Ep 57: Accountable Talk was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the latest audio-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors. Sonix is the best audio automated transcription service in 2021. Our automated transcription algorithms works with many of the popular audio file formats.
Hey, teachers, if you have a classroom and a commute, you're in the right place. I'm your host, Rachael, and I want to ride along with you each week on your ride into school. This podcast is the place for busy teachers who want actionable tips, simple strategies, and just want to enjoy their job more. Let's go.
Hey, everyone, welcome to The Classroom Commute Podcast. I am Rachael, your host, thanks for joining me today. I hope you're having a wonderful start to your week and I'm thrilled that you're spending a little portion of that week with me. I want to dive right into today's topic because I know your time is valuable and your commute might be short.
Let's get right at it. You can only get so far talking to your students, right? When the conversation only flows in one direction you are missing out on a valuable opportunity to really dive deep into a topic. That's why I feel it is really important to teach students how to have meaningful and valuable conversations with you, the teacher, as well as with their peers. This is called Accountable Talk. Now, before I go on, let's make sure we're all on the same page. You may have never heard the term Accountable Talk before, or maybe you have, but I want to make sure that we are all working from the same definition. When I say 'Accountable Talk', that means it's an intentional, open ended conversation where participants listen, add on to each other's comments and use clarifying questions to make sure that they are understanding what others are saying. Let me say that again. It is in an intentional, open ended conversation where participants listen, add on to each other's comments, and use clarifying questions to make sure they are understanding what the others are saying.
When students participate in Accountable Talk, they can have a richer and deeper conversations that go beyond surface level thinking. Accountable talk is especially powerful in settings like literature circles and other small group activities where you want students to take an active role in their learning. It forces students to really focus in on what the others are saying in order for students to participate in an Accountable Talk conversation. Listening is a must so we want to discourage students from thinking about what they are going to be saying when their partner or their peer is done talking. We want them to be just focusing on what somebody is saying and then responding with intentional conversation. Here's why accountability is so beneficial to your students. It gives students an opportunity to participate in healthy debating. In Accountable Talk, students are encouraged to challenge and even disagree, respectfully of course, with what their peers are saying. In return, students learn to back up their opinion and ideas with facts and details. Accountable Talk helps develop public speaking skills. It's easy for students to respond to others with 'yes', 'no', another short response, or not even say anything at all. With Accountable Talk, students practice and learn the skills it takes to have a real conversation that flows two ways. It also supports reluctant talkers. We all know those students who just blend into the conversation, not adding anything of real value to the group's discussion. Accountable Talk prompts, which I'll talk about in a minute, provide a scaffold for students who may not know how to effectively engage in conversation. It also promotes higher level thinking. In Accountable Talk, you're not just having a conversation that has one answer or one point of view. Instead, you're inviting students to think critically about what their peers are saying and respond in meaningful ways. I'm a big fan of accountable talk and I think once you really dive deep into how to use it, you will be too.
Let's talk about what you need to get started with using Accountable Talk. Of course, this is going to take a lot of practice, maybe even your entire year before your students really start to get a good grasp. We have to explicitly teach students how to have these conversations and provide them with a ton of modeling and practicing. One way to introduce the concept of Accountable Talk is to model different types of phrases that the students can use to promote Accountable Talk. This seems to be a bit scripted at first but it provides the necessary supports for students who are just learning how to have these conversations. These are phrases like, 'Does anyone think...', 'I agree?.', 'I disagree because...', and 'Could you explain?' If you've been with me for a while, you know that I like to have my prompt posters up for students because it is that scaffold that give students, specifically reluctant students who don't always want to participate, a little support that they might need to finally take the leap into participating in the conversation. I actually want to support you in supporting your students with using Accountable Talk. I actually have some free, Accountable Talk posters that you can download over in our Members Resource Library. If you are not a free member, you can become one with just a couple quick clicks, I will link to it in the show notes over at classroomnook.com/podcast/57. You'll see all the details on how to get these posters so that you can begin teaching Accountable Talk in your classroom. Go over there after this episode and download them. Once you do, you can display these posters for your students to use to keep the conversation going. It also helps them to maintain a conversation that is open ended with opportunities for other students to jump in and add their own two cents to the conversation.
Now, rather than just giving students a huge list of phrases that they can use, I've found that it's helpful to break Accountable Talk into three groups of phrases and comments to help students really master the art of Accountable Talk. These categories are 1) Phrases to add on, 2) Phrases to clarify, and 3) Asking questions. Now, the free posters that I just mentioned are breaking down those phrases in that same manner, phrases to add, phrases to clarify and asking questions. It helps students to really see which types of questions and which kinds of comments they will actually ask during Accountable Talk. Of course, as students get better with Accountable Talk, they're going to put their own spin on the phrases that I'm going to be sharing with you and become less reliant on the posters themselves. Of course, that is a good thing. You might be asking yourself what kinds of phrases are on these posters? I've already said that they're divided into three categories. I have three posters, the clarifying phrases, the phrases they add on, and the asking questions but here's what I mean by each type of phrase. A clarification phrase might be, 'I was wondering', 'Could you explain when you said blank?', 'I didn't understand.', 'Can you explain what you mean in a different way?'. These clarifying phrases will help students better understand what their classmates are saying. Phrases to add on to what somebody else is already saying might be something like this. 'Also, I think I agree or disagree because have you thought about blank?', 'I felt or I thought blank after you said...', 'I like what you said about blank because...'. These are phrases that students can use when they want to add on to what their partner or their peer is already saying. It keeps the conversation going and it becomes a two way conversation rather than a student just saying what they think and then the other students moving on to the next thought. These are phrases to add on and the final type of the category for Accountable Talk is the asking questions category. Those are questions like, 'Does anyone think?', 'What do you think about?', 'How would you feel if...', 'I was wondering?', and 'What if...', These aren't necessarily when you ask questions for when you don't understand something, it's asking the other people in their group questions to get them thinking more deeply about the text the topic that they are discussing. There's really no rule as to when students can use each type of phrase, they just pick a phrase that works in the moment that they're in, in the conversation that they're in.
You might first use Accountable Talk or model Accountable Talk during a conversation about a book that you're reading together as a class. You can begin the conversation by using one of the phrases from the asking questions poster such as 'What do you think about blank character or this event?' Invite other students to add on to the conversation by using their own phrases shown on the posters. It might be a little bit robotic at first, but it's important to keep at it. As you do, the conversations will begin to flow smoother and more naturally, these phrases will kind of become ingrained in students brains and they'll start using them on their own in a much more natural way. You're going to spend several weeks focusing on whole group Accountable Talk. Practice and be sensitive to your students abilities. Younger students are going to take a little bit longer to grasp the concept than older students who may already be doing bits and pieces of Accountable Talk on their own. Don't worry too much at first about whether Accountable Talk transfers into their own conversations without you just yet, this will come in time. However, be on the lookout when you do observe students using Accountable Talk and be sure to bring it to the attention of the whole class so that you can highlight those conversations as a whole class. The next step after a whole group modeling is to have students try out Accountable Talk on their own. You'll know your students are ready when you are doing less coaxing of using Accountable Talk in your whole group discussion and you find that your conversations are beginning to flow more naturally. If you feel like your students are ready to try it out on their own, but could still use a little support, inside that free download that I mentioned earlier, you'll also see a student reference sheet that you can give to your students that they can take with them to their discussions and just refer to it as needed. Again, you can get to that by going to classroomnook.com/podcast/57. The more students see these phrases, whether it's on their own reference sheet or on those posters that you can display in your classroom, the more likely they will begin to use them on their own.
Before you send your students off to their small groups to try the strategies out for Accountable Talk, you'll want to discuss with your students appropriate and inappropriate behavior during small group discussion. I like to use a simple 'Looks Like/Sounds Like' T-chart. Basically all you do is create a two column T-chart. On one side you write what good behavior during small groups should look like and the other, you write what good behavior sounds like, So it looks like everybody's eyes are on the speaker, they're sitting down, they're not playing with anything. And the 'Sounds Like' column might say something like, only one person is talking at a time, people are talking at an appropriate level so you don't disrupt other groups, things like that. It's just the routines and procedures that you want to set up before you have students go out and try this on their own.
Now, as I mentioned, this use of Accountable Talk takes lots and lots of practice. You should not expect mastery level of Accountable Talk to come too quickly, especially with your younger students. Don't get discouraged, here are two tips that you can use to help your students improve their Accountable Talk skills over time. The first one is to do a fish bowl conversation. A fishbowl conversation is where you have a small group of students doing something, in this case, having a conversation using Accountable Talk, while the other students watch and observe. The students that are participating are essentially in the fish bowl and everybody around them can see and watch what they're doing. Students can observe and take note about what's working and what isn't. You shouldn't necessarily pick a group of students that do everything right. It's okay to pick a group of students that may do some things right and other things they struggle with because it's good for students to see what to do and what not to do. The fish bowl students are going to carry on the conversation as if no one else is listening. When you first start this, you might actually want to be one of the fish bowl participants to kind of help guide that initial conversation. Then as time goes on, you can remove yourself from the conversation and just have a group of students leading the conversation. It's a nice scaffold to start with a conversation with you as one of the participants, have the other students observe, and then remove yourself from the conversation, just having students lead the conversation and then finally moving it towards individual small groups around your classroom. Of course, it's always helpful to have that conversation at the end when you come back together and have students discuss what went well and what should be improved. My second tip for helping students to improve their Accountable Talk skills is to actually record their conversations. Now, of course, you're not going to want to do this with an entire 30 minutes worth of conversation, but try having groups record ten or fifteen minutes of their conversation and carry on as if they're having their normal meeting. Then groups can play back their conversation and take notes of times that they use Accountable Talk well and times that they should have been using it. They can also quickly see if one student is dominating the conversation while others are left out. Recording the conversation is a great way for you to assess individual students on their participation and conversational skills. Those are my two tips for helping your students to improve their Accountable Talk skills. The first one was to do a fish bowl conversation and then the second one was to record small group conversations.
Finally, it's never too early or too late in the school year to begin teaching your students to use Accountable Talk. The important thing is consistency and repetition so be sure that you're modeling and encouraging Accountable Talk in all content areas. In reading, you're going to be discussing books in science and social studies. You're going to be talking about the topics that you're learning in class and anywhere else that you can have open ended conversation. You should be encouraging your students to use those clarifying phrases to add on to what others are saying by using those phrases that best help students to add on and to ask questions that are thought provoking and that get others to speak up about the topic that they're discussing. I want you to be successful at using this strategy with your students so make sure you go over and grab the free posters and the free student reference sheet that you can give your students to begin using Accountable Talk right away. I think that you will start using it and you'll never look back. You'll see your conversations becoming deeper and more meaningful, and you'll see those reluctant students taking the leap into participating in the conversation because they'll have that crutch that helps support them and gives them something to say when they feel at a loss for words. Grab the freebee, I'll link to it for you in the show notes at classroomnook.com/podcast/57.
All right, you guys have a great rest of your day and a good start to your week. I will be back again next week. Bye for now.
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