Who's Doing the Talking? Creating Rich Learning Environments Through Guided Student Discourse

Presenter:
Joshua Chard, 2024 Maine Teacher of the Year 2nd/3rd Grade Teacher East End Community School

We’ve all been there. You are in front of a group of learners and you feel pressure to talk and talk and talk. Why don’t they have anything to say? Why am I the one filling all of the awkward silences?  In this session we will explore explicit instructional moves that support students as they learn to share their ideas, build on other’s thinking, disagree respectfully, and analyze perspectives. We will take on the roles of active learners, practicing talk moves and partnership protocols and deepening our understanding of the importance of flipping the learning environment so that students do the most of the talking while deepening their understanding. Together we will discover how to build learning environments where the student voice thrives and where everybody is secure in the belief that they have valuable insights to add to the conversation.