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Academic Conversation Strategies to Help Students Share Their Thinking

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Episode 84
Helping students participate in academic conversations.

Academic conversations can be a great way to get students sharing their thinking, but getting everyone to participate isn’t always easy. You ask a question and wait. A few hands go up right away, and you already know exactly who you could call on to keep the lesson moving. Meanwhile, you’re looking around the room wondering what everyone else is thinking.

I know that moment well. It can be hard to stand in front of a class and wait, especially when you have a lesson to get through and those few seconds of silence start to feel much longer than they actually are. But I’ve also learned that if I want more students sharing their thinking, I have to give them a chance to figure out what that thinking is first.

And even then, having an idea doesn’t necessarily mean a student is ready to share it. Academic conversations ask students to do something that can feel pretty risky. They’re putting their thinking out there, sometimes before they’re completely sure of it, and hoping they can explain it in a way that makes sense.

So getting more students involved in academic conversations isn’t really about finding more questions to ask. It’s about helping students become comfortable enough to answer them.

Sometimes Students Just Need More Time

Silence can be uncomfortable in a classroom, and I think sometimes we feel that discomfort more than our students do. We ask a question, wait a few seconds, and immediately start wondering whether we need to rephrase it, give another example, or call on someone.

I’ve certainly done it. There’s always that temptation to call on one of the students whose hand went up right away and keep the lesson moving. But when we do that too quickly, everyone else learns that they really don’t need to spend much time thinking. Someone else will eventually answer.

One thing I’ve found helpful is making the wait time purposeful and letting students know what I’m doing. I might tell them, “I’m going to give you 30 seconds to think before I take any answers.” Other times, I might have students jot something down or talk through an idea with a partner first.

It doesn’t have to look the same every time. What matters is that more students have an opportunity to think about the question before someone else answers it for them. Over time, students also begin to understand that I’m not looking for the fastest hand in the room. I’m expecting everyone to spend some time thinking.

Academic Conversations Take Practice

Of course, giving students more time to think is only part of it.

Students can have plenty to say to one another until we put a text in front of them and ask them to explain an inference, compare two characters, or respond to someone else’s interpretation. Suddenly, they aren’t just sharing an opinion. They’re sharing academic thinking that they may not be completely sure about, and that can make the conversation feel very different.

That’s one reason I like to practice the conversation itself before making the academic thinking too difficult. I’ve used simple questions like whether books or movies are better or what makes a great vacation. Students can usually jump into those conversations without spending a lot of time trying to figure out what they think.

Students can practice sharing an idea and listening to what their partner says. They can learn how to respond instead of each person simply giving an answer and considering the conversation finished. It also gives me a chance to establish what I mean when I ask students to talk with a partner, something I think we sometimes assume students already know how to do.

Once the routine becomes familiar, I can start changing what we’re talking about. Books versus movies can become comparing two characters, or a simple opinion can become explaining an inference from a text. The thinking gets harder, but the process of sharing an idea, listening, and responding is already familiar.

Sometimes Students Need Help Getting Started

There’s another reason students sometimes stay out of academic conversations that I think is easy to overlook. They may have an idea. They just aren’t quite sure how to get that idea into the conversation.

This is one of the reasons I’ve used academic language sentence stems with students. I wanted students to have access to that language support whenever they needed it, so I kept sentence stem cards at the tables and also included discussion maps in their notebooks. They were simply different ways of making sure students had something they could refer to when they needed help getting started.

And I made that support available to everyone.

I didn’t want students spending all of their energy trying to figure out how to begin when what I really wanted them thinking about was the idea they were trying to communicate. The stems could help students formulate their own thinking, but they were also useful when it came time to respond. How do you ask someone to explain a little more? How do you clarify an idea? How do you build on what someone else has said?

Some students used the support more than others, and that was fine. As students became more comfortable with academic conversations, many of them naturally started moving beyond the stems and using their own language. But I kept the support available throughout the year because there was no reason to take away something a student might still need from time to time.

What Does Participation Need to Look Like?

I also think it’s important that we don’t define a successful academic conversation as every student eventually raising a hand and sharing in front of the whole class.

That isn’t necessarily what I’m working toward.

A meaningful academic conversation can happen between two students. It can happen in a small group, and it can certainly happen as part of a whole-class discussion. What matters to me is that students are becoming more comfortable putting their thinking into words, listening to someone else’s ideas, and responding to what they hear.

And that comfort takes time. Students aren’t going to become comfortable sharing their academic thinking because we practiced conversations once at the beginning of the year. Like so many of our classroom routines, this is something we continue to work on. Students need regular opportunities to think, talk, listen, and respond until academic conversations simply become part of what we do in class.

Which brings me back to those few hands that go up as soon as we ask a question. It can be tempting to call on one of them and keep moving, and sometimes that’s exactly what we’re going to do. But other times, we can wait a little longer and give everyone else a chance to get there too.

Building Academic Conversations Takes Time

When only a few hands go up after we ask a question, it’s easy to assume those are the students who are ready to participate. But the students who need a little more time may have just as much to contribute. They may need time to think through their answer, a chance to talk it out with someone first, or some support finding the words to explain what they’re thinking.

That’s why I think building academic conversations is less about getting more hands in the air and more about creating opportunities for students to become comfortable sharing their ideas. Not every student is going to want to speak in front of the whole class, and they don’t have to. If students are thinking, talking with one another, listening, and learning how to put their ideas into words, those academic conversations are already doing important work.

Resources you may find helpful:

Academic Language Sentence Stem Cards

Keep listening:

Easy Ways to Start Peer-to-Peer Academic Conversations

Today, we’re wrapping up our back-to-school series. I know, some of you are already getting ready to head off to fall break, but where I live, school just started a few weeks ago. The good thing about this series, though, is that these really aren’t just back-to-school ideas. They’re strategies you can come back to and use anytime throughout the year.

Over the last several episodes, we’ve talked about helping students see themselves as readers, supporting struggling readers, building class routines, and making better use of warm-ups. If one of those is something you’re working on with your class now, go back and relisten to that episode. Each one gives you practical ideas you can put to work no matter where we are in the school year.

For this final episode in the series, I want to talk about getting students comfortable sharing their ideas in class. We ask students to share their ideas all the time—in conversations with a partner, in small groups, or as part of a class discussion. But for a lot of students, sharing what they’re thinking doesn’t come easily.

And academic conversations can raise the stakes even more. Now students aren’t just sharing an opinion—they’re sharing an idea they think might be wrong, or trying to explain something they’re not quite sure how to put into words.

And in middle school, there’s always that added worry about what everyone else is going to think. If we want students to take that risk and share their thinking, we need to create a classroom where they feel comfortable doing it and give them the tools to help them get started.

One of the first things we have to get comfortable with if we want students to share more of their thinking is silence. And I know that sounds a little strange when we’re talking about getting students to participate in conversations, but think about what happens when you ask a question and nobody answers right away.

Those few seconds of silence can feel incredibly long when you’re standing in front of the room waiting for someone to respond. I’ve been there plenty of times. I ask a question, nobody volunteers right away, and almost immediately I start wondering whether I need to do something.

Do I need to rephrase the question? Do they not understand what I’m asking? Do I need to give them another example? And pretty soon, I find myself calling on one of the same few students who I know will be willing to answer.

I understand why we do it. We want to keep the lesson moving, and that silence can make us feel like something isn’t working. But sometimes nothing is wrong. Students may simply need more than a few seconds to figure out what they think and how they want to say it.

But when we step in too quickly, students start to learn that they really don’t have to use that time to think. If they wait long enough, someone else will answer, and they can sit back and listen instead of working through the question for themselves.

This is something I’m much more aware of now, and it’s something I talk about with my student teachers because I know how hard it is to get comfortable with that silence. But if we want more students doing the thinking, we have to be willing to give them time to do it.

One thing that helps is simply telling students that you’re going to wait. I might say, “I’m going to give you 30 seconds to think before I take any answers.” Now they know I’m not looking for the fastest hand in the room, and they know that I expect everyone to spend that time thinking about the question.

There are other ways to give students that same kind of space. Sometimes I’ll have them jot down an idea before we talk. Other times, I’ll ask them to think about their answer and share it with a partner first. I’ve even had students give me a little signal when they’re ready, maybe putting up a finger or simply looking up at me, so I can get a sense of when the class is ready to move on.

None of these are things you have to do every time you ask a question. They’re just different tools you can use depending on your students and what you’re asking them to think about. The important part is that we stop treating every moment of silence as something we need to fix.

And the more we make think time part of what we regularly do, the more students get used to it. They learn that they don’t have to have an answer immediately, but they also learn that they can’t just wait for someone else to do the thinking for them. We’re giving them a little time to figure out what they want to say before we ask them to share it.

Of course, getting students comfortable talking isn’t necessarily the same thing as getting them comfortable sharing their academic thinking.

Students usually have plenty to say to each other, but once we put a text in front of them and ask them to explain an inference or share what they noticed, the conversation changes. Now they’re not just sharing an opinion. They’re trying to figure out whether their thinking makes sense, whether they can explain it clearly, and probably wondering what everyone else is going to think about their answer.

And I think that fear of being wrong is a big part of what can make academic conversations so difficult. Students may have an idea, but they’re not quite confident enough to say it out loud. Or they know what they’re thinking, but they don’t have the language yet to explain it in the way we’re asking them to.

So simply giving students more time to think by itself isn’t necessarily going to solve the problem. If we want students to become more comfortable with academic conversations, we have to teach them how to have those conversations and give them opportunities to practice without worrying about getting the answer right.

One of the easiest ways I’ve found to do that is to take some of that academic pressure out of the conversation when we’re first teaching the routine. When we’re first teaching students how to have these conversations, I don’t want them worrying about challenging content at the same time. I want them to be able to focus on the conversation itself—how to share an idea, how to respond, and how to keep the conversation going.

One way I’ve done this is by starting with really easy, low-risk topics. I might ask students whether books or movies are better, what makes a great vacation, or even something as simple as whether they would rather have more homework or a longer school day. The topic really doesn’t matter as long as it gives students something they can easily talk about without having to work through a difficult question first.

Because at that point, the answer really isn’t what I’m teaching. How to have the conversation is the lesson.

I want students to practice what it looks like to have a conversation with a partner. How do you share your idea? What do you do after your partner responds? How do you ask a question or add something to what they’ve said? Starting with an easy topic lets us practice all of those things while the focus stays on how the conversation works rather than on getting the right answer.

It also gives me a chance to establish the routine and the expectations for these conversations. When I ask students to talk with a partner, I want them to know what that means. We’re not just turning to the person next to us, each giving an answer, and then waiting for me to bring the class back together. Which I’ve seen happen all too often. I want them listening to each other, responding to what the other person says, and learning how to keep the conversation going.

As students get more comfortable with the process, we can start moving those conversations to more academic content. Books versus movies can become comparing two characters, or a simple opinion can become explaining an inference from a text. The thinking is more challenging, but students already know how to share an idea, listen to someone else, and respond.

There’s another piece of this that I think is really important, and that’s giving students some of the language they need to participate in these conversations. Sometimes students know what they want to say, but they’re spending so much time trying to figure out how to say it that they never actually join the conversation.

This is one of the reasons I’ve used academic language sentence stems with students. I wanted students to have access to that language support whenever they needed it, so I kept sentence stem cards right at the tables and also included discussion maps in their notebooks. Whether they were working with a partner, in a small group, or somewhere else in the classroom, they had something they could refer back to if they weren’t quite sure how to put their thinking into words.

And the sentence stems weren’t just there to help students get their first idea out. They also helped with what comes next in the conversation. If someone shares an idea with you, how do you respond? How do you ask them to explain a little more? How do you build on what they’ve said? Having that language in front of students gives them somewhere to start while they’re learning how these conversations work.

I also don’t think of sentence stems as something that’s only for struggling students. They’re a tool that I make available to everyone because different students are going to need that support at different times. Some students may rely on them quite a bit at first, while others may only look at them occasionally. And as students get more comfortable, they’ll naturally start using their own language and moving beyond what’s written on the cards.

But I don’t think that means we need to take the support away. I want it to stay available throughout the year so that when a student gets stuck or isn’t quite sure how to put an idea into words, they have something they can go back to. The goal isn’t to have students following a script every time they talk. It’s to give them enough support that figuring out how to start a sentence doesn’t become the reason they decide not to participate.

If sentence stems are something you’re thinking about using with your students, I’ve linked my Academic Language Sentence Stem Cards in the show notes. They include sentence starters for things we ask students to do throughout the year, like comparing, summarizing, clarifying, making inferences, and analyzing, so students have somewhere to start when they need help putting their thinking into words.

And like so many of the routines we’ve talked about throughout this back-to-school series, this isn’t something that happens because we practiced it once in August or September. Students get more comfortable sharing their thinking because we keep giving them opportunities to do it.

That means giving them time to think before we expect an answer and opportunities to talk through an idea with a partner before sharing it more widely. It means making language support available when they aren’t quite sure how to begin, and then continuing to give them opportunities to practice until having an academic conversation starts to feel like a normal part of class rather than a special activity.

And I think it’s important to remember that the goal isn’t necessarily to turn every student into someone who wants to share their ideas in front of the entire class. A meaningful academic conversation can happen between two students, in a small group, or as part of a whole-class discussion. What I want is for students to become more comfortable putting an idea out there, listening to someone else’s thinking, and continuing to work with their own ideas as the conversation goes on.

And all of this brings me back to that silence we talked about at the beginning. When you ask a question and only a few hands go up right away, it can be tempting to call on one of them and keep the lesson moving. But giving everyone else a little more time to think may be exactly what they need. When students know they’ll have that time, and they have the structure and language to help them share their ideas, we’re creating opportunities for more students to be part of the conversation.

And don’t forget if you want to try sentence stems with your students, you’ll find my Academic Language Sentence Stem Cards linked in today’s show notes.

I hope you’ve found a few ideas throughout this back-to-school series that you can use with your class. And remember, none of these are really just beginning-of-the-year strategies. As the year goes on, some of those routines may start to slip or your students may just need a refresher. When that happens, you can always come back and revisit these episodes.

We have a fifth Tuesday this month, which means a bonus episode. I’ll be sharing a podcast series I’ve been working on specifically for students and talking about a different way you might think about using podcasts in your ELA class. I’m excited to share this one with you.

If you’ve been enjoying the podcast, please consider sharing an episode with another ELA teacher or leaving a quick rating. It really does help other teachers find the podcast.

Thanks for joining me today, and I’ll see you next time for our fifth Tuesday bonus episode. Until then!