K-12 Academic Productive Discourse and Implementation

Description of Activity:

“Imagine a classroom where students have just completed an activity or lesson and a whole class discussion is underway. K-12 students put forth competing ideas in their clearest and strongest form, even though some ideas may turn out to be more correct than others. Students explain their ideas in detail with evidence. They listen carefully to each other’s ideas with respect. Students take seriously and evaluate their own and other’s competing ideas. In other words they are intellectually engaged.

What are the hallmarks of an academically productive discussion such as this one?”

Linguists Sarah Michaels and Cathy O’Conner observed teachers and students in classrooms and created a list of “Talk Moves” including teacher prompts to facilitate high quality Academic Productive Discourse. Primarily applied to the sciences, these “Talk Moves” can be used in classroom discussions in any subject area.

With Academic Productive Discourse you can

• Boost student engagement
• Help deepen all students’ understanding
• Support students developing essential communication and collaboration skills
• Make student thinking “visible”
• Collect formative assessment data

Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education’s Project Zero has focused over 50 years of development of thinking routines. Thinking routines are sets of questions or sequential steps designed to scaffold and enhance student thinking. Developed by Project Zero researchers, these routines aim to deepen thinking and make it visible, enabling teachers to understand students’ thought processes. Students, in turn, learn to recognize and articulate specific “thinking moves,” enhancing their cognitive skills across different contexts.

Expand your facilitation of Academic Productive Discourse with these diverse “thinking moves” that can be used when teaching in any subject area and any grade level.

Instructor(s): Peney E. Wright