Jeff Zwiers

Marie Crawford

Where would we be without conversation? Throughout history, conversations have allowed us to see different perspectives, build ideas, and solve problems. Conversations, particularly 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. [The] authors ... 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 synthesizing. This books shows teachers how to weave the cultivation of academic conversation skills and conversations into current teaching approaches.

Classroom Talk that Fosters Critical Thinking and Content Understandings

Academic Conversations

Susan O'Hara

Robert Henry Pritchard

The Common Core State Standards require students to do more with knowledge and language than ever before. Rather than be mere consumers of knowledge, students must now become creators, critics, and communicators of ideas across disciplines. Yet in order to take on these new and exciting roles, many students need daily teaching with an extra emphasis on accelerating their academic communication skills. Common Core Standards in Diverse Classrooms describes seven research-based teaching practices for developing complex language and literacy skills across grade levels and disciplines: using complex texts, fortifying complex output, fostering academic interaction, clarifying complex language, modeling, guiding, and designing instruction. Most important, you will find clear descriptions and examples of how these essential practices can—and should—be woven together in real lessons. You will also find the following: Classroom activities based on the practices Dozens of classroom examples from lessons in different grade levels and disciplines Detailed lessons with annotations focused on language and literacy development Strategies and tools for building system-wide capacity for sustained growth in the practices Common Core Standards in Diverse Classrooms is a concise guide for helping us improve our practices to strengthen two vital pillars that support student learning: academic language and disciplinary literacy.

Essential Practices for Developing Academic Language and Disciplinary Literacy

Common Core Standards in Diverse Classrooms

The “communication effect” is what happens when we saturate our classrooms with authentic communication, which occurs when students use language to build up ideas and do meaningful things. For starters, authentic communication deepens and increases language development, learning of content concepts and skills, rigor and engagement, empathy and understanding of others’ perspectives, agency and ownership of core ideas across disciplines, and social and emotional skills for building strong relationships. And these are just the starters. With The Communication Effect, Dr. Jeff Zwiers challenges teachers in Grades 3 and up to focus less on breadth and more on depth by grounding instruction and assessment in authentic (rather than pseudo-) communication. This book provides: Ideas for cultivating classroom cultures in which authentic communication thrives Clear descriptions and examples of the three features of authentic communication: 1. building up key ideas (claims and concepts); 2. clarifying terms and supporting ideas; and 3. creating and filling information gaps Over 175 suggestions for using the three features of authentic communication to enhance twenty commonly used instructional activities across disciplines Additional examples of not-so-commonly-used activities that embody the three features Suggestions for improving four different types of teacher creativity needed to design effective lessons, activities, and assessments that maximize authentic communication Our students deserve to get the most out of each minute of each lesson. Authentic communication can help. As you read The Communication Effect and apply its ideas, you will see how much better equipped and inspired your students are to grow into the amazing and gifted people that they were meant to become.

How to Enhance Learning by Building Ideas and Bridging Information Gaps

The Communication Effect

“Of the over one hundred new publications on the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), this one truly stands out! In the second edition of Building Academic Language, Jeff Zwiers presents a much-needed, comprehensive roadmap to cultivating academic language development across all disciplines, this time placing the rigor and challenges of the CCSS front and center. A must-have resource!” —Andrea Honigsfeld, EdD, Molloy College “Language is critical to the development of content learning as students delve more deeply into specific disciplines. When students possess strong academic language, they are better able to critically analyze and synthesize complex ideas and abstract concepts. In this second edition of Building Academic Language, Jeff Zwiers successfully builds the connections between the Common Core State Standards and academic language. This is the ‘go to’ resource for content teachers as they transition to the expectations for college and career readiness.” —Katherine S. McKnight, PhD, National Louis University With the adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) by most of the United States, students need help developing their understanding and use of language within the academic context. This is crucially important throughout middle school and high school, as the subjects discussed and concepts taught require a firm grasp of language in order to understand the greater complexity of the subject matter. Building Academic Language shows teachers what they can do to help their students grasp language principles and develop the language skills they’ll need to reach their highest levels of academic achievement. The Second Edition of Building Academic Language includes new strategies for addressing specific Common Core standards and also provides answers to the most important questions across various content areas, including: What is academic language and how does it differ by content area? How can language-building activities support content understanding for students? How can teachers assist students in using language more effectively, especially in the academic context? How can academic language usage be modeled routinely in the classroom? How can lesson planning and assessment support academic language development? An essential resource for teaching all students, this book explains what every teacher needs to know about language for supporting reading, writing, and academic learning.

Meeting Common Core Standards Across Disciplines, Grades 5-12

Building Academic Language

Ivannia Soto

By now it’s a given: if we’re to help our ELLs and SELs access the rigorous demands of today’s content standards, we must cultivate the “code” that drives school success: academic language. Look no further for assistance than this much-anticipated series from Ivannia Soto, in which she invites field authorities Jeff Zwiers, David and Yvonne Freeman, Margarita Calderon, and Noma LeMoine to share every teacher’s need-to-know strategies on the four essential components of academic language. The subject of this volume is conversational discourse. Here, Jeff Zwiers reveals the power of academic conversation in helping students develop language, clarify concepts, comprehend complex texts, and fortify thinking and relational skills. With this book as your roadmap, you’ll learn how to: Foster the skills and language students must develop for productive interactions Implement strategies for scaffolding paired conversations Assess student’s oral language development as you go It’s imperative that our ELLs and SELs practice academic language in rich conversations with others in school, especially when our classrooms may be their only opportunities to receive modeling, scaffolding, and feedback focused on effective discourse. This book, in concert with the other three volumes in the series, can provide both a foundation and a framework for accelerating the learning of diverse students across grade levels and disciplines.

Academic Language Mastery: Conversational Discourse in Context

"This title examines the benefits and practices of academic conversations and social discourse in grades 3-12. Builds on activities and why academic conversations are important"--

Jeff Zwiers

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