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| Students in Madeline Noonan's Reading Workshop, May, 2013 |
Teacher's College Reading Workshop is often described as a talking curriculum. We agree! And as a talking curriculum, Reading Workshop invites us to leverage opportunities for language development for ELLs (and all students). On the one hand, a student can't DO Reading Workshop without talking. On the other hand, IF a student fully participates in Reading Workshop, it ought to help them talk and think with greater precision and fluency throughout their lives.
Below we provide some general information on Quality Academic Discussions followed by links to specific posts and videos.
A DISTINCTION BETWEEN OUTPUT AND INTERACTION IN QUALITY ACADEMIC DISCUSSIONS
When
students merely share their answer to a prompt, we call this output.
For example, a teacher may ask
students to Think-Pair-Share a cause leading to the French Revolution, and then each student shares an idea, and the exchange ends. Interaction, on the other hand, requires two or more people to work together
to
co-construct meaning through discussion, and by definition this interaction lasts more than two sentences.
For
example, a teacher might ask students to decide which of the many causes
to the
French Revolution was most important, with students proposing an idea,
marshaling evidence, challenging each other, encouraging each other to
elaborate, clarifying fuzzy concepts, and building on each other’s
ideas. Notice that the type of prompt for discussion has a big influence on whether the resulting student production is more a case of output or a case of interaction.
Providing opportunities for student output is a strong practice that supports the more challenging task of promoting authentic interaction around content. It's more common to see students, and ELLs in particular, demonstrate their ability to engage in output, often supported by specific scaffolds such as language patterns or specific structures such as Think Pair Share. The goal is authentic interaction.
Providing opportunities for student output is a strong practice that supports the more challenging task of promoting authentic interaction around content. It's more common to see students, and ELLs in particular, demonstrate their ability to engage in output, often supported by specific scaffolds such as language patterns or specific structures such as Think Pair Share. The goal is authentic interaction.
A ROAD MAP TO QUALITY ACADEMIC DISCUSSIONS
We believe there are at least
four important focus areas for developing authentic interactions around
academic content, as shown in the diagram below. If each of these areas
is developed over time, authentic interaction around academic content will be
more likely to occur.
1. ELLs IN A 4TH GRADE READING WORKSHOP AT ACORN WOODLAND ELEMENTARY
David Norris Reading Workshop Small Group Discussion
This link below shows a group of four students at Acorn Woodland Elementary in Oakland Unified discussing a text together. It includes some prompts for discussion embedded in the video.
2. VIDEO: QUALITY ACADEMIC DISCUSSION IN A 5TH GRADE READING WORKSHOP
Madeline Noonan's 5th-grade class at Think College Now in OUSD shows the Reading Workshop "talking curriculum" in action during an historical fiction unit.
More to come!
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