1.  To identify and explain 4 related
teaching techniques that create
student accountability for answering
questions and verbalizing thinking
 To assess readiness and plan to try
one or more these techniques in a
lesson by next Thursday
 To record successes and/or struggles
with your attempts at one or more
of these strategies by next Thursday
MS Staff Training
4.23.15
Learning Targets:

2. Holding students accountable during
questioning
*

3. *
*To get students to higher-level thinking, we
need to get them talking

4. *

5. *
*No hands up
*Random – check: how do you control bias?
*Strategies: random name generator
*Dice, cards, popcycle sticks, etc

6. *
What teacher moves and
student moves do you see?
What effect are they having on
student responses and thinking?

7. *
*Based on the premise that every student will
eventually provide appropriate/ correct answer
*Remind, Repeat, Return

8. *
What teacher moves and
student moves do you see?
What effect are they having on
student responses and thinking?

9. *
*To ensure high level thinking from all –
especially low expectancy students
*“There’s a difference between partially
right and all-the-way right answers.
Right is Right means that when you
respond to students’ answers in class,
you set a high standard by holding out
for all-the-way right, or, if there is no
‘right’ answer, holding out for thorough,
rigorous answers.”

10. *
*Four main criteria for Right is Right:
1) Is the answer all-the-way correct?
(When there is no precise correct
answer, is the answer up to my
standard of thoroughness and rigor?)
2) Has the student answered my
question?
3) Is this the right answer at the right
time?
4) Are my students using technical
vocabulary?

11. *
*“Learning shouldn’t end at the first ‘right’
answer. Stretch It rewards ‘right’ answers
with more knowledge and further
challenge: follow-up questions that test
for reliability, extend knowledge, and ask
students to apply skills in new ways.”
*“Stretch It can help you differentiate
instruction for students at different skills
levels and meet the ever-expanding
horizons of students who might otherwise
be coasting.”

12. *
*Six Effective Ways to Stretch It.
Ask students to:
1)Explain how or why.
2)Answer in a different way.
3)Answer with a better word.
4)Provide evidence.
5)Integrate a related skill.
6)Apply the same skill in a new
setting.

13. *
*Try to incorporate one of these strategies in
your class and be prepared to share your
results next week

14. “[From birth to age 4], an average child in a
professional family would have accumulated
experience with almost 45 million words, an
average child in a working-class family
would have accumulated experience with 26
million words, and an average child in a
welfare family would have accumulated
experience with 13 million words.”
-from “The Early Catastrophe: The 30 Million Word Gap by Age 3” by Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley
The Importance of Student Talk –
Participating, Listening, Processing

15. “[From birth to age 4], the average child in a
professional family would have accumulated 560,000
more instances of encouraging feedback than
discouraging feedback (6 affirmations to 1
prohibition), and an average child in a working-class
family would have accumulated 100,000 more
encouragements than discouragements (2 affirmations
to 1 prohibition). But an average child in a welfare
family would have accumulated 125,000 more
instances of prohibitions than encouragements (1
affirmation to 2 prohibitions). By the age of 4, the
average child in a welfare family might have had
144,000 fewer encouragements and 84,000 more
discouragements of his or her behavior than the
average child in a working-class family.”
-from “The Early Catastrophe: The 30 Million Word Gap by Age 3” by Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley

16. “Language [. . .] is how we think. It's how we
process information and remember. It's our
operating system. Vygotsky (1962) suggested
that thinking develops into words in a number of
phases, moving from imaging to inner speech to
inner speaking to speech. Tracing this idea
backward, speech—talk—is the representation of
thinking. As such, it seems reasonable to suggest
that classrooms should be filled with talk, given
that we want them filled with thinking!”
-from “Why Talk Is Important in Classrooms” in Content-Area Conversations
by Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey and Carol Rothenberg

17. "In homes where the near friends and visitors are mainly
literary people--lawyers, judges, professors and clergymen--
the children's ears become early familiarized with wide
vocabularies. It is natural for them to pick up any words that
fall their way; it is natural for them to pick up big and little
ones indiscriminately; it is natural for them to use without
fear any word that comes to their net, no matter how
formidable it may be as to size. As a result, their talk is a
curious and funny musketry clatter of little words,
interrupted at intervals by the heavy-artillery crash of a
word of such imposing sound and size that it seems to shake
the ground and rattle the windows. Sometimes the child gets
a wrong idea of a word which it has picked up by chance,
and attaches to it a meaning which impairs its usefulness--
but this does not happen as often as one might expect it
would. Indeed, it happens with an infrequency which may be
regarded as remarkable."
- Mark Twain's Autobiography