Part Two, Partnership Talk & Collaborative Conversations | The Speaking Part of Conversations: A Road Map for Collaboration
Conversations are a part of our everyday life; they help us navigate the world and process our feelings, emotions, and thoughts. Conversations offer us new perspectives and help us make sense of our own, ultimately shaping how we understand and relate to ourselves, as well as to others.
This is part two of a series on partnership talk & collaborative conversation, so for deeper context on the subject, make sure you read that post first. It helps to provide the framework of what we mean by collaborative conversations (and what we don’t mean), review our values around student-led decision-making, and the listening part of the conversation, which begins with inquiry.
Here, we’re going to launch into the second part, which is the speaking part of conversations, and how to create a road map for collaboration. Let’s dive in!
Prompts to Encourage Student Conversation
Whether it’s the whole classroom, a small group, in partnerships, or with you, giving students a language framework that guides their conversations often proves a useful tool. As educators, we can help encourage this through cues or prompts to help clarify, share, challenge and explore thinking out loud.
The below chart offers a few important navigational moves we use in our day-to-day teaching that when modeled and coached, provide students with a toolkit:
Keep in mind that a chart like the one above is to remind us that just like thinking, conversations are rarely linear - but instead rhizomatic. Having a toolset of language that helps us manage the ebb and flow of circular thinking patterns helps. The goal is not to use this exact language, but rather to be open to and aware of the language we use to steer conversations and tools to push our thinking partners.
Implementing Collaborative Conversations in Your Instruction
As with reading and writing, conversational skills also need to be taught to students. Another way to encourage student-led conversations is to think of them having their own instructional focus. Below are some ways you can model this through your teaching. Start from the top and work your way down, particularly if it is a new concept for your classroom.
Once students become confident and comfortable with their collaborative conversation, you can ask if they’d like to model their discussion to their peers. The chart below is an example of just one of the many tools I write about in Teacher’s Toolkit for Independent Reading, co-authored with my bestie, and colleague, Gravity Goldberg.
Side Note: Use our Reading Identity Survey to get students thinking and putting pen to paper about their conscious reading patterns before they start building out some goals.
Designing Through Lines of Curriculum with Collaborative Conversations
Imagine if all the educators on your team and throughout the entire school community agreed on an aligned curriculum of conversation?
Consider thinking through this now, and especially during your curriculum calibration seasons throughout the school year. Below is an example of a chart that considers conversations as a curriculum throughline for all subject areas.
When and Where to Apply Collaborative Conversations
Now that we’ve set up the throughlines, where exactly will we enact collaborative conversations?
Some examples could be:
During daily read aloud
Within independent reading, either in partnerships or book clubs
Woven within the curriculum throughout the day
Consider giving students time and opportunity to apply the tips and techniques of collaborative conversations in ways that set them up for success. Design a few “non-academic” opportunities such as discussing a community-based topic, a recent classroom event, or even listening to a song, a few minutes of a podcast, or viewing a 1-2 minute video.
These non-traditional scenarios release the pressure of students having to try out new thinking patterns and new skills and strategies in an academic arena and help them see the connection to everyday life living and learning. It frees up brain space to focus on the speaking and listening elements of a collaborative conversation before adding the layer of academic skills and strategies.
Wrapping It Up
I often say, “Reading work is life work…” and perhaps the same is true of collaborative conversations.
When we give students time and space to use conversations as tools to support their thinking – it brings an element of socialness to learning, which ultimately increases engagement and joy in learning.
It’s a win, win, win!
For teachers, we have an automatic (informal) assessment opportunity to hear thinking patterns emerge from students. When we hear their thinking, it factors into our decision-making protocol. Our teaching becomes student-centered and targeted to what they truly need in order to experience success. It essentially helps to take the guesswork out of “What do I teach next?”
Action Items to Consider:
Study “talk time” in your classroom this week. Who has more – you the teacher? Students? Why?
Pay attention to conversations in your everyday life. What do you notice? What are patterns in language? What do you notice about the ebb and flow of the conversation?
Check out more of what Gravity and I have to say from Teacher’s Toolkit for Independent Reading in this short video.
Listen in to our thinking in this video from What Do I Teach Readers Tomorrow, Nonfiction. Here, Gravity Goldberg and I discuss how we can be intentional in our design of an interactive read aloud for students to rehearse and apply techniques for collaborative conversations.
