Monday, February 18, 2019

The Person Who Does the Talking Does the Learning


Happy New Year!  2019 brings with it new energies, new excitement and more 
opportunities to help set students up to be more literate beings.  With the break, we find
ourselves often missing the energy and hustle of the school day. As teachers we were 
filled with the wonderment of thinking, what experiences have students had over weekends 
or breaks? Who will be filled with stories on the first day?  As consultants, we still often find 
ourselves walking into a school after a break with anticipation of what kids have to share? 
How their read aloud will come to life even more now with increased experiences of the 
holidays. How their comprehension of  Knuffle Bunny, Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse or even
Watson’s Go to Birmingham might be deepened based on the broadening of their schema 
over the break.  

Increasingly over the last few years, the time for these 
conversations has been minimized by the realization that the end of the year is fast 
approaching, the gravitational pull of state testing and all of the impending commitments
that tell us our students have not acquired all of the skills necessary to prepare them 
for what will deem them “acceptable” or “proficient”.  We ignore all of the research 
telling us that conversation with peers improves comprehension and engagement 
with texts. We revise our schedules to allow more time for skills and drills, 
teaching specific skills in isolation and pushing toward more question and 
answer episodes where the teacher is doing most of the talking. It feels 
counter-intuitive to give them more talk time when our minutes are limited and there’s
so much information to cram into their little heads.  We continue to view students as
empty vessels that we have to fill, instead of seeing them as having important information 
and life experiences that contribute to the goal of learning. We’ve all been guilty of being 
in the middle of the lesson and seeing the blank stares and realizing “they’re not getting it”. 
So what do we do? We talk more and teach more because if we talk slower, talk louder, 
or try it one hundred more ways they will eventually get it. Only to look at their faces 
10, 20, 30 minutes later, just as confused and you are utterly exhausted and frustrated.  
Right? Been there, done that. However, all of this goes against what research tells us about 
how kids process, evaluate, retain and utilize information.

John Hattie tells us that based on analyses of classroom observations, on average
teachers pose about 200-300 questions per day and speak about 80% of the time.  
Richard Allington’s research teaches us that talk is an essential element in elementary 
literacy instruction. It is often underutilized, but the most easy-to-implement means of 
improving comprehension.  Allington found that in highly effective classrooms teachers 
used a more conversational means of talk vs. interrogational. Students talk more with 
their peers about ideas, concepts, hypotheses, strategies and responses to others’ thinking.  

One way we can increase student talk time is to think about our initial questions.  
How well do they initiate or invigorate students ability to stimulate and thrust ownership 
of conversations into the hands of the students, while also deepening understanding 
and transfer of concepts? Look at this conversation in Guided Reading about the text  
Katie Woo: Red, White, and Blue by Fran Manushkin.  The story is about a girl named 
Katie and her friends that are celebrating the Fourth of July by attending a parade and 
then enjoying a party in Katie’s backyard.  The teacher is attempting to have students 
think more deeply about Katie’s perspective about the day.

(after reading the first chapter)
T: Why is the 4th of July Katie’s favorite holiday? (Factual)
S: She likes it best of all.
T: But why is it her favorite?
S: She’s having a parade in her backyard.
S: She having a party too!
T: Why do they put decorations on their bike?
S: They wanted their bikes to look nice.
T: But did the text say they wanted their bikes to look nice.
S: No, but when I put up decorations on my bike, I want it to look nice.
S: Yeah, me too. 
T: Where are they going?  To the _____
S: parade
T: So why would Katie, Pedro, and JoJo decorate their bikes?
S: To look pretty for the parade.

The teacher in this excerpt made many attempts to get the children to expand their 
responses and think more broadly about what was happening, but only elaborated 
with a few words.  This conversation started off with a narrow factual question and 
continued to ping-pong from the teacher to the student. Based on the Text Talk 
research of Isabel Beck and Margaret McKeown, we know that initial questions 
should be open questions that require students to describe and explain text ideas, 
rather than recall and retrieve words from the text.  Allington also suggests that interactions 
with the texts are more meaningful and deep when children are analyzing, commenting 
and comparing the text rather than recalling or telling information.

Take a look at this conversation about the same text:
T: What do we know about Katie so far? (inferential)
S: Katie loves holidays especially the Fourth of July.
S: Yeah, she is excited about having a party and parade in her backyard.
T: Do all of the characters introduced share Katie’s excitement or perspective about the
 Fourth of July? Make sure you have evidence to back up your argument.
S: Yes, because Pedro and Jojo decorated their bikes with red, white and blue decorations.
S: I agree, and when Katie said she was excited about the parade and party, Pedro told her 
don’t forget about the fireworks, so he must like the fireworks the best.  
S: Oooh!  I want to add on, the parents were excited too.
T: Whose parents?
S: Katie’s parents because when they rode by in the parade on their bikes, everybody was 
cheering and Katie’s mom and dad yell at them “Way to go!”  
S: I didn’t think about the parents.  Look they have their arms up cheering in the picture.  
Yeah, I agree with Juan. They had to be excited too because they were having the party.  Katie 
is just a kid so she can’t throw a party by herself so her parents had to want to celebrate too.  

The teacher in this excerpt talked about the same book but allowed for a broader
 initial question that set the conversation on a trajectory that allowed students to 
think more deeply about not only the main character but also the secondary 
characters in the story.  Readers were better able to make connections and in 
conjunction with revelations from peers, they heightened their understanding of 
the story and the ability to think about the perspectives of multiple characters.

Doing the work of intentionally planning and writing good open-ended, inferential 
and critical thinking questions is what is needed for students to be able to deepen 
students' understanding and ability to discuss the subject matter.  

Let’s see how we can provide more opportunities for kids to take ownership of their 
learning by broadening their conversations so that they will think more deeply about 
their reading and writing.  We invite you to investigate how much time students are 
engaging in student-focused conversations in one of these ways:
  1. Videotape yourself and reflect on the ratio of student talk versus teacher talk;
  2. Ask a colleague or a coach to observe and discuss what they notice about the 
    amount of time students are engaging in deep reading and writing conversations 
    (partnerships, book clubs, group talk).
  3. Try out an initial question that is open-ended and allows readers to deepen their
     understanding of the information the author wants the reader to learn in the text.
Comment below on ways you have increased student talk opportunities within your classroom.


Kanika & Mary

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