I wanted to share the last tip I have for how to turn around those pitfalls of “think, pair, share.” It is about really making sure that you scaffold for your kids through sentence stems, or sentence starters. In order to do this, it takes a little bit of planning, but a good thing for you in our resources we have some great tools that you can use in your classroom for increasing that level of language.
Remember, if we can increase the quantity of time kids have to be able to talk to each other, we can increase the quality of their work through these sentence stems. Something that’s really important about sentence stems, is they allow for kids to be able to use our specific vocabulary that we want them to become more productive with. Kids have a lot of skills that are receptive whether they are listening or they’re reading. But in order for them to actually own that content, we need for them to use the language.
For example, in your math classroom, if you’re teaching fractions right now, and you want kids to use the language of ‘numerator’ and ‘denominator’, you have to plan for that with the sentence stem, or if you’re teaching multiplication and you want them to use the words ‘factor’ and ‘product’, you have to plan for it in the sentence stem. We can’t allow kids to get off the hook was just saying the simple answer. We need for them to be able to extend their learning. And that’s what these sentence stems provide. And here’s a critical tip. When we provide kids with these sentence stems. They’re able to talk in and complete sentence.
We know if kids can talk it, they can write it. So when we allow them to be able to share with their partners in those complete sentences by using the academic language and using the text evidence. We know when we ask them to them write their thinking. It will be a much more streamlined process, and they’ll be able to really write what they wanted to say in those complete sentences.
It’s important when using these sentence stems, again, thinking about our gradual release of responsibility that you model how they work in your classroom. You want to think about doing “what I do first”, and then we do together and have them really practice collaboratively with your partners, so that when you are in a step where your partners are established that they are able to get. Again, more efficient at getting right to thinking about it writing about it and talking about it.
Thanks for taking the time to learn about purposeful partners, I can’t tell you enough how important it is to work these strategies in to really raise the rigor in your classroom. When we establish these purposeful partners it’s moving beyond compliance just that, I ask a question you answer a question and it’s really upping the level of academic achievement, as teachers we can teach what we want to teach, but it can’t tell kids have really practiced with it and wrestled with it and received feedback on the content and the information they’re getting, they’re not going to get to that learning part
This is why those purposeful partners really allow them an opportunity to work with someone collaboratively to get to the learning. And who doesn’t want more learning in their classroom.
So check out our tools and resources. There are a lot of great materials on there that you can start using in your classroom tomorrow to help you increase that level of engagement and quality of talk through the purposeful partners. If you liked this video, please click the like button and make sure you subscribe so that you can see our next series of videos on raising academic achievement in your classroom.
