Discourse Strategies for Inquiry Learning

Math and Science Sentence "Sentence Frames" Starters To Elicit & Deepen Inquiry, Build Background Knowledge, Make Connections to Anchor Phenomena, Models Discourse, & Develops Students Higher Order Thinking Expertise

Sentence frames are a scaffolded language arts structure that develops academic language. Students stretch their language usage and understanding by using the premade stater sentences and questions to practice conversation and dialectic skills. 

Why I use Sentence "Frames" Starters to Build Math, Social Studies, and Science Knowledge?

Math and Science Sentence "Frames" Starters Provides:

• Provides students a structured framework and academic language that is needed for rich academic discussions
• Students with supported language and thinking structures, models inquiry and deductive in inductive thinking strategies, and/or reasoning skills a scientist or mathematician uses to evaluate problems
• Scaffolding and supports new language development and thinking skills in a supported way
• Students with a starting point for discussions and/or a road map for academic discourse in a safe risk free way

Supporting Mathematics Discourse with Sentence Starters PDF
Interactive Technologies in STEM Teaching and Learning ... Ms. Knight uses sentence starters and sentence frames with her grade 2 students to ... 

Talk Like a Scientist! Simple “Frames” to Scaffold the ... -PDF
provides examples of science-related sentence frames and step-by-step directions for ... scientific discourse patterns,” developed by Fred Dobb for the California ..

accountable talk frames to support language functions PDF
Guiding Questions from Building Academic Language (Zwiers): ... vocabulary, grammar, discourse/ textual, and functional ... stems” provides a scaffold for.

Sentence Frames PDF
discourse &/or language ... incorporating one or two sentences frames to use ... Sentence Stems Printed from

Thinking Discourse Strategies for Inquiry Science: Fan-N-Pick

Mathematical Discourse Sentence Frames - PDF
Academic Language Frames/Sentence Starters. For Mathematical Discourse. Mathematical discourse is the way students represent, think, talk, question, agree, ...

Sentence Frames PDF
What language functions will students use to engage in discourse? 3. What language scaffolds are necessary for students to be able to demonstrate their evidence ...

#2 Structuring Academic Discussion PDF
academic classroom discourse. To support secondary in ... Sentence frames/sentence starters – providing students with the beginning of an academic response, ...

Scaffolds to Support English Language Learners in WritingPDF
Sentence frames are particularly helpful when writing about more ... Sentence frames/starters help students understand what they should be analyzing ...

Discourse Strategies for Inquiry Science: Gallery Walk

Discourse Strategies for Inquiry Science: Prompts as Discourse Tools

Academic Conversation - Language Development OpportunitiesPDF

Based on Academic Conversations: Classroom Talk that Fosters Critical Thinking and Content Understandings by Jeff. Zwiers & Maria Crawford. Stenhouse ...

Best Practices: Academic Conversations

Why are Basal Reading Programs so Bad? Closing the Achievement Gap!

Why are Basal(BASIC) reading programs so bad at delivering good results for our at-risk students? What’s a better plan to help our struggling at-risk students thrive academically?

MY THOUGHTS and my Experience Teaching At-risk Students for 20 Years! Focusing on building students rich academic vocabulary understanding and deep concept "BACKGROUND Knowledge" using rich complex/authentic text vs, focusing on isolated and/or abstract reading comprehension skills using basal/basic readers that are usually not embedded in rich text with complex language.

How do you close the knowledge/language GAP? READING aloud daily with your students, READING LOTS and LOTS OF AMAZING and VARIED/RICH TEXT ALOUD, UNPACKING ALL UNKNOWN IDEAS/VOCABULARY IN CONTEXT, and then having AUTHENTIC AND SUBSTANTIVE CONVERSATIONS THAT BUILD HERCULEAN KNOWLEDGE THROUGH THOUGHTFUL CONNECTIONS!

17 Years ago I moved out of teaching special education and I took over one of the poorest performing 6th grade classes in my district, we still had K-6 schools. These students were performing at the 20th percentile range on reading assessments and a bit better in math. We had no basal readers THANK GOODNESS, no up to date science books, a few worn out old 6th grade world history books, and a class set of old math books and zero workbooks! I had to make up my own engaging reading CURRICULUM (I DID NOT KNOW ABOUT E. D. HIRSCH and CKLA and EngageNY had yet to be invented). I had an ELL student from Mexico that absolutely loved Harry Potter, so we started reading and rereading HP in class as our primary reading materials.

The process of reading Harry Potter to a group of below grade level struggling readers and ELL students was the start of many eureka teaching moments in reading! I became the human dictionary and WORLD encyclopedia, making constant connections to words, ideas, inferences, and academic literary concepts. I was constantly scaffolding unknown vocabulary and literary concepts to help my students make meaning. make connections, and build understand from a complex text that was 3-5 years ahead of most of my students decodable reading levels!

I read aloud daily a minimum of 60-90 minutes with my students, that included reading many chapter books throughout the year "Harry Potter first", reading fascinating accounts of world history, usually inspired by students own curiosity and interest, we read plays, fables, Greek mythology, (we played lots of strategy board games in my class, so i read lots of game directions), we read GREEK PHILOSOPHY, I LEARNED to read by sing songs so I love singing, so we sang lots and lots of songs daily! The kids interest helped me select complex engaging text that also guided me as a teacher to make contextual connections to critical thinking, reasoning, and abstract reading comprehension skills.

I would read what many considered materials that were way too advanced/complex for my students. When reading authentic RIGEROUSE text, I was constantly presented with great teachable moments, when literary elements jumped of the page we unpacked them. All unknown ideas within the context of our reading, especially academic vocabulary words and literary concepts were studied, savored and explored. We would stop often and discuss great philosophical ideas, we would have great conversations using Socratic principles and Kagan cooperative learning structures like Buddy Buzzing, RallyRobin, Think Pair Share/Timed Pair Share, RoundRobin, RallyCoach, and Stand Up, Hands Up Pair Up.

The ideas and educational practices that came out of teaching those 6th graders to really read became my Reading Boot Camp. Those kids went on to become one of the highest performing 6th grade classes in our district. Today I still focus on building deep academic vocabulary knowledge, expose them to vast concept and content knowledge, and actively practice and rehearse listening and conversations skills, all in the context of reading great thought provoking "AUTHENTIC" literature with my students! This year I will be adding the updated and revised E. D. HIRSCH CKLA lessons and materials to my 2020-2021 ELA planning!