Overview

Talking with others is a powerful way to learn. In Academic Conversations, students explore ideas and negotiate meanings to deepen understandings and connections. While this strategy cultivates a range of thinking and language skills, it emphasizes the development of five conversation skills across disciplines:

• Elaborating, clarifying, and questioning
• Supporting ideas with examples and evidence
• Paraphrasing
• Building on ideas
• Synthesizing key ideas of the conversation

Developing these skills helps students to fortify their academic language, critical thinking skills, content understandings, academic writing, and oral communication skills. Moreover, Academic Conversations are also powerful windows for assessing language, learning, and thinking.

For more information, refer to the book Academic Conversations: Classroom talk that fosters critical thinking across disciplines by Zwiers, J., & Crawford, M. (2011). Stenhouse.

Five Core Academic Conversation Skills

• Academic Conversation Skills
  
• Lesson Activities for Developing Each Skill
  Discusses many challenges that arise when teaching through Academic Conversations. These include test pressures, curriculum limitations, and time.
  

Academic Conversations Across Disciplines

• ACs in Language Arts
  
• ACs in History & Social Science
  
• ACs in Math
  
• ACs in Science
  
• ACs in Grades K, 1, 2

Academic Conversation Assessment

• Assessment, Data Analysis, and Action Research
  This section discusses assessment methods, data gathering, and analysis of results of the use and development of Academic Conversations.