• Students work together with peers on appropriate topics and texts.

• Students express their own ideas clearly through discussion in pairs, small groups, and with the entire class. 

• Teachers define expectations for collaborative discussion.

• Teachers provide opportunities for students to clearly express their own ideas and collaborate with peers on appropriate topics and texts.  

• Teachers monitor and provide opportunities for students to receive feedback. 

When students struggle to communicate in collaborative discussions, teachers can…

• provide one essential question to begin discussions. 

• provide sentence and/or question stems to start conversations. 

• provide graphic organizers to help organize and/or facilitate student thinking. 

• allow students to observe conversations, then meet with them privately to role model communication. 

When students do not work collaboratively, teachers can…

• remind students of agreed-upon discussion rules.

• model active listening, then have students practice taking turns as active listeners.

• Collaborative Discussion: discussions that provide opportunities for speakers and listeners to use dialogue and interaction to raise issues, explore ideas, make claims, and discover differences.

• Sentence/Question Stems: This technique gives students the opportunity to respond in the form of a complete sentence to effectively communicate.  

• 4.1.S.1:  Collaborative work