Professional Learning Opportunity:
Developing Student Discourse
Fosters academic rigor and student agency through productive discussion
This 8-session course supports educators to build a robust discourse culture where students take ownership of their learning through collaborative talk and reasoning.
My experience with taking the Discourse Course was very smooth and easy…being able to see examples being used in actual classrooms helped me to adapt those lessons in my own classroom.
Kalen Simon
First Grade Teacher
Boone Elementary School
Course Outline
Eight sessions designed to establish and deepen discourse practices. Each session is designed to take approximately one hour.
- Session 1 · Classroom Discourse: What and Why?
- Session 2 · Creating Shared Expectations
- Session 3 · Structures and Routines for Discourse
- Session 4 · Getting Students to Talk… and to Listen
- Session 5 · Upping the Ante: Pressing for Reasoning and Building Interactive Discussion
- Session 6 · Development of Students’ Discourse Skills
- Session 7 · How Do We Link Talking to Learning Throughout the School Day?
- Session 8 · Visible Markers of High Quality Student Discourse: Five Vital Actions
This course will emphasize the increase in rigor and student ownership that student discourse affords.
Teachers will systematically be taken through the steps to build their own discourse practice, and to develop the strategies to troubleshoot when challenges arise.
These include:
- the steps of establishing a discourse culture; discourse fundamentals
- anticipating and troubleshooting challenges
- ratcheting up the rigor of discourse over time
- gradually relinquishing ownership to students or time
Developing Student Discourse Course
FOR COACHES
SERP offers a version of this course with additional resources for instructional coaches. A digital Coaching Guide is included with a coach license. A coach license also provides access to the same 8 session course as the teacher license.
The teachers actually want to do it, they want to take time and look at the videos because it’s helpful. It’s good stuff.
Lakia Kenan
Instructional Coach
Lawrence E. Boone Elementary School
Companion Product:
Discourse 5x8 Card
The Discourse 5x8 Card is a resource that is designed to be literally 5” by 8”. It provides a set of “look fors” that allow coaches or administrators to identify features of high quality discourse that students have and have not mastered, providing a focus for feedback and collaborative conversations with teachers.
