Academic Conversations

Where would we be without conversation? Throughout history, conversations have allowed us to see different perspectives, build ideas, and solve problems. In Academic Conversations: Classroom Talk That Fosters Critical Thinking and Content Understandings, Jeff Zwiers and Marie Crawford dig into back-and-forth dialogues in which students focus on a topic and explore it by building, challenging and negotiating relevant issues.Academic Conversations identifies five core communication skills to help students hold productive academic conversations across content areas. These skills are:Elaborating and clarifyingSupporting ideas with evidenceBuilding on and/or challenging ideasParaphrasingSynthesizingReaders will find numerous practical activities for working on each of the conversation skills, strategies for crafting conversation-worthy tasks, and examples of how to use conversations to teach and assess. Academic Conversations offers and in-depth and practical approach to helping students develop into the future parents, teachers, and leaders who will collaborate to build a better world.