Hunches: What do I see?

-Oral reading of novel at/above grade level everyday (straight forward reading...with quick pull apart after)

-Implementing talk moves strategies in Literacy while promoting discussions in pairs, small group and whole class

-Begin by reading Jannie’s book (see Russell) for possible ideas to implement

- Integration with Writing???

Problem Defined:

How can we use dialogic discussions to expand vocabulary usage while strengthening reading comprehension?

Possible Hypotheses:

Students need to develop confidence applying prior knowledge and vocabulary to new situations and experiences and understand that learning from one year (or one term) to another builds upon the previous. In order to provide opportunities for this to happen:

• Students need to be exposed to higher level vocabulary in a variety of ways
• Students need to be exposed to words in a variety of settings linking them together
• Students need to develop the confidence to talk in a large group setting in order to hold a beneficial dialogic discussion linking vocabulary, prior knowledge and information from a text
• Students need to understand the elements of a beneficial dialogic discussion, using Talk Moves

Evidence of Need:

According to the Wolf Fisher Research Centre, our students learn by talking about what they are learning (dialogic conversations).  However, over time students often fail to use effective vocabulary to explain their thinking and link their learning from one year to another. 

Data Gathered:

• Student PAT and STAR results-Nov 2017 
• Student PAT and STAR results-Feb 2018
• Running Records-Nov 2016 
• 2017 Teacher OTJ-Reading
• Reading previous student Blog posts 
• In class micro group discussions

Next Steps:

• Read Dr Jannie van Hees' book and decide how/what to apply to my classroom setting
• Explore ways to incorporate the use of Talk Moves into daily discussions
• Directly Model/Teach how to use each Talk Move
• Scan the class with a Google Form survey to formulate genre/topic interests