Academic Conversations: Classroom Talk that Fosters Critical Thinking and Content Understandings

Product Description: Authors Jeff Zwiers and Marie Crawford have identified five core communication skills to help students hold productive academic conversations across content areas. These skills include: elaborating and clarifying, supporting ideas with evidence, building on and/or challenging ideas, paraphrasing, and synthesizing. Drawing on many hours of classroom practice, research, and video analysis across grade levels and content areas, the authors describe how to use conversations to build academic vocabulary and grammar; critical thinking skills; literacy skills; and complex and abstract essential understandings in content areas.