go through Terry Heck
Meaningful conversations make learning more personal, immediate and emotional.
In meaningful dialogue, students are forced to take responsibility for their own positions, listen, analyze opposing viewpoints, and adjust their thinking on the fly.
There are many popular strategies for this type of conversation, each with slightly unique rules and applications. These include Socratic discussions, responsible conversations, debates, and literary circles. No matter which strategy you use, students need support.
It is sometimes argued that such conversations benefit students who are confident in expressing themselves verbally, and this is hard to argue with. But consider that academic writing benefits gifted writers, traditional testing benefits those who are willing to prove what they know, learning with technology benefits students with a more diverse history of using technology, and so on.
Everyone can benefit from scaffolding to provide students with different levels of support—perhaps a unique index card hierarchy that is easier to use or more natural stemming—so they can be successful at some level.
If you have any useful conversation stems, let us know in the comments so we can update the list!
26 Sentences for Meaningful Conversations in the Classroom
clarify
Can you tell me your thesis in one sentence?
Your position is…
To be clear, you mean…
You said Z is confusing to me, can you elaborate?
Definition
In other words, you are saying…
So you are saying…
It’s fair to say you believe…
I hear you say that…
agree
I agree with Y because…
Z’s opinion about X is important because…
The evidence for Z is overwhelming when you consider…
X and I come from the same position.
Although I disagree with Y, I agree with Z…
disagree
I have a different opinion because…
The evidence I’ve seen suggests something different.
Some of it is fact, but some of it is opinion.
I agree with Y, but we also have to consider…
We think of Z differently.
built on
Y mentioned…
Yes – and…
The author claims that Z is interesting because…
To add to what X said,…
If we change the position of X slightly, we can see…
Summarize
Overall, what I’d say is…
All I mean is…
Most importantly, I believe…
26 sentence stems for advanced classroom discussions
