Demystifying Discussion

How to Teach and Assess Academic Conversation Skills, K-5

Jennifer Orr

• Publisher: ASCD
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781416630654
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Méthodes pédagogiques

How do you take the passion and chatter that K–5 students bring to the classroom and turn it into conversation skills that make them better learners?

Academic conversation can help hone speaking and listening, critical thinking, and social-emotional skills, as well as deepen content knowledge. But despite its effectiveness, this kind of purposeful, student-led discussion is rarely taught or used at the elementary level. The mystery for teachers is how to support students at various stages of development and build an environment of trust that lets them cultivate these skills.

In Demystifying Discussion, veteran teacher Jennifer Orr gives elementary school teachers a primer on teaching students to engage in student-led academic conversation. The strategies, sample assessments, and example conversations in this book show you how to help young learners get better at sharing, exploring, and synthesizing their individual and collective thinking. You'll also learn how to manage different perspectives and disagreements among students.

This is a book to use all year long to improve classroom discussion, hone students' skills (and your own), and enhance students' overall learning throughout their time in school and beyond.

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Chapter 1

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Shifting Mindsets

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Academic conversations can only truly happen in a meaningful way in a place of trust and risk taking. This may sound obvious and relatively simple. It is not. In an elementary classroom in a typical school year, students and teacher have 180 days together. Those days are broken up by weekends and holiday breaks. Building an atmosphere of trust among the 20–30 people in a classroom is a crucial and challenging task, especially with all of the other demands on teachers at school. It is also a task that needs to be started immediately and achieved as quickly as possible, and one that requires maintenance throughout the year. Having the right mindsets—both teachers and students—is essential to building this environment.

Some of these mindsets are specific to teachers. Trusting in students and letting go of control are both important and (at least sometimes) difficult. Some mindsets, meanwhile, require development for both teachers and students. Everyone involved needs to be able to see the benefits of mistakes and value questions, especially when no one knows the answers. Finally, strengthening social-emotional learning skills is essential to setting everyone up for success.

The traditional model of school is one of the most significant challenges to building an environment in which students feel comfortable taking risks, admitting what they don't know, and asking questions. The majority of talk that happens in classrooms today follows the IRE model: initiation, response, evaluation (Mehan, 1979). The teacher initiates an interaction, typically by asking a question, then chooses a student to respond to the question or prompt. After the child has responded, the teacher evaluates the response.

This model continues again and again, student after student, day after day, in many classrooms. Such interactions leave no room for mistakes or lack of knowledge. When students know that their responses will be evaluated immediately, and judged as right or wrong, they internalize the importance of being "right." How often do you use this model in your classroom? There may be times when this is exactly what you desire, but if IRE is the model students know best and see most frequently, it will discourage them from gaining the confidence, skills, and comfort they need to engage in meaningful academic conversations. Instead, students will spend their time and energy working to ensure they have the correct answer at all times or trying hard never to be called on in the classroom. For many of us in education, this is what we knew as students, so it is what we continue as teachers. It doesn't have to be that way.

Trusting in Students

As a teacher of young children, I often find myself thinking, "They can't do that" or "They aren't ready for that idea yet." This happens in spite of the fact that my students have shown me, time and time again, that I underestimate them. I have found this to be true as a teacher and as a parent: I make assumptions about children's abilities or readiness and then find them going far beyond my expectations.

As a teacher, you have certainly heard the message that you need to set high expectations for children. Setting high expectations does a couple of things. It communicates to students that you believe in them, that you think they are capable and smart (Weinstein et al., 1982). These are powerful ideas to convey to young children. It also keeps you from wasting time. If students are not quite ready or able to meet those expectations, you can always step back and give them more support by differentiating. Maybe they need a little more time to practice a skill or more one-on-one time with you to get to where they need to be. But if they are ready? Then you've moving fast. You don't need to take time to go over paths your students have already traveled; you've moving them on to new and more challenging things.

As your students begin to engage in academic conversations, you must trust in them. Believe in their abilities to develop this particular skill and to grow as independent learners. Let them try out new ideas and give them time and space to fail and to try again. If you step in every time they are struggling, they will not learn to overcome when things are difficult. Watch the struggle, listen to their ideas, and be ready to plan lessons that will help them work through misunderstandings or difficulties.

Using your classroom conversations as a tool for ongoing assessment and to drive instruction will be addressed in more detail in Chapter 6. Immediately taking over or telling them answers will only support your young learners in the short term. Trust them (and yourself) to make the journey to deeper learning.

Letting Go of Control

The idea of letting go of control flies in the face of all of the university classes and professional development workshops on classroom management. I'm not suggesting chaos or anarchy. I do believe in the classroom as a benign dictatorship. You, as the teacher and adult in the room, are ultimately in charge. At any time, you have the capability and the right to step in and control things. However, stepping back and not controlling everything can shift the atmosphere in your classroom. This is part of trusting in students. When you believe in your students to do well and do right, you do not need to control everything.

One way to let go of control is to talk less. I consciously remind myself of Aaron Burr's line in Hamilton (Miranda et al., 2016), "Talk less, smile more." (His reasoning may be quite different, but the big idea is valid.) The more you talk, the less space your students have in which to talk. There is more, though. Adults—and especially teachers—are powerful authority figures for young children. When you speak, there is weight behind everything you say, simply because you are an adult and a teacher. If you want students to value their own voices and their own knowledge, step back and give them the space to practice. Give them your silence and let them try being the expert by sharing their ideas and knowledge.

During classroom conversations, my goal is to not speak beyond setting the prompt or question at the beginning and bringing things to a close at the end. I rarely make that goal, of course, but having that goal definitely limits how often I speak up. Throughout this book, I will share situations and times when it's important to interject in academic conversations—and why. Just bear in mind that you must have a very good reason to speak because otherwise you might not reach your goal of releasing control of the conversation and moving to student independence.

Another way to let go of control is to start the year with blank walls. If that feels too unwelcoming to you, post signs around your room that say, "Ready for Construction." Blank walls at the beginning of a school year allow you and your students to construct your learning space together. You and your students will create charts together to document their learning and to remind yourselves of ideas and strategies. As you develop them together, those charts can take the place of your "Ready for Construction" signs.

One note about the physical space of your classroom: If possible, have an open place on the carpet for your class to gather together. A space where all of your students can sit in a circle (or rectangle or oval) and be able to see one another will make conversations easier and more comfortable. One year my students watched a short video and then discussed it. They were all sitting on the carpet, facing the board, to see the video. When it was over and they began talking, the conversation stagnated quickly. After waiting a bit to see if they would get it moving, I asked them what they needed to be able to talk. Did they need to see the video again? Did they need some time to write about their thinking? One student looked up and said, "I think we need to move so we can see each other." They all quickly moved, and the conversation flowed.

Seeing the Benefits of Mistakes

Helping students change their thinking about mistakes requires some serious work. Even by 2nd or 3rd grade, many children have learned that mistakes are shameful and should be avoided at all costs. One thing that teachers can do to shift that thinking is to model making mistakes. This is easy because everyone makes mistakes. You simply need to allow students to see you do so, highlight these mistakes, and model for students how to respond when one has erred.

Modeling is a strategy that I return to often throughout this book. Teacher (and student) modeling offers students examples with language that promotes trying new things or—especially in this case—shifting their thinking. The second thing you can do is to celebrate students' mistakes. The ways you respond when others make mistakes teaches students quite a bit. Positive noticing and naming—noticing when students make a mistake and naming it—encourages ongoing learning. This is work that must begin early and continue all year. As Mary Anne Buckley noted in Sharing the Blue Crayon: How to Integrate Social, Emotional, and Literacy Learning (2015),

People judge and form attitudes quickly; it is our nature. By discussing powerful emotions early in the school year, before those attitudes are established, we can build the foundation of our community with empathy and acceptance in place of judgment and rejection. (p. 60)

Modeling Making Mistakes

Thursday morning started the same way every day begins in my 3rd grade classroom, with our morning meeting. That day's meeting manager led her classmates through the greeting, share, and activity (see Responsive Classroom, 2016). But, as Jalieen led the class read-aloud of the morning message, there was a snag: a typo in what I had written for them. They noticed, as they read, that it didn't make sense. I stopped Jalieen and said to the class, "That felt wrong to you, didn't it? I noticed you all paused a bit there because you realized what you were reading wasn't quite right. It isn't. I made a mistake in this message." I grabbed one of our interactive whiteboard pens and made a correction to the morning message, thinking aloud what it should have said. Then I turned the meeting back over to Jalieen, who wrapped up the reading.

This brief incident, which took less than a minute of our class time, was an important one. Certainly, my students were demonstrating their abilities as readers when they noticed the error in the text. But, more important, my young students saw that I made a mistake and that it wasn't a big deal. Not only that, but that I could admit to the mistake, work to fix it, learn from it, and move on. They had the opportunity to see that making mistakes is a normal part of life.

When I was a new teacher, I didn't feel this way. In my first few years of teaching, I was terrified of making mistakes; I was so worried about not knowing what I was doing and not being a good teacher. When I did make mistakes (and I most definitely did), I tried to cover them up or pretend they didn't happen. I didn't want my students to realize there were things I did not know or things I was unable to do. If I made a typo in something I wrote, I pretended not to notice and hoped my students didn't either. If I called a student by the wrong name or gave them incorrect directions, I would make an excuse. If a student asked me a question and I didn't know the answer, I would make something up or quickly change the subject. I don't think I was unique or even unusual in my attitude and actions. Most teachers did not see their teachers make mistakes when they were young, so they feel uncomfortable with the idea. It took several years before I felt comfortable admitting my mistakes or lack of knowledge to my students. And it took even more years before I realized how important it was that I do so.

Now, more than two decades into classroom teaching, I admit to multiple mistakes every day. Most of them are small, like a typo. But even when they've small, I make sure that students understand that I made a mistake. Sometimes my mistakes are big, either in my eyes or in the eyes of my students. When I tell students to go to the wrong location for specials (head to the gym when actually we have computer lab), that is something my students see as a big mistake. They often quickly correct me and point out my error. I own it: I tell them they are correct and that I was wrong, and we go on our merry way to computer lab. When I make a computational error or mislabel something on a map or diagram, either my students will point it out to me, or I will catch it myself. Either way, I note the mistake, remedy it, and keep on going. I don't try to hide it or make excuses or pretend it didn't happen.

The most serious mistakes, in my mind, are those in which I am wrong about a student—times when I misjudge a student or respond to a student in a way that is less than caring, accepting, or loving. I may have told a student to stop talking when they were explaining something about the lesson to a classmate or not believed a student when they told me they were late because a teacher had needed their help. This type of mistake, ones that are about my students rather than about content, took me longer to handle well, especially publicly. In many ways, however, these are the type of mistakes it is most important to acknowledge. How you handle these mistakes teaches your students more powerfully than other mistakes because of the personal nature of the error. It can be difficult, but it is important to admit this type of mistake as publicly as you commit it, and to apologize. This not only contributes to developing students' thinking about making mistakes, but also serves a larger purpose in building the community you want. Your students must trust that you believe in them and accept them as they are if they are going to feel comfortable with risks and errors. That cannot happen if you are unwilling to admit when you make a mistake about them.

In my 4th grade classroom some years ago, I frequently chastised one of my students, Freddy. He was often talking when he shouldn't have been, walking around the room when he should have been working, or messing around with materials in the classroom that did not belong to him. None of his behaviors was dangerous or horrible, but he was consistently challenging and distracting. One day he opted to sit by his best friend, Shams, on the carpet for a lesson, a choice that concerned me, but I let them make the choice to see if they could do well together. I began an interactive read-aloud of Eve Bunting's A Day's Work (1997), stopping occasionally for students to share their thinking and discuss the text. As I turned to read the last few pages, I noticed Freddy whispering to Shams. I immediately put down the book and began berating Freddy for such behavior. He turned away from Shams and hung his head. Shams interrupted me, saying, "But he was just trying to explain to me what Amira had said about the grandfather. I was confused."

I had made a mistake—a big one, in my mind: I had reinforced Freddy's sense that he was always screwing up in the classroom and getting into trouble. I made it less likely that he would be willing to talk with a friend about a text in the future. Before picking the book back up, I said,

Freddy, I apologize. I made an assumption about the talking you were doing, and I was wrong. Thank you for helping Shams understand the book and our discussion. I will try to do a better job of not leaping to conclusions and thinking before I speak in the future.

Then I picked up A Day's Work and finished reading it.

By making the apology as public as the rebuke had been, I made it clear to my students that making a mistake is something everyone does. Making a mistake is not shameful or life-ending. I modeled messing up, making an incorrect assumption, and hurting someone else. But I then also modeled recognizing that mistake and the pain it caused and taking steps to fix it. My students saw that interaction and saw me use a mistake as a chance to learn and grow when I shared what I would try to do differently in the future. In addition, because the mistake was about a student, correcting it and doing so publicly supported the development of my student's self-esteem rather than undermining it. I also modeled strong social-emotional skills with my recognition and apology (Sprenger, 2020). Finally, I reinforced rather than strained the trust we were continually building in one another.

Celebrating Mistakes

Building an atmosphere in which students (and adults) feel comfortable making mistakes is a powerful step. Seeing mistakes in a more positive light is the next step. In recent years, I've discovered research in two areas that has reinforced my determination to ensure that making mistakes without shame happens in my classroom. First, it is important for teachers to understand that making mistakes actually grows one's brain. Most teachers recognize that making a mistake, noticing it, and working to correct it can be helpful to learning. Research shows, however, that making a mistake—whether it is noticed or not—increases electrical activity in the brain, firing synapses and growing the brain. Another piece, closely connected, is that when students feel comfortable making mistakes, they are likely to work harder. Jo Boaler (n.d.), citing the work of Gabriele Steuer and colleagues, noted that "when students perceived their classroom as mistakes friendly—above and beyond other aspects of their classroom environment—they increased their effort in their work" (para. 6).

A classroom that is "mistakes friendly" is a classroom that will be more conducive to student learning in a wide variety of ways. As noted above, students will be more willing to put effort into the work they are doing as learners. They will also not be as afraid of making mistakes, thereby being more willing to take risks and work through struggles rather than give up when things are challenging (Boaler & Anderson, 2018). This is an essential foundation for academic conversations. Students who see mistakes as both a regular part of learning and as something that helps them learn will be more willing to share their ideas in a conversation and more willing to listen without judgment as their peers do the same.

The mindset that mistakes are welcome and helpful can bring about a major change in thinking for both students and teachers. Mistakes can be seen as a chance to learn, a chance to grow our brains, something positive rather than shameful. Mistakes can be celebrated!

One of the strategies I often use in my classroom's math workshop is "task and share" (Lempp, 2017). In my 3rd grade classroom, at the beginning of our math workshop one November day, I gave my s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Shifting Mindsets
• Chapter 2. Sharing Thinking
• Chapter 3. Exploring Others' Thinking
• Chapter 4. Synthesizing Thinking
• Chapter 5. Navigating Disagreements
• Chapter 6. The Payoff: Using Conversations for Assessment and Planning
• References
• About the Author
• Related ASCD Resources
• Study Guide
• Copyright