Let them Speak! Empowering students with Academic Conversations Skills to Deepen Content Understanding

K-12 Educators

Curriculum Instruction and Assessment

The content of this workshop is based on the highly regarded texts by author Jeff Zwiers: Academic Conversations

- understand some of the big ideas and features of academic language discourse know how to strategically
- design classroom discourse that is sustained and purposeful
- explore the power of teaching parts of speech explicitly to students
develop cognitive tools for critical thinking - interpretation, considering multiple perspectives, evaluation and application
- foster literacy skills such as summarizing, predicting, and connecting to prior knowledge
- create a classroom environment that ensures equity of voice and utilization of social emotional skills such as empathy, perseverance, and self awareness