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Conversing with others has given insights to different perspectives, helped build ideas, and solve problems. Academic conversations push students to think and learn in lasting ways. Academic conversations are back-and-forth dialogues in which students focus on a topic and explore it by building, challenging, and negotiating relevant ideas. In Academic Conversations: Classroom Talk that Fosters Critical Thinking and Content Understandings authors Jeff Zwiers and Marie Crawford address the challenges teachers face when trying to bring thoughtful, respectful, and focused conversations into the classroom. They identify five core communications skills needed to help students hold productive academic conversation across content areas: Elaborating and Clarifying Supporting Ideas with Evidence Building On and/or Challenging Ideas Paraphrasing Synthesizing This book shows teachers how to weave the cultivation of academic conversation skills and conversations into current teaching approaches. More specifically, it describes how to use conversations to build the following: Academic vocabulary and grammar Critical thinking skills such as persuasion, interpretation, consideration of multiple perspectives, evaluation, and application Literacy skills such as questioning, predicting, connecting to prior knowledge, and summarizing An academic classroom environment brimming with respect for others' ideas, equity of voice, engagement, and mutual support The ideas in this book stem from many hours of classroom practice, research, and video analysis across grade levels and content areas. Readers will find numerous practical activities for working on each conversation skill, crafting conversation-worthy tasks, and using conversations to teach and assess. Academic Conversations offers an in-depth approach to helping students develop into the future parents, teachers, and leaders who will collaborate to build a better world.
Teachers across the country are seeking ways to make their multicultural classrooms come alive with student talk about content. Content-Area Conversations: How to Plan Discussion-Based Lessons for Diverse Language Learners is a practical, hands-on guide to creating and managing environments that spur sophisticated levels of student communication, both oral and written. Paying special attention to the needs of English language learners, the authors *Detail research-based steps for designing lessons that spark student talk; *Share real-life classroom scenarios and dialogues that bring theory to life; *Describe easy-to-use assessments for all grade levels; *Provide rubrics, worksheets, sentence frames, and other imaginative tools that encourage academic communication; and *Offer guiding questions to help teachers plan instruction. Teachers at any grade level, in any content area, will find a wide variety of strategies in this book to help students simultaneously learn English and learn in English. Drawing both on decades of research data and on the authors' real-life experiences as teachers of English language learners, this book is replete with ideas for fostering real academic discourse in your classroom.
Presents information about two major types of writing: writing to learn and public writing. Offers strategies for planning, organizing, and teaching, as well as numerous examples of student work and guidelines for evaluation and assessment.
Strategies, tools, tips, and examples that teachers can use to help English language learners at all levels flourish in mainstream classrooms.
Get students thinking and learning by getting them talking! Transitioning from home to school can be chaotic—but it doesn’t have to be. When you make Morning Classroom Conversations (MCCs) a regular part of your homeroom or advisory period, you give students a safe space to practice critical and creative thinking, build active listening skills, learn to respectfully disagree with others, and strengthen peer relationships... all while improving overall classroom climate. Written by expert practitioners in the area of SEL, this book provides teachers, school counselors, and other conversation leaders with a wealth of tools to guide successful MCCs from start to finish—in just 10-15 minutes! Features include: Three calendar years’ worth of thought-provoking prompts and themes An overview of the underlying structure and goals of MCCs Sample scripts Vignettes and student and teacher voices Adolescents need to feel heard and understood—by adults and by their peers. MCCs teach them to channel scattered thoughts and strong feelings into dynamic discussions while also strengthening social, emotional, and character development and building the skills they will need to achieve their goals as they transition to adult life.
Prompt students to become the sophisticated readers, writers, and thinkers they need to be to achieve higher learning. The authors explore the important relationship between text, learner, and learning. With an array of methods and assignments to establish critical literacy in a discussion-based and reflective classroom, you’ll encourage students to find meaning and cultivate thinking from even the most challenging expository texts.
Much has been written about the cognitive and academic language needs of those learning English as a new language (be it a second language in the United States or other English-speaking countries or as a foreign language in all other parts of the world). Many guidebooks and professional development materials have been produced on teacher collaboration and co-teaching for special education, inclusive classrooms. Similarly, much has been published about effective strategies teachers can use to offer more culturally and linguistically responsive instruction to their language learners. However, only a few resources are available to help general education teachers and ESL (English-as-a-second-language) specialists, or two English-as-aforeign-language (EFL) teachers (such as native and nonnative English speaking) teachers to collaborate effectively. With this volume, our goal is to offer an accessible resource, long-awaited by educators whose individual instructional practice and/or institutional paradigm shifted to a more collaborative approach to language education. Through this collection of chapters, we closely examine ESL/EFL co-teaching and other collaborative practices by (a) exploring the rationale for teacher collaboration to support ESL/EFL instruction, (b) presenting current, classroom-based, practitioner-oriented research studies and documentary accounts related to co-teaching, co-planning, co-assessing, curriculum alignment, teacher professional development, and additional collaborative practices, and (c) offering authentic teacher reflections and recommendations on collaboration and co-teaching. These three major themes are woven together throughout the entire volume, designed as a reference to both novice and experienced teachers in their endeavors to provide effective integrated, collaborative instruction for EFL or ESL learners. We also intend to help preservice and inservice ESL/EFL teachers, teacher educators, professional developers, ESL/EFL program directors, and administrators to find answers to critical questions.
With an emphasis on active learning, this supplementary text helps busy elementary and middle school teachers engage all students in the vibrant world of social studies. This inquiry-based book presents hands-on explorations, interaction with primary sources, and critical thinking activities, that provide concrete methods to successfully integrate the language arts into the social studies curriculum. Key Features Promotes the development of literacy skills by authentically integrating language arts Supports differentiated instruction for specific grade levels, English language learners, and students with special needs Connects to standards in language arts, social studies, and technology
In this practitioner’s guide to building a quality collaborative relationship through critical conversations, the authors explain three co-teaching models and how co-teaching fits within school improvement initiatives. Next, they present the critical conversations framework designed to foster dramatic improvements in the way educators communicate with their colleagues. The authors use practical examples and real-life stories to show how co-teaching strategies make a positive difference for students.
