Accountable Talk has changed the way my students talk and interact with one another in my classroom. It has allowed them to have respectful class conversations.
What is Accountable Talk?
Accountable talk is intentional conversation where students listen, participate in discourse and ask questions to clarify understanding. Accountable Talk teaches students how to have respectful and deeper conversations that lead to higher level thinking.
Accountable talk provides structure to academic discourse and requires students to provide evidence to support their statements. This ensures rigor and moves the conversation to concept oriented learning and higher level thinking. Students ask one another about their thinking and build on the responses of others.
Why use Accountable Talk?
Promotes Listening – To actively participate in accountable talk listening is a must for the students.
Healthy Debate – Students are encouraged to agree and disagree with each other as well as back up their opinions with facts, details and reasons.
Develop Public Speaking Skills – It is easy for a student to respond with a “yes” or “no” but it is much more difficult for them to use complete sentences and have real conversations.
Supports Reluctant Talkers – Accountable talk provides students with sentence stems and therefore provide a scaffold for students who may not know how to effectively engage in a classroom conversation.
Higher Level Thinking – Accountable talk conversations encourages students to think critically about what other students are saying and respond in meaningful ways.
Supports English Language Learners - Accountable talk provides sentence stems and gives students who are learning the language some of the words to help them form their thoughts and sentences.
Accountable Talk Sentence Stems and Clarifying Questions Examples
Can you tell me more?
Can you give me another example so I can understand?
This reminds me of __________ because __________.
I believe this is true because __________.
Why do you think that?
Could it also be that __________?
Can you give me an example from the text?
Where can I find that in the text?
I agree with __________ because __________.
I would like to add __________.
I disagree with __________ because __________.
I respect your opinion but __________.
