Building Kindergartener's Independence with Text‐Based Conversations

Abstract

AbstractIn primary‐grade classrooms, young children are expected to participate in rich conversations as they build their speaking and listening skills. One way to support students' success with these types of conversations is to explicitly teach them academic conversation skills. Academic conversations are intentional, focused on school‐related topics, and sustained over multiple turns (Zwiers & Hamerla, 2018). The skills needed to participate in these conversations include posing, clarifying, supporting, and evaluating ideas along with focused listening. In this article we offer five steps to help teachers build students' academic conversation skills in their classrooms starting with assessment, selecting books, determining the focus of the conversation, teaching and modeling conversation skills, and building student independence.