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Sammamish High School has defined seven key elements of problem-based learning used in our classrooms. This week we will explore the key element of academic discourse. How students communicate their discoveries and connect them to the overall learning is an essential part of what we do. Without proper communication, progress cannot be made on many projects.

What is Academic Discourse?

Academic discourse encompasses the idea of dialogue, the language used, and a format that facilitates a high level of communication in the classroom. The discourse can range from peer-to-peer discussion to whole-class discussion and can take on many forms: metacognition, presentations, debate, listening, writing, and critiquing others' work. What is important is that students are able to process and interact using academic vocabulary.

Academic discourse is not something that comes easily to most students; rather, it is something that needs to be taught, modeled and recognized by both teachers and students. With strategic instruction around what academic discourse sounds, looks and feels like, it can be a useful tool that enriches all classroom interactions and facilitates deeper learning and retention. As we developed the key elements of our program, the math department reflected on how academic discourse could become stronger in our classrooms.

We defined the most important components of academic discourse within a math classroom and developed an approach to implementing these components.

1. We set the expectation that students will present problems and explain how they reached their answer.

2. We emphasized the importance of using correct vocabulary. For example, math students often confuse an expression and an equation. Making that distinction is important for students. To retain the difference between the two words, they must practice using those words.

3. We made writing in math a norm. Students will be expected to write about the process of how they reached an answer. This serves as another way of seeing how students are processing the material and how they are applying vocabulary words.

Processing the Problem

Through our problem-based learning curriculum, the complexity of problems forces students to communicate with each other more than if they were just working on individual homework. In our unit called "How can the student store maximize their profit?", students work in groups to study a product and how sales would change based on a price increase or decrease. They look at the cost of that product and, based on the data, create a quadratic equation to determine profit. This quadratic tells them at what price change the student store can maximize its profit for that specific product. Students are completing this project while learning about quadratics, so it presents many difficulties. For example, students need to process what each axis represents, and how income, profit and cost are related in this context, identifying break-even points and the vertex.

When presented with a PBL task that is especially difficult, students need one another to process their thinking, providing a natural way for them to become more comfortable with academic discourse. At the end of this unit, students were asked to individually write a letter to the student store recommending a price change. This was a way to assess their use of vocabulary and how their interactions contributed to their understanding of the material. It is also important for students to self-assess their understanding of the material. Processing techniques might include starting the period with vocabulary games, or having students reread their writing and underline the vocabulary words they used.

After completing a unit where students are dependent on communicating with group members, academic discourse is elevated in the classroom. Students cross the threshold of being nervous as they begin talking to their peers about their learning. Prior to implementing our problem-based learning curriculum, most student discourse consisted of students comparing answers. With practice, students find that discourse helps deepen their processing and validates their contributions to the group. As a teacher, modeling academic discourse is essential, but acknowledging students for their academic discourse is what makes it stick in the classroom.

Over the past year, we have established that increasing academic discourse also increases classroom engagement. When students are more likely to interact with their peers and take part in discussions, the long-term benefits of their understanding of the material are apparent in other math courses.
Editor's Note: Visit "Case Study: Reinventing a Public High School with Problem-Based Learning" to stay updated on Edutopia's coverage of Sammamish High School.

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Sammamish High School has defined seven key elements of problem-based learning used in our classrooms. This week we will explore the key element of academic discourse. How students communicate their discoveries and connect them to the overall learning is an essential part of what we do.

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AMLE - Association for Middle Level Education

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You ask the students, "What is the main idea of the passage?"

Joseph responds, "Always persevere," to which you reply, "Very good, Joseph."

In the average classroom, as much as 70% of instructional time consists of these kinds of verbal exchanges between you and students or among students: teacher initiation, student response, teacher evaluation of the response/feedback. Classroom discussion, dialogue, and discourse are the principal means of exchanging ideas, evaluating mastery, developing thinking processes, and reflecting on content and shared thoughts.

Engaging students in effective classroom talk begins by creating a discourse-rich classroom culture. Begin the year by discussing what rich discourse is, the rationale for it, and answering the What's In It for Me question by specifying ways students benefit.

Another key element of building a discourse-rich culture is embedding the spirit of collaboration versus competition. Classroom talk is not only a means of students supporting each other, but also of holding each other accountable by helping clarify, restate, and challenge ideas.

Students may not participate if their thoughts are ridiculed, devalued, or ignored. To that end, establishing norms of discourse helps develop safe spaces, establishes boundaries, and moves the discussion forward.

In my classroom, the norms included specifics on how to engage in active listening, address ideas versus individuals, and respectfully disagree/question. Role-playing appropriate and inappropriate actions can give students a better understanding of their expected role during classroom talk.

A third central element of developing a culture that fosters rich discourse is helping students appreciate the processes to get there versus simply the production of right answers. Make it clear that you value students strategically thinking about, discussing, clarifying, and elaborating on ideas rather than having someone simply state the correct answer in order to save time.

Complex Thinking Processes

Does most of your classroom talk consist of students recalling or reproducing facts? Or, do they often use complex thinking strategies such as making claims supported with evidence and reasoning, discerning the author's purpose and its effect on the interpretation of text, and applying models to tasks? As you begin to reshape and enrich your classroom discourse, planning for and assessing complex thinking processes is essential.

To begin to engage students in more complex thinking processes, be clear about the distinction between difficult and complex. I ask teachers in my professional learning sessions whether the task of spelling a word such as antidisestablishmentarianism is difficult or complex. Many say it's complex. However, if students have a good grasp of phonemic awareness (sounds that build words), spelling long words may be difficult, but not complex.

Webb's Depth of Knowledge (DOK) model (recall, skill/concept, strategic thinking, extended thinking) can be used to plan and assess the complexity of thinking as well as the presence of rigor. This tool may help you plan for the type of discourse that evokes deeper cognitive processes. You might use it to:

Prompt students to describe and analyze the characteristics of texts written during the modernism period.

Identify and explain misconceptions around the discovery of America.

Justify solutions for mathematical tasks involving equations with more than one solution.

Cite evidence and use reasoning to support the claim that an unknown liquid is a mixture.

Webb's DOK is a powerful tool that can help you evoke complex thinking processes during discourse. You'll find a comprehensive graphic at http://static.pdesas.org/content/documents/M1-Slide_19_DOK_Wheel_Slide.pdf

Engage Reluctant Students

You probably have a few students who need their mouths physically pried open before they will contribute. Some are fearful of being critiqued in the courtroom of classmate opinion and find solace in silence. Others are disinterested and prefer to think about everything else except what's going on in your room. Here are a few suggestions for bringing such reticent students into the fold of rich discourse:

Invite them to discuss a topic that is important to them. Interest inventories, heart maps, and informal conversation can help you uncover such topics.

Engage them in partner talk (e.g., pair-share, turn-and-talk) or small group before whole group. More students participate in whole-group talk if first allowed to articulate, clarify, and reorganize thoughts with a partner.

Appreciate wait-time. When you want to know how to repair that leaky faucet in your kitchen or where your favorite retailer is located, you want the best answer in the shortest amount of time. Similarly, in the classroom, you may be guilty of wanting the best answer in the shortest time, given the pressure of staying on target with the pacing guide. Hardly novel but wholly effective, wait-time has been shown to improve not only the proportion of students who respond but the quality of the responses as well.

Name the strategy after a student. For instance, when a student provides a substantive contribution, call it the Johnathan way, Maureen method, or Sharon technique.

Releasing the instructional reins to your students can make you uneasy. Fear of letting go may conjure thoughts of less learning taking place, increasing disorder, and the discomfort of not driving the wheels of learning. However, when students lead discourse, they clarify their own ideas and increase their levels of cognitive and behavioral engagement. It makes their thinking visible and helps you determine the most effective subsequent instructional moves.

To introduce student-led discourse, explicitly model the talk. Have them lead discourse about a topic many are passionate about, such as social media rights for young people, as a way to get them more comfortable and familiar with leading discourse.

Figure 1
Moving from Conventional Discourse to Rich Discourse

Conventional Classroom Discourse Rich Classroom Discourse

Convergent responses

Divergent responses

Known answer questions atypically posed

Multiple answers/explanations possible

Predominantly teacher-driven and led

Students co-construct, drive, and often lead discourse

Students rarely afforded latitude to build on peers' thoughts

Students build on, challenge, revoice, and share ideas with peers

Teacher relies on a few students to carry talk

Many students eagerly participate

Aim is to have correct answer given in shortest time

Goal is to have students articulate strategic thinking

Self-Checking Discourse Quality

A few questions may help you self-assess the quality of discourse in your class:

Is the emphasis on giving the right answers rather than processes and strategies?

Do the verbal interactions follow the teacher-dominated initiation-response-evaluation pattern?

Is discourse carried by the voices of a few where the others are reluctant to contribute?

Do you often provide opportunities for students to lead the discourse?

Do you model and insist wait-time be used as a key component of dialogue?

Do you send non-verbal signals to students based on your perception of their ability to give a quick or correct response?

Does your lack of comfort with content lead you to pose more close-ended questions?

When you create a classroom culture rife with intellectually safe spaces and emphases on processes of strategic thinking versus production of right answers, you invite instructional episodes of rich discourse. Student-led discourse is a powerful way to let students take ownership of their own learning.

Jelani Jabari is president of Pedagogical Solutions, LLC, in Detroit, Michigan. jabari@pdlsolutions.com

Published in AMLE Magazine, November 2014.

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You ask the students, “What is the main idea of the passage?” Joseph responds, “Always persevere,” to which you reply, “Very good, Joseph.” In the average classroom, as much as 70% of instructional time consists of these kinds of verbal exchanges between you and students or among students: teacher initiation, student response, teacher evaluation of the response/feedback.

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Oracy in the Classroom: Strategies for Effective Talk

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Speaking at LIFT 2007, Sugata Mitra talks about his Hole in the Wall project. Young kids in this project figured out how to use a PC on their own -- and then taught other kids. He asks, what else can children teach themselves?

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First Grade Student Talk - Mirror, Restating, Revoicing, and Ranking

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First Grade Student Talk - Mirror, Restating, Revoicing, and Ranking

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One of the most important things we can do for our students is to give them more opportunities to talk in the classroom. It helps build community, encourages learning from others, and helps with the acquisition of a language.

When I was an ESL teacher in my first classroom position, I was at a school where more than half of the students were developing bilinguals. Despite our commitments to helping these students acquire English, state assessments showed that from year-to-year, they weren't making progress with their acquisition of English.

Things changed when, as a 4th grade teacher, I planned a thematic unit with a capstone activity of a stage play for the school. Lessons went from me talking at the class to students collaborating in groups with each other, and one-on-one with me. The results were extraordinary; A boy who never spoke in my class before requested the lead role in our end-of-unit play. He was soon reading his lines in English on little note cards, and laughing along with his peers through rehearsals.

Because of the change in classroom atmosphere, my shy quiet student who would only speak in Spanish was now performing in front of all his peers, in English. This marked an enormous transition for him as a student and dramatically shifted my instructional practices going forward.

When we curate social classrooms, our students can move mountains.

When teachers facilitate conversations in the classroom, students become more comfortable and astute in all aspects of language. This has been confirmed by decades of research, showing that students who are not yet proficient in the language commonly used by their class are simply not given as many opportunities to talk, and that during the few times they are, they are frequently only asked questions around comprehension (Durkin, 1978).

"Were you able to read that?" or "Did you understand this?" can only go so far, however, when it elicits merely a nod or a yes/no. Instead of checking for comprehension, we educators must first build the pathways to enable a steady flow of comprehension, through comfortable, ample, and lively conversation.

Teachers must create lessons that encourage purposeful and planned opportunities to talk, researchers at San Diego State University observed (Fisher, Frey, and Rothenberg, 2008). Noisy, talkative classrooms are a good thing - they facilitate conversations among peers and with the teacher.

So how can we invest in building these lively, engaging classrooms for our developing bilingual students? I've outlined four simple strategies below to provide some guidance.

Happy, noisy classrooms can make the difference. Let's help our students make amazing progress, both in and out of the classroom, by encouraging them to talk more.

Get the Infographic

Email yourself an infographic - 7 Conversational Strategies for Developing Bilinguals - to guide the activities in your happy, noisy classroom.

4 Simple Strategies for Lively Classrooms

1. Think-Pair-Share

Purpose: Use this activity to help students share their responses to a prompt. Also can be used for Vocabulary or Summarizing.
Steps:

1. Tell the class the prompt and provide one minute for students to think of their response. They can use graphic organizers or take notes to write down their thoughts.

2. Have students turn to a partner and have Partner One share their response for 60 seconds. Then, provide 30 seconds for Partner Two to ask questions or pose counterarguments. Repeat with Partner Two sharing for 60 seconds, following with 30 seconds for discussion.

3. Bring the whole class together and have pairs report on what was shared. Write responses and note points at which students agree and disagree. If possible, create a whole group response to the prompt.

2. Last Word

Purpose: Use this routine to have students share their response to a writing prompt or question.
Steps:

1. Put students into small groups and have each group select a timekeeper and facilitator.

2. Provide the students in each group with a text, article, or passage. These passages can be different from group to group or student to student, but should center around the same theme or topic.

3. Share a question or writing prompt with the whole class.

4. Ask students to individually read their texts, mark evidence in the texts, and use that evidence to support a response to the prompt.

5. Choose a presenter in each group. The presenter shares their claim, reasons, evidence, and reasoning in response to the prompt. The other members of the small group have one minute to comment on the presenter's argument. Encourage students to use evidence from the text in their comments.

6. The presenter has the last word and shares how the evidence from other memebrs of the group changed (or did not change) his or her thinking.

7. Allow each student to present. Assure students that they can have the same claim as another, but remind them that they may have different evidence or reasons why they think as they do.

8. As a whole group, discuss what was shared in the small group. Was there consensus about the answer to the question? Why or why not? Did many people use the same evidence? How did people connect their evidence back to their claims?

3. Fishbowl

Purpose: Use this activity as a precursor to peer editing.
Steps:

1. Arrange chairs in two concentric circles, the inner circle smaller than the outer.

2. Share the writing prompt or question with students. Have students in the inner circle discuss the question, including stating a claim, citing evidence, and explaining reasons and reasoning. Have students use graphic organizers or take notes in their discussion. Remind students that each person should have an opportunity to share.

3. Have students in the outer circle observe the students in the inner circle and note times when they used textual evidence, explained their reasons, or used counterarguments effectively.

4. Allow time for each person in the outside circle to stop the discussion to share a counterargument or a piece of evidence from the text that has not been mentioned.

5. Provide all students a chance to be in the inner and outer circles, though they do not need to have both roles in the same class period.

6. Discuss the conversation in the inner circle. Have students note when students were effective arguers. Encourage students to share any alternative points of view, or claims that were not shared in the fishbowl discussion.

4. Turn and Face

Purpose: Use this routine to discuss the writing prompt or question. Encourage students to use evidence from a text during the discussion.
Steps:

1. Have students find partners or assign partners. Have each pair stand with their backs to one another

2. Read a question to students. Give students 60 seconds to think about what they want to say in response.

3. Have students turn to look at their partners and invite them to share their claims, reasons, and evidence. Give each student 30 seconds to share.

4. Then, have students turn around and provide 30 seconds for students to come up with a reason for why they disagree with the other person's argument.

5. Have students turn and share their reasons.

6. Then, have students turn around and provide 15 seconds for students to think of a rebuttal to the comment.

7. Have students turn and share their rebuttals. (Students can also repeat this activity with new partners.)

Learn more by watching our recorded webinar on conversational strategies for English learners:

Citations

Durkin, Dolores. "What Classroom Observations Reveal about Reading Comprehension Instruction."Reading Research Quarterly14, no. 4 (1978): 481-533. http://www.jstor.org/stable/747260.

Fisher, Douglas, Nancy Frey, and Carol Rothenberg. Content-area Conversations: How to Plan Discussion-based Lessons for Diverse Language Learners. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2008.

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How Getting My Class to Talk More Made a World of a Difference for a Bilingual Student

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One of the most important things we can do for our students is to give them more opportunities to talk in the classroom. It helps build community, encourages learning from others, and helps with the acquisition of a language.