Supporting Student Discourse - What can I try? Here are some options you can try out to support students in talking to each other in pairs or groups and in participating in whole class talk. These work best in combination. As you try a few options, reflect on student participation and the depth of talk. Then make small changes in an effort to fully support ALL students in engaging in talk and doing so at a deeper level of explanation.
❏ Have students generate posters of sentence stems they can use to agree, disagree, add on to an idea, revise their thinking, and pose a question. Students come up with lists on chart paper of sentence starters for different talk moves. These are generic and can be used throughout the year. Have students write in large writing and use dark markers so they can be seen across the room. At right, is one example for adding on to an idea. Other talk moves could be: asking a clarifying question, asking a probing question, respectfully disagreeing with an idea, revising an idea.
❏ Demonstrate what partner talk looks and sounds like. With a student volunteer or
another teacher, demonstrate for a class some examples of what “not-so-good” and “good” partner talk looks like and sounds like. For “not-so-good”, partners aren’t turning towards each other, listening, seem distracted, one may talk too much and the other might not get a turn. Then ask students what they noticed and what you and your partner could do better. Then do a “good” example showing respect toward the partner and making room for both people to have a turn and asking some clarifying or follow-up questions related to what the partner shared.
❏ Introduce listener sentence stems. Often during partner talk one student talks the whole
time and one doesn’t talk at all OR each partner shares their response but there is no back-and-forth exchange or any additional talk. Listener sentence stems can help sustain talk between partners in both cases because they provide a job or role for the listening student and some actionable talk moves to use. These stems work best when students are discussing an open-ended questions where students are asked to make and justify claims.
After I listen, what can I say? - I heard you say ______. What makes you think that? - Can you repeat the part about ______? - Would you explain a bit more about ______? - What did you mean when you said ______? - I’m not sure I fully understand _______. Would you say
more? - I heard you say ____. What if…? - What’s your evidence for______?
❏ For a few lessons, focus on: Your own talk moves and questioning strategies to listen to student ideas and ask clarifying, pressing, and probing questions. Review the Talk Science Primer for some talk moves and to consider what kinds of questions and talk moves to use for you discussion. Reflect on how students responded when you asked questions or used certain talk moves. What changes could support students even more in engaging in talk? How could this option be combined with another option to support student talk? http://inquiryproject.terc.edu/shared/pd/TalkScience_Primer.pdf
❏ For a few lessons, try: Providing question(s) with response sentence stem(s). Plan 1-2 questions with sentence starters. Project or write question(s) on the board and provide a sentence starter or two that students can use to respond. Giving students some language to help them get started with a response makes it more accessible to all students and demonstrates the kind of language we use in science class. Two examples are below. Here students used the starters to talk about patterns in their data, and these patterns happened.
❏ For a few lessons, try: Intentionally planning times for partner talk. Explicitly plan a question for a partner talk each lesson. Use at least one think-pair-share or a partner talk in each lesson for a few lessons. Intentionally plan an open-ended question that you will ask that will allow for a longer response (i.e. the question doesn’t have a one-word response). Give students some silent time to think before having them turn to a partner and share. Partner talk could be used in combination with the above option (providing a question with sentence stems) to support student participation. Next step could be introducing a structured talk protocol described below so that students know whose turn it is and what they job is if they are the speaker or the listener.
❏ Set up a structured AB partner talk for how/why reasoning. Often we give students time to talk during unstructured “turn-and-talk” times but this does not ensure that all students have a chance to air their ideas or practice becoming fluent with scientific terms and concepts. In structured talk students are given roles and equal time for talking. Structuring talk in science classrooms means that students need specific opportunities to reason with how and why a natural phenomenon is occurring—this helps elevate the rigor of the student talk. For details on how to enact a structured talk protocol for how/why reasoning and data from schools who use it with students, visit https://goo.gl/pIWTaA
How do I know if I’m improving or changing the nature of student talk in my classroom? There are 3 suggestions below for taking some relatively quick data about student talk. You could use these ideas to take some baseline data or to track how some of the strategies you are trying out are working. If you come up with another way to take quick data about student talk in your class, please share it with the PASTL group!
❏ Keep tally marks on a copy of the seating chart to mark how often each student participates in a whole class discussion. Some teachers find it helpful to assign a student to keep track of who participates to get more accurate data. Data from this tally chart can help inform changes in how/which questions are asked or how discussions are structured. For example, to get more students to participate, a teacher might provide silent thinking or writing time before asking for a response and/or having students talk to a partner first before sharing out whole group. This gives students rehearsal time and time to get feedback from a peer so they are not solely presenting an idea to the whole class. They have a peer that can help them out which reduces some of the risk and could increase participation from students who normally do not participate at all or as much.
❏ Script what you hear students saying during a turn-and-talk. During partner talk,
listen in on a pair for a minute or so. Script what you hear and do not ask questions. If there is silence, just wait. This helps teachers practice listening to what students actually say and not what we expect or want to hear. Having this data also gives insight into concepts students are wrestling with or those that they feel confident talking about. It can also reveal places where additional scaffolding or structures could better support student participation. For example, if there is lengthy silence during partner talk and no attempts by students to try to keep talking, what structure or scaffold could help?
❏ Have students give you feedback and reflect on their talk/listening using a
half-sheet exit ticket. After students have had a few opportunities for talking in partners and in discussions as a whole class, provide an exit ticket about talk to collect some data on how students feel the talk is going for them. This data can inform changes you make to pay explicit attention to discussing progress as a class about their adherence to talk norms.
