Talk Activities Flowchart

Which talk activities can I use with my students?

What is the purpose of the talk activity?

To get students to critique and get feedback on science models

To get students to revise their thinking

To reach consensus

To get students to explain their thinking

Where are you in the unit?

Are you going to moderate discussion?

How will students think about this phenomenon best?

Where are students in their completion process?

Completed models

Working on models

Written language

Images

No; this is a chance for them to “work out” their ideas

Yes; I am curious what they’re thinking

Beginning

End

Middle

Data

Graphs

Agree - Disagree Line

Three stay one stray

Data Discussion

Discussion Diamond

All class science talk

Share - Trade

Claim- Pass

Stronger - Clearer

Continuing the Conversation

Four Quadrants/ Voting Chips

Write & Pass

All - Day Post-its

Opener Sentence Frames

Driving Question Board

AB Partner Talk

Talk Moves Checklist

Talk Moves

Sharing my Question

Listen and Compare

Revoice and Compare

Interpret and Analyze

Interpret and Compare

Partner Parade

Go Around Once

Go Around Twice

Go Around All

Go Around Timed

Put in Your Two Cents

Think Pair Share

Many Minds One Marker

Give one Get one

Agree-Disagree Line

Purpose: To Elicit Student Argument from Evidence or Experience - Reaching Consensus

​

Setup: Students will need a common experience, such as a lab activity, in order to do this whole-class activity. Teacher puts signs at opposite ends of the classroom indicating two possible explanations for what happened.

1. The teacher asks students to think about the demonstration they just saw.
2. The teacher goes to each sign (on opposite sides of the room) and explains them as necessary.
3. The teacher then asks students to think about which sign they think best explains what they witnessed.
4. Students stand up and move toward the explanation they most agree with, based on their certainty. For example, students who are not sure should stand in the middle of the room, students who are really sure stand directly beneath the sign, and students who have another explanation can stay in their seats.
5. Students make their thinking public by: a. grouping with the people near them and writing to explain what they think happened in their own words. b. sharing their ideas by speaking to the entire class passing a “microphone” or talking stick to share their ideas. You can invite discussion by using teacher talk moves from the the “Talk Science Primer.”
6. Students are free to move around the room as their ideas change. The following quote might be helpful: “In order to learn one must change one’s mind” -Orson Scott Card
7. At the end of class, you can facilitate a debriefing session where students share what (if anything) made them change their minds: their friends’ ideas, the evidence offered, the emotion people spoke with, how sure they seemed, etc. This can be a good opportunity for students to talk about what makes people believe certain statements, such as forcefulness of tone, gender, or ethnicity

Three Stay, One Stray

Purpose: To Elicit Student Argument from Evidence or Experience - Critiquing Ideas

Setup: Students sit in four-person teams. Each team has their model and a feedback form at their table. If available, students could use table tents for accepting criticism or praise.

One person from each group is designated as the wandering critic.

1. The wandering critic “strays” to another group’s model.
2. Each group must explain their model to the visiting critic.
3. The critic can ask questions about the model.
4. The wandering critic returns and tells their group about the model they saw.
5. Steps 1-5 can be repeated with a new critic.
6. Groups can revise their models based on what they’ve learned.

​

All-Day Post-Its

Purpose: To Elicit Student Argument from Evidence or Experience - Critiquing Ideas

Setup: Students have an almost-final product that they are ready to share for public critique. They tape these products up around the room. Teachers may have already checked over this work, as well, to understand the range of students’ ideas. Here are some tools for recognizing students’ range of thinking.

1. Students make their models or explanations public (on a poster or another form of representation).
2. Students’ work is left out for 24 hours.
3. During the time they are left out, each student from your other classes must leave at least one comment on a post-it note on a model. Consider encouraging students to include their name and support students with sentence starters for constructive criticism, such as:
1. I liked how you included ____ because ___.
2. Have you considered adding ____ to show ____?
3. Are you planning to show ____?
4. If time allows, other teachers could come in and make comments on the models, as well.

Write & Pass

Purpose: To Elicit Student Argument from Evidence or Experience - Revising Ideas

​

Setup: Students each have a loose piece of paper, a writing utensil, and some phenomenon or demonstration to make sense of. The teacher must have a provocative question that students can each answer. It helps if students have had practice giving each other criticism or pushing others’ thinking. They may do peer editing often in Language Arts class – you might draw on that experience.

1. Divide students into groups of four.
2. The teacher posts a question that students must answer with an explanation.
3. Students each write their own ideas on a loose piece of paper.
4. Then the papers are all passed to the left.
5. Each student silently reads the student’s response (and any of the other students’ comments, on iterating rounds of this process).
6. Each student writes suggestions directly onto the original copy to help make their peers’ ideas sharper and clearer.
7. Repeat the pass-read-edit until each student gets to read and comment on each others’ ideas.
8. The original author of each statement reads their peers comments and writes a refined, final statement at the bottom of the paper to turn in. ** To add more physical activity

Four Quadrants/Voting Chips

Purpose: To Elicit Student Argument from Evidence or Experience - Revising Ideas

Setup: This is a good way for students to explain what they have seen in a demonstration or how it relates to the anchoring phenomenon. Print four slightly different statements related to the model on a paper (example to the right). Provide each table with four BINGO chips, beans, or plastic markers.

1. Have a student from each small group or table read the four statements aloud and place the paper with the statements on it in the middle of the table.
2. Going in turn, have each student state which of the four statements they most agree with and why.
3. No one may interrupt whichever student is speaking.
4. When the speaker is finished, he or she places a BINGO chip on the statement they most agree with.
5. Going in turn, each of the other three team members states their beliefs and places a BINGO chip.
6. As a whole room, tally how many chips there are for each statement and ask students to clarify their thinking to each other. Use talk moves from Michaels and O’Connor’s Talk Science Primer to ask students to elaborate and clarify their thinking. If needed, each student can write his or her ideas at the end of class in their science journal.

Continuing the Conversation

Present and Idea

• Our data showed…
• Something that caught our attention…
• I think…
• One/Another way to think about it is…
• I noticed that…
• It’s interesting that…
• I didn’t realize that…
• In my opinion…

Build on an Idea:

​

• I agree with… that…
• I also think that…
• Your idea (relates, is similar) to…
• ______ made an important point. I would add…

Challenge an Idea

​

• I (disagree, don’t agree) that…?
• I have a different idea…
• A different way of looking at it is…..
• Our data showed something different…
• Another idea is _______.
• We noticed something different…

Data Discussion - cards for each step at this link

Purpose: Scientists present their explanations and critique the explanations proposed by other scientists.

• Quality Control of Data and Graph
• Orienting to the Data
• Finding Similarities & Differences
• Exploring the Pattern

— Walk the Triangle —

• Make Sense of Pattern
• Predicting the Future

​

• Board Meeting (small groups) - Protocols that students can use to share whiteboards with other students.\
• Board Meeting - 2 variations
• Board Meeting (whole group) - A structured data discussion protocol where students draw graphs on whiteboards, organize boards, then discuss the patterns and their meaning.
• Board meeting discussion slide show
• Ways to facilitate a board meeting
• Student Cards for Discussion - sentence starters
• Ways to facilitate a Data Discussion

Go Around Once

Purpose: This protocol is useful when you want groups to quickly share a few ideas. It assures each student has the opportunity to share ONE idea in a small group before the group discusses the ideas together.

Take some purposeful private thinking and reasoning time to record your ideas.

Person #1, report one idea that you have recorded.

While Person #1 is reporting, listen attentively, but do not question Person #1, comment, or give clues to indicate whether you agree or disagree.

Person #2 report one of your recorded ideas while the rest of you listen attentively as described above.

Repeat until all group members have reported all of their ideas one at a time (including ideas that are repetitions or slight variations of ideas previously reported).

Discuss the ideas that were reported as a group.

Go Around Twice

Purpose: This protocol is useful when you want groups to quickly share a few ideas. It assures each student has the opportunity to share ONE idea in a small group before the group discusses the ideas together.

Take some purposeful private thinking and reasoning time to record your ideas.

Person #1, report ideas for prompt one.

While Person #1 is reporting, listen attentively, but do not question Person #1, comment, or give clues to indicate whether you agree or disagree.

Person #2 report ideas for prompt one.

Repeat until all group members have reported report ideas for prompt one.

Repeat process for prompt two.

Discuss the ideas that were reported as a group.

Go Around Timed

Purpose: This protocol is useful when you want to control the amount of time for sharing ideas. It assures that each student gets equal time the to share their ideas in a small group before the group discusses the ideas together.

Take some purposeful private thinking and reasoning time to record your ideas.

Person #1, report all of your recorded ideas until the facilitator announces “finish your thought and rotate.”

While Person #1 is reporting, listen attentively, but do not question Person #1, comment, or give clues to indicate whether you agree or disagree.

Person #2, report all of your recorded ideas (even if those ideas were already reported by Person #1) while the rest of you listen attentively as described above until the facilitator announces “finish your thought and rotate.”

Repeat until all group members have reported.

Discuss the ideas that were reported as a group.

Go Around All

Purpose: This protocol is useful when you want groups to generate a lot of ideas. It assures each student has the opportunity to share ALL their ideas in a small group before the group discusses the ideas together.

Take some purposeful private thinking and reasoning time to record your ideas.

Person #1, report all of your recorded ideas.

While Person #1 is reporting, listen attentively, but do not question Person #1, comment, or give clues to indicate whether you agree or disagree.

Person #2 report all of your recorded ideas while the rest of you listen attentively as described above.

Repeat until all group members have reported all of their ideas.

Discuss the ideas that were reported as a group.

Put in Your Two Cents

Purpose: This protocol is useful when you want to assure each student has the opportunity to share, but you don’t need to control the order of sharing. It also provides each the student the opportunity to respond to others in the group.

Take some purposeful private thinking and reasoning time to respond to the prompt, question, image, or object.

Take turns putting one penny or token in the center of the table as you share your idea.

Once all have shared once, take turns putting in the other penny or token in the center of the table as you respond to what others in the group have shared.

Discussion Diamond

Purpose: To Elicit Student Argument from Evidence or Experience - Reaching Consensus

Setup: Each small group or table needs a copy of a graphic organizer that looks like the image to the right. Each student will write one of the triangular “corners” of the organizer.

1. The teacher poses a question that students can answer with data.
2. All students get three minutes to think and write their thoughts in their respective corner.
3. The students take turns explaining their ideas to each other (all students must share).
4. The students discuss what their consensus view might be and write their consensus view in the middle.

Notes: 1. This makes a good formative assessment artifact. 2. Coming to a consensus is really hard work and can be really emotional. Remind students that coming to a consensus is about arguing about ideas, not arguing with people. You might have to scaffold participation even further and hold class debriefs about how the argument process itself went for different groups.

All Class Science Talk

Purpose: To Elicit Student Argument from Evidence or Experience - Reaching Consensus

​

Setup: The teacher must develop an open-ended question that students can use experience or a data set to answer.

1. The teacher poses a question for students to answer.
2. If necessary, give students time to think or write.
3. The teacher asks students to turn their bodies toward the center of the room for a Science Talk.
4. The teacher explains: a. “in a Science Talk, knowledge is held by your fellow scientists, and you should talk to each other.The goal of a Science Talk is to help each other understand a phenomenon. You can help your fellow scientists understand by: sharing results, using data, being as clear as possible, and listen carefully to deeply understand what your fellow scientists are saying.
5. Teacher facilitates the student discussion by using Michaels and O’Connor’s Talk Science Primer and avoiding telling answers or asking closed-ended questions.
6. Optional: At the end of the Science Talk, students can record their thinking. Optional: At the end of the science talk, students can record their thinking, document the evolution of their thinking, or talk about what made them change their mind at any point. Expert Tip: Try to take an open-minded stance during all discourse activities, but especially whole-class ones. Research shows that teachers often subtly privilege students who “talk like scientists” by using mainstream or standard English. This should be a space for all students to be free to share, not just ideas of students you agree with.

Think - Pair - Share

​

​

8.5’’ x 11’’ Placemat

Linked Here

Talk Moves Checklist

Talk Moves

Share-Trade

Purpose: To Generate Students’ Initial or Final Explanations of a Model

When you give students an open-ended question, share-trade can help students refine their ideas and their language over time.

1. Each student writes their individual thoughts.
2. Students stand up with their ideas on paper and move around the room.
3. Each student finds someone they don’t know very well and forms a partnership with them. To form a partnership, students must high five.
4. With their partners, students share their ideas and trade papers.
5. Each student is now responsible for sharing the ideas of the person they just spoke with, even if they don’t agree with those ideas. This isn’t a time for them to critique their partners’ ideas.
6. Students form partnerships three or four times so they see and explain multiple ideas.
7. Students return to their seats and write a final explanation or idea.

​

NOTE: Paige Keely prompts like this one for middle school biology can be helpful to get initial ideas out. For example, if students are working with heat energy and phase changes, you could use an image of a snowman in a jacket with the question: What will happen to the snowman? Three explanations can be given in thought bubbles, and your students choose the thought bubble they think is most accurate, and they share-trade their explanations.

Driving Question Board

Link to resource

Purpose: The Driving Question Board (DQB) is a tool used at the beginning of units as a way to generate student questions. It can be used throughout the unit to , keep track of, and revisit student questions that drive the investigation of the anchoring phenomenon and related phenomena.

Organize

Sharing my Question

Purpose: This protocol is used to share questions to to class as it related to the Driving Question Board

Opener Sentence Frames

Purpose: to have students share as many iterations on a topic as they can in a given amount of time. Usually used as an opener to formatively assess prior learning. Students share their ideas with the class.

Claim-Pass

Purpose: To Generate Students’ Initial or Final Explanations of a Model

Setup: Each small group or table needs one piece of paper and one pencil.

1. One person in each group writes a claim (can be provided by the teacher or not) at the top of a paper with the pencil in response to a recent observation of a phenomenon.
2. The student who wrote passes the paper and the pencil it to the left. ]
3. The person with the paper writes one piece of evidence that supports the claim under the claim
4. The paper and pencil are passed to the left.

​

NOTE: The other students in the group can support each writer by offering ideas, but the writer gets to make the ultimate decision about what to write. Emphasize that this is about getting good ideas on paper, and that misspelling is okay. This write-pass continues until the group is out of evidence. Note: students can add counter-evidence, also, if you note a special place on the page, such as beneath a line two-thirds of the way down the page.

AB Partner Talk -

Link to Protocol

Switch partner roles and repeat the protocol

Purpose: Take some purposeful private thinking and reasoning time.

​

A: Explain your ideas

B: Silently listens to understand A’s thinking

​

Reverse roles.

​

B: Explain your ideas

A: Silently listens to understand B’s thinking

A/B: Discuss ways their ideas are the same and/or different

​

For triads and quads, continue until all partners have reported.

Listen and Compare - A/B Talk Cards

B green

B Yellow

A Red

A Blue

Form A/B Partners.

Purpose: Take some purposeful private thinking and reasoning time.

​

A: Explain your ideas

B: Silently listens to understand A’s thinking

B: Carefully re-voices A’s ideas without judging, adapting, or commenting on correctness of ideas

A: Clarifies as needed

​

Reverse roles

​

B: Explain your ideas

A: Silently listens to understand B’s thinking

A: Carefully re-voices B’s ideas without judging, adapting, or commenting on correctness of the ideas

B: Clarifies as needed

A/B: Discuss ways their ideas are the same and/or different

Revoice and Compare

B green

B Yellow

A Red

A Blue

Form A/B Partners

Purpose: Take some purposeful private thinking and reasoning time.

​

Form Small Groups.

A/B Partners divergently verbally brainstorm all kinds of ideas, being careful to avoid getting in a rut.

A: with the one marker, writes down an idea on whiteboard, and passes the marker to A

A: with the one marker, writes down an idea on whiteboard, and passes the marker to B

B: with the one marker, writes down an idea on whiteboard, and passes the marker to B

Many Minds, One Marker

B green

B Yellow

A Red

A Blue

Purpose: Take some purposeful private thinking and reasoning time.

​

A: Give your response

B: Silently listens to understand A’s thinking

​

Reverse roles.

​

B: Give your response

A: Silently listens to understand B’s thinking

A/B: Discuss ways their ideas are the similar and how each might improve.

​

For triads and quads, continue until all partners have reported.

Give One, Get One

B green

B Yellow

A Red

A Blue

Form A/B Partners

Interpret and Compare

Purpose: Take some purposeful private thinking and reasoning time to review written work

Exchange your written work with your A/B partner.

Use private thinking and reasoning time to study each other’s work and, without discussion, try to understand each other’s scientific reasoning.

A: Report your interpretation of B’s reasoning.

B: Clarify as needed.

B: Report your interpretation of A’s reasoning.

A:Clarify as needed.

A/B: Compare your ideas and revise writing.

For triads, continue until all have reported.

B green

B Yellow

A Red

A Blue

Form A/B Partners

Interpret and Analyze

Purpose: Take some purposeful private thinking and reasoning time to review graphs

Complete these sentence starters to interpret and analyze your graph.

A: “The graph is about ____ and ____.”

B: “The x-axis measures ____ in ____.”

A: “The y-axis measures ____ in ____.”

B: “The scale on the x-axis counts by ____.”

A:“The scale on the y-axis counts by ____.”

B: “The trend or pattern of the graph ____.”

A: “This trend or pattern means ____.”

B: “The mathematical model is ____.”

For triads, continue until all have reported.

B green

B Yellow

A Red

A Blue

Form A/B Partners

Partner Parade - One or Multiple Prompts

Form two lines facing each other.

Take some purposeful private thinking and reasoning time to answer the question or respond to the prompt.

Take ___ minutes to greet each other and discuss your thinking.

First student in line 1, move to the end of your line. The rest of you in line 1, shift one step sideways so that everyone has a new partner. If you are in the other line, do not move.

• One prompt: Take ___ minutes to greet and discuss your refined thinking with your new partner. Add to or revise your thinking.
• Multiple prompts: Take some purposeful private thinking and reasoning time to answer the NEW question or respond to the NEW prompt.

Repeat the process.

Stronger Clearer - Video and Protocol

1. Pose a question about which students have prior knowledge that is aligned with what is currently being taught in class. Make sure the question is not a yes or no question, but one where students are asked to explain their thinking.
2. Give students time to answer the same question independently in writing, using complete sentences (depending on the grade).
3. Partner students up. In my class, I allowed students to choose their partner.
4. Partner 1 shares their response while Partner 2 is actively listening and taking notes of any new ideas they hear to make their own response stronger and clearer.
5. Now Partner 2 shares while Partner 1 is listening and taking notes.
6. Students synthesize what they heard with their own ideas and get ready for their next partner.
7. Repeat steps 4, 5 and 6 as many times as the teacher thinks. I kept it to 3 different partner talks for the sake of time and student engagement.
8. Students create a final written response which is stronger and clearer than their first one based on what they have listened and learned from their peers to.

• Student Template
• Slideshow Template

Use private thinking and reasoning time. Then line up and:

​

Stronger and Clearer

Then, A’s rotate one and repeat stronger and clearer.

​