THE SOCIAL DIMENSION is… Understanding the … · The Social Dimension involves community building in ... importance of metacognition and collaboration to student reading development

THE SOCIAL DIMENSION is… • Creating a safe, open, and trusting

environment in the classroom • Understanding the relationship between

being literate and having personal power • Discussing insights about reading books and

other texts • Sharing one’s own reading processes,

problems, and solutions • Learning to use effective strategies that

others use

1 Tab 5 - Social Dimension - Page 1

The Social Dimension involves community building in the classroom, includingrecognizing the resources brought by each member and developing a safeenvironment for students to be open about their reading difficulties.1 Results ofresearch on cooperative learning show that students who have opportunities towork collaboratively learn faster and more efficiently, have greater retention, andfeel more positive about the learning experience.

Social Dimension Theory Stop

The following is quoted from a five-year study conducted by Dr. Judith A. Langer, directorof the National Research Center on English Learning & Achievement (CELA). She and ateam of researchers investigated English programs in 44 classrooms in 25 schools in 4states. By comparing typical programs with those that get outstanding results, Langer andcolleagues have been able to identify the features of the more effective programs.

Finding 6: Classrooms Foster Cognitive Collaboration.

In schools that beat the odds, English learning and high literacy (the content as well as theskills) are treated as social activity, with depth and complexity of understanding andproficiency with conversations growing from interaction with present and imagined others.

In contrast, in the more typically performing schools, students tend to work alone ortogether on answering superficial questions rather than engaging in substantive discussionfrom multiple perspectives.

In higher performing schools, students work in communicative groups, and teachers helpstudents participate in thoughtful dialogue. Students engage in the kind of teamwork that

1 Schoenback, R. Greenleaf, C., Cziko, C. and Hurwitz, L. (1999). Reading for Understanding: A Guideto Improving Reading in Middle and High School Classrooms. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. p. 22.

THE SOCIAL DIMENSION is…• Creating a safe, open, and trusting environment in the

classroom• Understanding the relationship between being literate

and having personal power• Discussing insights about reading books and other

texts• Sharing one’s own reading processes, problems, and

solutions• Learning to use effective strategies that others use


is now so highly prized in business and industry. They bring their personal, cultural, andacademic knowledge to these interactions, in which they play the multiple roles oflearners, teachers, and inquirers and have opportunities to consider issues from multipleperspectives. Minds bump against minds as students interact as both problem-generatorsand problem-solvers. Teachers expect students not merely to work together, but also tosharpen their understandings with, against, and from one another. In the higherperforming schools, even whole class activities, particularly discussions, foster similarcognitive collaborations. Students learn to work together, listening to and interacting withone another about the ideas at hand. Teachers understand the importance of treatingstudents as members of dynamic communities that rely on social and cognitive interactionsto support learning.

Teachers in more typical schools and classes focus on individual thinking rather than oncollaborative work. Even when students work together, they think in parallel rather thanengaging in thoughtful, interactive conversation. Cognitive interactions about ideas areminimal and their focus is on completing tasks on their own. Students may cooperate incompleting tasks, but they don’t work their conceptualizations through with each other.Often individual students in a group will each complete parts of a worksheet and thenexchange answers rather than working and thinking together as a collaborative group.

Teachers in more typical schools often express concerns about managing collaborativegroups. They worry that students will become unruly, distracted, or off task when workingtogether. As a result of these concerns, teachers tend to treat each learner as anindividual. They assume that group interaction will either diminish the thinking of thestudents or disrupt the discipline of the class. Rather than teaching the students to taketheir group work seriously and trusting them to do so, they develop activities that ensurethat students will work independently and quietly.

Some Activities That WorkStudents working in small and large groups to:• share their ideas and responses to literary texts, questions, etc.• question and challenge each others’ ideas and responses• create new responses

Teachers providing support during discussions and group work by:• moving from group to group• modeling questions and comments that will cause deeper discussion and analysis• encouraging student questions and challenges that cause students to think more deeply


What Doesn’t WorkStudents working:• alone without time to discuss, question, or share ideas• together but not engaged in discussions or assignments that require them to grapple

with ideas togetherTeachers assigning:• tasks that encourage independent work rather than group interaction• questions that have predetermined answers


B A C K G R O U N D A N D P R I N C I P L E S O F P R A C T I C E

Building the Social Dimension

Students come to the Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy course with many misconceptions about reading, about their own capacities as readers, and about the role reading may play in their lives. To dispel these misconceptions, teachers demonstrate that reading proficiency develops over a lifetime of reading experiences, and that because the reading experiences of the various students in the class differ from one another, students will bring unique strengths and resources to the classroom. This happens in metacognitive conversation, by making thinking visible in a classroom community.

Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy builds on a substantial research base that has identified the importance of metacognition and collaboration to student reading development. The metacognitive conversation at the center of the Reading Apprenticeship model is generated by various metacognitive routines for making thinking visible. It draws on both the teacher’s expertise as a reading mentor and the students’ individual and cultural knowledge and experience.

In a recent volume summarizing the growing knowledge and science of learning, a national committee of learning experts writes, “a ‘metacognitive’ approach to instruction can help students learn to take control of their own learning by defining learning goals and monitoring their progress toward.” Further they state, “Because metacognition often takes the form of an internal dialogue, many students may be unaware of its importance unless the processes are explicitly emphasized by teachers” (National Research Council 2000, 21). Making thinking visible unlocks the doors to proficiency for students who have previously struggled to accomplish mental tasks like reading. Another recent report by the RAND Reading Study Group (2002), commissioned to study reading comprehension research, concludes that the use of collaborative learning groups is key to improving the reading comprehension skills of students. Metacognitive skills can be cultivated through collaboration in the classroom where students have opportunities to work together and share their thinking processes as they approach reading tasks.

Because reading has been unrewarding for most of the students in the Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy course, however, many have decided they just aren’t readers. They’ve disengaged and figured out many ways to avoid reading. They’ve hidden their struggles, finding many ways to avoid looking like they can’t read, to hide their confusions, and above all, to save face. Creating a classroom environment where it is possible for unsuccessful readers to reveal their thinking and confusion is not an easy task, yet it is the heart of the Reading Apprenticeship classroom.

Ongoing metacognitive conversation relies on three conditions of the classroom environment that teachers work to create in the early part of the year:

1. A supportive social environment in which students feel free to take risks and share their thinking

2. Grouping structures and classroom conversations that foster collaborative learning

3. Metacognitive routines that make teacher and student thinking visible.

1. Developing a Supportive Social Environment

A truly supportive learning environment is both accepting and academically challenging. In the Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy course, teachers nurture a classroom culture where it is “cool to be confused” and yet everyone is working to understand complex text more deeply.


Page 220 Academic Literacy Supporting Metacognitive Conversation

BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS

Developing relationships among students is an important step toward building collaboration. Many teachers use team-building and trust-building activities to help students work together productively. Early in the course, students learn each other’s names and are encouraged to refer to one another by name in class conversations. In the first week, students talk with one another about their recreational interests as well as their reading experiences, using the survey as an opportunity to gather their own information as well as interview a peer. Building knowledge about one another in these ways helps establish the grounds for respectful and supportive interactions.

The teacher is important in modeling this strategic interest in students and what they bring to the classroom. By knowing students’ interests and goals, the teacher can help forge connections to the curriculum and to reading, can draw the student in to the class conversation as appropriate, and can serve as a more-informed mentor. The mentoring relationship itself is one the teacher works to build by sharing his or her own reading struggles and experiences as well as problem-solving approaches and successes. This mentorship takes place in whole class as well as individual interactions with students.

DEVELOPING NORMS

Norms are a set of agreements you and your students make so that everyone can invest in learning. Begin by brainstorming with students: What makes you feel comfortable in a classroom? Uncomfortable? What are some things the teacher can do to support your learning? What are some things classmates can do to support one another’s learning? What would get in the way of your learning? Let students know that this class will involve sharing their ideas and experiences. What will help them feel safe and supported to share not only what they are confident about but what they are not?

Offer students a little think time, individually, to gather their thoughts about these questions. Start a classroom conversation, or ask students individually to contribute their ideas by posting sticky notes on a common poster. Starting from students’ lists of things that support or undermine their learning, develop with the class a preliminary set of “norms” for how everyone will support one another’s learning in the class.

Post a large version of the norms on the wall so everyone can see them. Periodically, as issues arise, you may need to return to the norms to remind students of their agreements or to add to the norms as needed.

SUPPORTING INQUIRY

The Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy course invites students into an inquiry about reading. Together, you and your students are going to be engaged in a year-long conversation about why people read, what happens in your minds as you read, and what kinds of skills and knowledge particular texts require of the reader. As you and your students make your thinking visible, you will notice the exploratory and tentative nature of your thoughts as you muddle through a comprehension problem or work toward clarity of ideas. Many students will feel uncomfortable exposing such uncertainty and exploring multiple possibilities because they’ve learned that school often rewards certainty and “right answers.”

You will need to be explicit with students about what kind of thinking and talk you value. As one Reading Apprenticeship teacher says, “This class values thinking. The more you think, talk, and write about your thinking, the better your grade will be. There may be wrong answers, but there are no ‘wrong ideas’.” Another teacher we know posts “It’s cool to be confused!” in large print at the front of her classroom.


Supporting Metacognitive Conversation Academic Literacy Page 221

It may help establish this inquiry culture to create a list of sentence stems that demonstrate an inquiry stance toward thinking and reading and particular texts. Be alert to examples students provide in Think Alouds or other metacognitive routines, as well as times when your own thinking is more inquiring in nature than certain. Write phrases that you/your students say at these times: “I wonder whether…” “I’m guessing that…” “I’m not sure but I think….” Put these on sentence strips around the room. Over time, as students gather more tools for thinking and problem solving, you can add more inquiry phrases: “At first I thought… but now I see that….”

2. Fostering Collaborative Learning

In the Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy course, collaborative learning takes place in the class as a whole, as well as in smaller grouping structures. Small groups allow individual students to participate more fully in thinking and learning activities than they can in the whole class environment. However, for groups to function well, students need to learn productive ways of working together to accomplish academic tasks. Because very little of the school experience has given students opportunities to engage in true instructional dialogue, they also need to learn how to exchange ideas with one another in classroom conversation.

The teacher not only sets up varied collaborative learning group structures and teaches students how to participate in these structures, but also actively demonstrates that each student’s thoughts and experiences are valued in the class and contribute to the learning of the whole. The teacher explicitly teaches and models how to converse, how to express interest in one another’s contributions, how to work together, and how to support one another’s learning. A possible progression for developing a collaborative learning environment in the classroom is given on page 17 of this document.

MOVING THE FURNITURE

Often high school classrooms are arranged in rows with desks facing the teacher’s desk and the chalkboard at the front of the room. The room is arranged, in other words, to support teacher-directed, lecture-style instruction rather than collaborative work among students. Although there will be plenty of times when students will listen and observe and even take notes while the teacher presents or demonstrates reading processes on the overhead projector, desks should be moved to accommodate pair and group work.

An ideal arrangement would place students in pairs at small tables, with the tables oriented so students could also face the front of the room when necessary. The tables could easily be pushed together to make a group of four students. At minimum, if only individual desks are available, consider arranging the desks in ways that encourage conversation between students: two desks face to face, all desks in a circle or U shape, etc.

ENCOURAGING PARTICIPATION

To encourage all students to participate in class discussions and exchanges of ideas, teachers must have a variety of ways to call on students equitably without intimidating students who are reluctant to speak up in the whole class setting.

WAIT TIME

Giving students time to think is key. Don’t be tempted to fill silences in the classroom with your own talking—these silences help spur students to speak up. Tell students you will wait for them to think a moment and respond—and then wait! Often those students who are most vocal will want to jump in and



speak. Once you identify the talkers, you will need to enforce wait time in order to hear from those who aren’t so quick to jump in. One way to do that is to tell students you are “waiting for more hands” before calling on anyone.

QUICK WRITES

Jotting down ideas sometimes helps students gather their thoughts before sharing something with a partner, small group, or the class. Quick writes work well as a way to enforce wait time for you as well as for the other students in the class. Make sure you give students a chance to “finish their thought” before asking the class for contributions.

EQUITY STICKS

Randomly selecting students often relieves students of the fear that they are being called on to test their attention or knowledge rather than to encourage their participation and hear their ideas. Use Equity Sticks made from Popsicle sticks to call on individuals, pairs, or groups to participate.

Write each student’s name on a Popsicle stick and create a collection of sticks for each class. Draw a stick from the bunch and call on that student to share something with the class, respond to a classmate, offer an idea, etc.

Have pairs or small groups give themselves a name, connected to the theme of the unit. For example, students might name themselves by the kinds of things they like to read outside of class: Text Messengers; Graffiti; etc. Write these pair or group names on a Popsicle stick to draw at random for reporting to the class on group work, or for responding to another group’s ideas.

SPOKESPERSONS

Speaking for others is often easier than speaking for yourself. Ask students to share an idea they heard from someone else. More formally, have small groups choose a spokesperson to share ideas and give students a model for doing so anonymously. For example:

“Some people in our group thought _________, but others thought ___________.”

Three out of four people in our group said ______________.”

VOLUNTEERS BY ELIMINATION

As the class progresses and students get accustomed to sharing their ideas and seeing their thoughts treated respectfully, they will increasingly volunteer. Ask periodically in the first few weeks for volunteers and make note of the students who are offering to speak up. To avoid hearing from just a few vocal students during classwide discussion, eliminate students from the volunteer pool until everyone has had a chance to share their thoughts. If necessary, return to the Popsicle sticks to select shy students.

ACCEPT AND REWARD ALL CONTRIBUTIONS

Most importantly, respond positively to all student contributions, especially at first. Avoid correcting students or telling them they are correct. Instead, express interest in their ideas and thoughts. Thank them for contributing. Be encouraging: This is great, class. We’re really getting some good ideas out now. Does anyone have anything to add? Anything else we haven’t talked about yet?



SETTING UP GROUPING STRUCTURES

Individual students need time to practice and time to work out their thoughts in conversations with others. Small group structures offer this time for individuals. They also provide a smaller audience for students reluctant to speak before the class as a whole. Ultimately, they offer opportunities for students to exchange ideas and offer the abundant resources they individually hold—their knowledge, strategies, experiences, and problem solving approaches—to one another.

THINK-PAIR-SHARE

The easiest way to initiate collaborative group work is through Think-Pair-Share, a structure that moves from individual to partner conversations to whole class sharing and discussion.

Think. First, students think individually about a problem or call up their experiences or prior knowledge. Often it will help to have students write, sketch, or make lists to capture their ideas before pairing up with another student to talk.

Pair. Students take turns sharing their individual thinking with one another. To begin with, this sharing can be very structured: Tell your partner one thing you liked about the books at your table. Share one thing you remembered about learning to read. You may also want to provide students with sentence frames for this paired conversation at first: I think I am going to keep this book because…. I don’t think this book will survive the ten-page chance because…. Students may need help learning how to listen to one another. Giving the listener a task like making a note of their partner’s ideas can help focus the student on listening well.

Share. In varied ways, the teacher draws partner conversations into a whole class discussion. In the beginning, he or she may call on a spokesperson from each of the pairs in turn to share one idea or response to a question or task with the class as a whole. Later, the teacher will want to foster exchanges between pairs of students by regrouping them into small groups or asking one pair to respond to the contributions of another before offering their ideas. Even more so than in partner conversations, giving students a task to do while others are sharing with the class may be essential in getting them to listen to one another. Listen for ideas that come up more than once —that probably means they are important. If you hear something repeated, let me know to put a star next to that idea on the poster we’re making. Listen for things that are similar and things that are different.

Monitor pairs as they work to make sure that students are becoming comfortable sharing ideas, confusion, and difficulty with one another and are not merely chatting about unrelated matters. You may need to seek individual student’s preferences and adjust seating to encourage both comfortable and productive peer conversations.

SMALL GROUP WORK

Once students become comfortable sharing their ideas with a partner and in the whole class setting, it is time to begin moving the class into four-member small groups for collaborative work and projects. The easiest way to begin is by having two pairs join one another, sharing with another pair rather than the whole class during Think-Pair-Share. Following the small group share, the teacher can have a spokesperson from each small group share with the class as a whole. An initial group task might include coming up with a theme-related name for the group. (See p.5.)



Many teachers avoid putting their students into small groups because they are concerned that students may not focus on academic tasks or contribute equally to group products. They wonder how to hold individual students accountable for group work and how to grade group work responsibly and fairly. These are important concerns. However, the social exchange that occurs when students share knowledge, experiences, approaches to tasks, and tentative ideas as they strive to comprehend reading materials is key to individual students’ success. Teachers can help ensure that all students contribute, have adequate opportunities to practice reading strategies and approaches, and learn course material by

structuring small groups to assign and distribute both process and content roles;

specifying the procedures and expected products of group work;

monitoring small group processes during group work;

mentoring students as groups work by modeling appropriate group interactions, listening to group conversations, and asking questions to facilitate thoughtful approaches to the work;

asking students to reflect on and assess their own and their group-mates’ contributions to group products;

underscoring students’ accountability for the work and their responsibilities to one another by giving students a group and an individual grade.

Group tasks are often divided up so that each student has responsibility to carry out part of the work. Frequently, this is achieved by giving each student a particular role to carry out during group work. However, because so much of reading improvement depends on a student’s opportunities to practice, it will be very important to distinguish between process and content roles and to distribute turns differently for each.

PROCESS ROLES

Process roles divide up responsibility for the procedural aspects of group work.

Some potential process roles include:

materials collector/distributor (collects and distributes materials needed by the group)

timekeeper (keeps track of time and students’ turns to talk or practice tasks, as needed)

facilitator (distributes turns equitably, moves group through assigned tasks)

recorder (writes notes to record or capture group thinking, writes up group work to turn in, consolidates individual written products into group product)

illustrator (draws, illustrates group products)

reporter/spokesperson (presents group work to teacher/class)

process observer (reports to the group on how individuals participated and how the group worked together).

The goal is normally for all group members to contribute equally to the content of the work—the thinking, reflecting, trying out and observing, writing, discussing, etc. that is assigned by the teacher. It will be important to draw this to students’ attention, since their first inclination will be to divide up the substantive work to get through it as quickly and efficiently as possible. By structuring tasks to require substantive individual contributions, by requiring groups to turn in individual work along with group products, and by grading accordingly, you can get this message across.



For example, imagine that a small group is assigned the task of summarizing a chapter from the Anthology. Each student may be asked to write a twenty-five-word abstract of the chapter as homework and to come to the small group prepared to share his or her work. The group task may be to craft and revise, and then illustrate, a summary of the chapter, using contributions from each of the abstracts students bring to class. As they work, a timekeeper allocates time for each member to share his or her twenty-five-word abstract while a facilitator may help members walk through the procedures assigned by the teacher. At the same time, a recorder may keep track of the summary revision ideas, and an illustrator may draw the key graphic ideas identified by the group. Students turn in their individual abstracts along with the final summary and illustration for a group and individual grade.

Similarly, in Reciprocal Teaching, a small group of students practice four high-leverage comprehension strategies—clarifying, questioning, summarizing, and predicting. However, students do not divide up these comprehension strategies among the members of the group. Rather, each group member takes responsibility for facilitating the whole group’s practice of one of these strategies. Individual roles in the group include:

1. facilitating clarifying

2. facilitating questioning

3. facilitating summarizing

4. facilitating predicting.

To distinguish these process roles for students who might otherwise confuse them with a content role, one teacher we know uses the names Clarification Coach, Question Coach, Summary Coach, and Prediction Coach rather than Clarifier, Questioner, Summarizer, and Predictor. The coach’s role is to make sure everyone in the group is contributing to the comprehension of a passage by practicing clarifying, questioning, summarizing, and predicting.

CONTENT ROLES

Teachers are sometimes familiar with group work processes such as Literature Circles in which roles such as Quotation Expert, Word Wizard, Illustrator, Responder, Questioner, and such are assigned to different students in preparation for the literature discussion. In these discussions, students take distinct content roles. The hope and expectation is that with enough opportunities in Literature Circles, individuals will experience and practice many of these roles. However, too often, students who struggle to read are assigned the Illustrator or a similarly ancillary role, which both relieves them of responsibility for the reading and denies them needed practice with important reading strategies. Group roles in Reading Apprenticeship classrooms work instead to ensure that each student has opportunities to practice important thinking and reading strategies and is seen by all to contribute to the work of the whole. Process roles are preferred to content roles.

More rarely in a Reading Apprenticeship classroom, then, students may divide up the actual substantive work needed to carry out lengthy projects. An example of this comes up in “Unit 4: Reading Media” when students take content roles to evaluate websites. In the case of the “Reading Media” project, a Content Specialist evaluates the content of a website, while the Design Specialist evaluates its graphic layout, a Purpose Specialist evaluates bias and audience appeals, and a Credibility/Authority Specialist evaluates the reliability of sources referenced on the website. These content roles divide up what otherwise may be a very large and unwieldy project. By dividing up reviewer roles, it allows students to review more websites than they would otherwise be able to evaluate.

Similarly, Jigsaw groups may divide up lengthy reading tasks by splitting expert groups of students who have all read and discussed the same piece or excerpt of a piece into jigsaw groups where they will share their reading and understanding of this piece with students who have read a different piece.



In the classroom community as a whole, Expert Groups may function similarly in that small groups may specialize in the knowledge they research and bring and are responsible for teaching to the class.

What is most important is for the classroom teacher to determine whether students in small groups will take distinct roles, and whether these roles will be process roles or content roles. In making this decision, the key questions will be:

Do all students need experience and practice doing the work specified in this role in order to grow as readers and students?

If so, have I provided ample opportunities in the curriculum for all students to take this role multiple times?

If not, how can I assign individual and group work to provide all students with the needed practice?

GRADING AND ACCOUNTABILITY ISSUES

Teachers are often concerned about grading students appropriately, particularly for group work and group projects. In a Reading Apprenticeship classroom, however, grading does not primarily serve the purpose of evaluating and ranking students’ performance. Instead, grading is used primarily as a tool for rewarding students’ efforts and recognizing and promoting individual growth.

A carefully structured grading policy can provide needed leverage to encourage more risk taking, more sharing of ideas and difficulties, more reading, and more collaborative work to comprehend course texts, rather than offering rewards for quick responses, right answers, or merely completed work. We know that opportunities to earn partial credit for late work and/or revise major assignments for better grades place additional grading burdens on teachers. However, we have seen that these methods, together with ongoing support for reading and academic work in the classroom, help to convince reluctant and resistant readers that effort can pay off and that they can be successful readers and learners. As their efforts to complete assignments and turn in quality work begin to pay off, they build new, more successful learning goals and habits, turning in higher-quality work on time.

One way that grades can foster collaboration and also support individual responsibility for group work is to give students both group and individual grades for each significant group project. Students can complete a self- and peer-assessment sheet when they turn in their group work that ranks the quality of contribution to the final product for each group member. This way, individuals in the group hold one another accountable for their contributions.

The reverse is also true; you can hold the group accountable for everyone’s learning by making group grades contingent on individual performance. For example, if students are assigned to work in groups to comprehend an excerpt from a text, the group score can be the sum of individual scores on a comprehension quiz with that passage. This way, all group members will know that their grades depend on working together to make sure all members of the group comprehend the passage fully.

In our research in Reading Apprenticeship classrooms, we have seen how “negotiating success” with students—namely, showing students that their efforts to learn will pay off—goes a very long way in helping students develop new academic identities that will serve them in the future. Based on documenting profound transformations among under-performing students when they are encouraged and rewarded for their work, we recommend that you use some or all of the following grading strategies:

Develop grading policies that reward effort

Use grades to place the emphasis on learning and growth rather than on ranking students’ performance



Offer partial credit for late work

Allow students to redo or revise major assignments for grade/point increases

Require students to complete self- and peer-assessments of contributions to the work as part of group score

Total individual grades to assign group score.

In general, students are very strategic about giving teachers what they ask for, no more and no less. Assignments and grading policies inadvertently communicate to students what we value.

Stop a moment and reflect about your grading policies.

What is the message students receive about what counts most in your classroom, based on what you reward and how you reward it?

Does turning in work on time count more than showing evidence of learning?

Does taking time to read and comprehend whole texts count, or are students rewarded for taking shortcuts where “you don’t have to read” but can “answer the red-square questions” instead?

Does completed work count more than thoughtfulness, since thoughtful responses may take longer for students to complete?

Get in the habit of asking yourself questions about your grading policies and approaches. On what do your policies place the highest value? Is thinking and learning consistently rewarded in your classroom? This self-reflection will help you chart a course toward success for all of your students.

MODELING AND SUPPORTING CONVERSATIONAL EXCHANGE

Decades of classroom research have documented that very little real conversation takes place in classrooms (Cazden 1988). While teachers and students do talk in classrooms, the teacher is most often asking students questions to check for students’ understanding, comprehension, or retention of facts rather than to open a conversation about the topics being studied. In fact, researchers Nystrand and Gamoran recently discovered that discussion was one of the rarest activities in English classes, taking place on average for less than a minute a day (Nystrand 1997; Nystrand and Gamoran 1991). In the largest empirical study of classroom discourse ever done, these researchers documented that 85 percent of all instructional time in eighth- and ninth-grade English language arts classrooms is spent in some combination of recitation of information, lecture, and seat work.

While true discussion is rare, opportunities for discussion nevertheless accounted in this study for significant gains in students’ achievement as measured by tests assessing recall, depth of understanding, and response to aesthetic elements of literature. A later study by researchers at the National Center for English Learning and Achievement also found that students tended to make significant gains on complex academic tasks (for example, essay writing) to the extent that teachers asked authentic questions, followed up student responses with probing questions about their responses, and encouraged students to ask questions about their work (see http://cela.albany.edu/).

Opportunities to discuss and explore ideas are clearly essential to student learning. Yet, in school, students gain little experience talking to one another and responding to one another, as the research suggests. Instead, they often orient to the teacher, even when ostensibly talking “to” each other. And very often the teacher, even when ostensibly encouraging student conversation, retains the floor by calling on individual students and commenting on their responses. The “conversation” passes through the teacher, as depicted in the drawing below.



While this discourse structure can serve other goals, for example, giving the teacher access to the current state of student thinking on a topic, it does not support the goal of fostering conversation between and among students.

The Reading Apprenticeship framework promotes more equitable conversational exchange among students about their affective responses to reading, as well as their strategies and thinking processes. In true classroom conversation, the teacher would participate as a member of the group, as depicted below.

This document has outlined several important ways to foster conversational exchange among students through:

grouping structures

the use of sentence stems to help students articulate their ideas and converse politely

the use of wait time to encourage student response

encouraging exploratory talk (inquiry)

supporting participation of all students



monitoring and mentoring during group work

assigning process roles

grading policies that reward individual participation as well as group collaboration.

USING OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS AND PROBING RESPONSES

In addition to these strategies, you will need to develop a repertoire of open-ended questions and probing responses to foster conversation among your students.

Begin classroom conversations by posing your favorite open-ended questions. Use wait time to give students a chance to think about the question and to formulate and elaborate their response:

What do you think?

What about this piece grabbed your attention?

What did you find interesting?

Anyone confused?

What do you make of that?

How did you interpret…?

Does anyone have any ideas about why…?

To encourage students to elaborate their ideas and to extend the conversation, from time to time you will want to follow a student’s contribution with a nonjudgmental response, such as another open-ended question:

Did anyone else have a similar or different idea?

Can you tell us a little more?

Help us understand your thinking on that.

Can you give us an example?

PROMOTING STUDENT-TO-STUDENT EXCHANGE

To foster conversational exchange, you may also need to model conversational interaction and give students explicit instruction about how to converse in a classroom.

Modeling conversational behavior might include showing your interest in and appreciation for students when they speak, providing encouragement through verbal and nonverbal gestures, attending to student remarks and listening carefully, wearing a thoughtful expression, and acknowledging contributions with a simple “thank you,” “hmmm,” or nod. You will need to call students’ attention to your model of “good listening” and let them know you expect the same behaviors from them.

From time to time, to underscore this point, you may need to stop a student when he or she is talking and classmates are clearly not listening. You may also need to stop a student from speaking directly to you and invite him or her to direct responses to another student, instead. The Equity Sticks are helpful to develop these routines. In addition, you might use wait time to encourage other students to respond



directly to their classmates. Let students in on your facilitation goals and strategies by explaining what “wait time” is and why you are using it. Through these explicit means, you signal your expectation that students will talk and listen to one another in this class, and you show that you value their contributions to classroom conversations.

LISTENING TO STUDENT THINKING

Finally, use conversations as your own opportunity to get to know your students—their thinking, experiences, passions and strengths. You do not have to respond to everything a student says. Listening thoughtfully to your students—and modeling thoughtful listening—is the foundation for good teaching.





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THE SOCIAL DIMENSION is… Understanding the … · The Social Dimension involves community building in ... importance of metacognition and collaboration to student reading development