Academic Conversations: Classroom Talk That Fosters Critical

Academic Conversations: Classroom Talk That Fosters Critical Thinking and Content Understandings

Author - Marie Crawford & Jeff Zwiers

Where would we be without conversation? Throughout history, conversations have allowed us to see different perspectives build ideas and solve problems. Conversations, particularly those referred to in this book as 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.

Unfortunately, academic conversations are rare in many classrooms. Talk is often dominated by the teacher and a few students, or it does not advance beyond short responses to the teacher’s questions. Even certain teaching approaches and curriculum programs neglect to train students how to maintain a focused, respectful and thoughtful conversation.

To address these challenges, authors Jeff Zwiers and Marie Crawford have identified five core communication skills to help students hold productive academic conversations across content areas. These skills are: elaborating and clarifying, supporting ideas with evidence, building on and/or challenging ideas, paraphrasing and synthesising. 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 summarising
Complex and abstract essential understandings in content areas such as adaptation, human nature, bias, conservation of mass, energy, gravity, irony, democracy, greed and more
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 year 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.

Code: SHP6760

ISBN: 9781760016760

No of Pages: 228

Publish Date: 06 November 2015
hb
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