Tips to make turn and talk an integral part of your reading program
Display the Turn and Talk share and response stems for students to see. The share stems change daily. Find a place to display these where you can rewrite them each day.
- written on the blackboard or whiteboard
- written on an interactive smartboard
The response stems will stay the same all year long. These can be permanently displayed.
- sentence strips
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- pocket chart
- tagboard or poster board
| TIP: Use colored magnets to designate whose turn it is to share and respond. |
Now that you have displayed the turn and talk stems, it is important to use them. While it may seem awkward at first, both for you and your students, it is vital to the skills being taught for teachers and students to use the stems provided within each lesson. These stems teach and reinforce the learning targets for that day. Guidelines for how to do this successfully are outlined in Chapter 1 of Raising the Standards Through Chapter Books, 2nd edition.
Designate who the Turn and Talk partners are using the procedure described in the Assessment and Intervention Guide.
Once you have thoughtfully assigned turn and talk partners to each other it is important to display them for students.
- Turn & Talk partners should be color coded, a color for the
higher partner and a color for the lower partner. These colors can match the magnets for the turn and talk stems so each partner knows what their role is each time. - Rotate which students sit in each row each day to facilitate monitoring and assessment during the read-aloud. Shift rows back each day, bringing the back row to the front. Designate who sits in the back row on the turn and talk list using sticky notes, clothespins, or magnets.
- Groups of 3 should be created and used sparingly. If you have an odd number of students create a group of 3. The third member of the group could be someone who is frequently absent or tardy, missing out on reading instruction, a student whose first language is not English, a student who receives extra services in reading or who simply needs more support and scaffolding.