOR
FICTION
Academic Language for fiction could be:
• I’m Predicting
• This is the type of character who
• My interpretation of what this book is really
about
• Symbolic of
• I am accumulating ideas to build a theory
• The main idea supported by these key details
Domain Specific words
Different types of character traits – ex. Shy, lazy
Mysteries – clues, suspects, crime
General Academic Vocabulary that
crosses Content Areas
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
I agree/disagree because
Please say more
I would like to add on to that
The idea I have is__________
That is one way to look at it, another way is
I used to think________ but now I think ____
In my opinion _______
The evidence I have to support my idea ______
Conventions of Standard English
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.L.1 Demonstrate
command of the conventions of standard
English grammar and usage when writing or
speaking.
How to Choose the Perfect Read Aloud
• Do you LOVE IT?
• Is it at or above where your student’s are
conceptually? (always push for a little above)
• What are you studying about
• Which standards are you working on?
MOST IMPORTANT THING
• Choosing texts to read and talk about is a
CRITICAL decision. This is an opportunity to
build strong classroom community, the texts
you select to share, think, and talk about are
invaluable.
• BE INTENTIONAL – help your students be
inspired, react, learn, be challenged by, get
passionate
BOOKS CHANGE LIVES
(So do conversations)
• LOVE THAT DOG