All Great Ideas Begin
by Talking Out Loud:
Redesigning Classroom
Conversations
Outcomes for this Session
• Understand the importance of academic
conversation
• Experience strategies that promote
academic conversation
• Reflect on next steps for increasing
academic conversation in your school
Conversation Cube
• Work with one to two
others and toss the cube.
• Read the quote on top of
the cube
• Reflect on quote &
discuss:
How does this relate to
teaching and learning in
your school?
What is Academic Language?
Phonology
Vocabulary
Grammar
Sociolinguistics
Discourse
• Academic & Technical
• Sentence Frames
• Cooperative
Learning Structures
• Language of
Product - Genre
Metacognition
Learner
Identity
• Builds self-efficacy by valuing
experience, learning styles, and
language
Language
• Identify language and academic
discourse of the content area
Learning
Community
• Promote student to student
communication in the classroom
through cooperative learning
structures
Schema
Building
• Facilitate knowledge construction
around conceptual understanding by
building on background knowledge
and making connections
Students listen and may
answer 1 question at a time
Unsupported opportunities:
group discussions, pairshares
Scaffolded oral output:
sentence frames,
cooperative learning
structures
Extended academic
discourse: quantity, quality,
meaning creating
ACADEMIC Discourse
“Academic discourse not
only describes
knowledge, it sustains
the creation of it.”
Integrating Critical and Creative
Thinking Strategies
It is not about whose viewpoint is “right” . . .
it is getting to deeper understandings with
new and broader perspectives
Three types of argument:
1. Social Arguments
2. Literacy Argument
3. Nonfiction Topic
Social Arguments
• Should chocolate milk be allowed in
schools?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjxpeAom5HU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ4wGDl56Zg
• Should soda be sold in school vending
machines?
Literary Arguments
• Giving Tree – is tree weak or strong?
• Children learn to be more
nuanced
• Lead to deeper understandings
of abstract ideas
• Example: Socratic Seminar,
http://www.ebmcdn.net/fcps/fcps_video_vie
wer.php?viewnode=194301d2a52ff
In Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken” is the poet
ambivalent, self-assured, regretful, or adventuresome?
How does this poem connect to the focus on increasing
academic conversations
school?
Thein your
Road
Not Taken
by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted
wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to
way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Nonfiction Argument
• What they know comes from the text
• Requires student to sort, weigh, and
evaluate evidence
• Reasoning coupled with evidence
• Examples: Structured Academic
Controversy, Debate
Academic Controversy
Have you learned the lessons only of those who admired
you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you?
Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced
themselves against you, and disputed passage with you?
Walt Whitman, 1860
Scaffolding Academic Controversy
It was the __________’s
opinion that barbed wire led
to _______.
While ________ felt
that barbed wire was
_________, ________
felt that it
___________..
According to ______
barbed wire is _______
because____________.
Academic Controversy exists when one
student’s idea, information, conclusions,
theories, and opinions are incompatible with
those of another, and the two seek to reach
an agreement. (Johnson & Johnson, 1995)
Aristotle called this deliberate discourse the discussion of advantages and
disadvantages of proposed actions
aimed at synthesizing novel solutions.
Student Talk vs. Teacher Talk
ACADEMIC
CONVERSATIONS
TRADITIONAL CLASS
DISCUSSIONS
97% student talk
97% teacher talk
Average student response –
8-12 seconds
Average student response –
2-3 seconds
No teacher approval or
disapproval
Thinking is paramount,
backed up with textual
evidence
Students listen primarily to
peers
Teacher judgment; emphasis
on correctness
Rightness is paramount;
thinking ends when someone
is right
Students listen primarily to
teacher
Student ownership for “flow”
Teacher ownership for “flow”
What is happening in the brain?
• Reading words or
looking at a picture
(Visual cortex)
• Understanding words
(Wernicke’s area)
• Putting thoughts into
words (Broca’s Area)
• Explaining thinking to
a partner (Widespread
activity)
Journey to Student Driven
Academic Conversation
4
Leadership
3
Listening
Learn how
to share
2
leadership
Cooperation
with the
Work together to
1
listen to each other teacher.
Participation
Learn how
and the text.
to lead the
Become aware Examine their
group.
of problems like assumptions and
perspectives and
factions and
Learn to speak to
how they differ from
dominance.
each other with
Work together those of the text and
minimal mediation by
one another.
to enable all
facilitator.
Begin to change
members to
Learn discussion
their opinions
speak.
skills
because of what
Invest in process
others say.
through sharing
Stand Up, Hand Up, Pair Up
1) What is the purpose of
using academic
conversations?
2) Describe how you could
support moving from talk
to discourse in your
building.
Conversation starters:
I would ____ in order to ______.
If ___, I would use _____.

Conversation
prompts:
 Can you elaborate
on that?
 Please give an
example.
 I was wondering
what you meant
by…
 To build on what
you said…
Academic Conversation Skills Placemat
x
© Jeff Zwiers
To succeed in life, students should be able
to write and speak with clarity, and to read
and listen with comprehension. Language
and thought are inextricably connected,
and as students develop their linguistic
skills, they hone the quality of their thinking
and become intellectually and socially
empowered.
- Ernest Boyer, Carnegie Foundation
How might I apply
this information in
my school?
What resources
and support might
I need?
What professional Who at my school
development might can help lead the
my teachers need? way?