Get an inside look at the discourse interactions of third- and fourth-grade students as they consider various design proposals to solve an engineering problem and negotiate a group decision. The authors present possible factors that impact student teamwork and provide recommendations for teachers to develop students' skills for group engineering…

A classroom community doesn't just show up on the first day of school along with the glue sticks and boxes of Kleenex. It requires careful thought and planning. It requires a strategy. For one teacher, community-building conversations--inspired by Nike's "Find Your Greatness" ad campaign--helped set the tone for the new school year.

Kentucky's elementary social studies curriculum includes introductory knowledge in state and national history, providing an opportunity for teachers to include instruction on the influence of slavery on society before and after the Civil War, and sometimes on current events. For example, following the violent events in 2017 in Charlottesville,…

What types of talk promote teachers' professional growth? In the following vignettes, 4th-grade teachers and instructional leaders examine student work and observe classroom instruction. These learning designs encourage teachers to talk in ways that develop a shared understanding of teaching, which is instrumental to their professional growth…

Twenty-one fourth graders are actively listening and constructively critiquing mathematical statements. Each student is eagerly participating in mathematical discussions that involve multiple strategies to discover solutions. What a dramatic change since the first months of school when the same students sat as quiet as stone statues, hoping their…

When Debbie Miller, educational consultant and author of "Reading with Meaning" (2013) and "Teaching with Intention" (2008) visited a Title I elementary school in Texas, the instructional reading coach was challenged in her thinking about best practices for independent reading. Ms. Miller's visit included modeling interactive…

In this article, the authors illustrates techniques for integrating diverse learners in shared mathematical contexts while providing differentiated support or challenge, as necessary. The techniques described were developed for a curriculum project entitled Learning Mathematics through Representations (LMR). A premise of LMR is that students'…

In this article, we address the ways children collaborate to inquire about text in the context of group discussions, addressing the question: How do students stay on-topic and sustain their discussions of text? We speculate that a framework for dialogic discourse, referred to as exploratory talk, allows students to understand that discussions of…

It is important to use rich problem-solving tasks to develop students' understanding of important mathematical ideas (NCTM 2000). Rich tasks are complex, nonalgorithmic, and nonroutine, requiring reasoning, problem solving, and communication of thinking. Evidence has shown that using rich tasks in student-centered classrooms is especially…

Online conversations help teachers engage in constructive criticism and attend more carefully to aligning lesson plans with problem solving. This article describes a strategy for using an online discussion board to help teachers evaluate one another's lesson plans. The online peer-review activity suggests that fostering critical pedagogical…

This article details how certain mathematical "discoveries" that Cavazos' fourth graders made were recorded throughout the year. Cavazos invited a math professor, a biologist, a literacy professor, a chemist, a statistician, and an engineering student, as well as their school principal and computer lab technician, both of whom are…

Although it is unspectacular in appearance, dead wood is one of the most ecologically important resources in forests. Fallen logs, dead standing trees, stumps, and even cavities in live trees fulfill a wide range of roles. Prominent among these is that they provide habitat for many organisms, especially insects. Fourth-grade students at Fox…

Critical thinking is important for lessons in classes for gifted and talented students. Since definitions of critical thinking are plentiful and varied, teachers must decide what behaviors are most productive in the classroom. One viable method to promote critical thinking through productive discussion is the Dixon-Hegelian method. This paper…

In many literacy classrooms, teachers provide instruction in comprehension by helping students to practice explicit comprehension strategy use when they encounter difficult texts. In many of those same literacy classrooms, students are placed in peer-led groups to discuss literary texts as a way to increase their engagement with difficult reading.…

When literacy specialist Jennifer Allen agreed to meet weekly with five boys who wanted to share their out-of-school writing with her, the weekly all-boys lunch-time writing group was born at Albert S. Hall elementary school in Waterville, Maine. She had intended to run the group as a writers' workshop and teach mini-lessons. But from the…