A preschool teacher and her students re-read the story "Bear Snores On," identifying key elements of the story and making connections to knowledge about hibernation.
Student partners respond and discuss ideas prompted by a focus question provided by the teacher. Students literally turn, and then talk, to another student while the teacher monitors, listens and records interactions.
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What is it?
Turn and Talk is an oral language support strategy that provides students scaffolded interactions to formulate ideas and share their thinking with another student. This strategy encourages a high level of pupil response and participation helps students sustain their focus.
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How it works
After the teacher asks a question, students turn to a preselected partner and discuss their thinking about the question.
Students can share with the rest of the group what they said, what their partner said, or the teacher can pass on the group share. It is not necessary to share out from every interaction.
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Why it works
Soliciting responses to teacher questions often limits discussion. Students either choose not to respond or the same students respond and teachers call on those students to move the discussion along and get the “right” answer. When classroom participation structures are used they foster oral language development with peer talk and interaction being key. The social speech structure also provides effective classroom management but the key goal is oral language development with peer supported talk.
When this structure is used, almost all students have a chance to share their thinking in a low-risk setting. Verbalizing their thinking scaffolds students understanding and provides talk at a peer level using a model close to the language the student controls.
Sample of Turn & Talk in the classroom
In this short example, a teacher asks students to turn and talk to a neighbor and to share a solution to a problem posed.
This short outtake is taken from a full clip more completely illustrating Turn and Talk: “Tell your neighbor two strategies to help you read words.” Find this complete clip and more in the scrolling video library below, or open the Turn and Talk sidebar in All Video Clips to the right.
Turn & Talk Video Library
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A preschool teacher and her students use "Accountable Talk" phrases to analyze sight words. For more on Accountable Talk, see Michaels et al (2007)
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A preschool teacher and her students engage in conversation using different prompts related to the week's theme.
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Emily and her second grade students conclude the lesson by re-reading the list of key words they created and contributing examples of animals that use camouflage.
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Emily and her second grade students discuss how word frequency helps them identify what characteristics animals need to have to blend in with their surroundings.
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Emily and her second grade students re-read the first section of their camouflage paragraph to identify key words.
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Emily and her second grade students begin a shared reading of a paragraph about camouflage.
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Jenna and five kindergarten students explore and describe math manipulatives of geometric shapes.
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Jenna and her kindergarten and first grade students review the strategies identified by the class for reading unfamiliar words. -
Jenna and her kindergarten and first grade students identify strategies for deciphering unfamiliar words.
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Jenna and her kindergarten and first grade students read through the poem "My Puppy" and discuss its meaning.
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Emily invites her second grade students to identify insights into the text and connections with their own lives, then share these insights with each other.
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Emily and her second grade students develop their own summarizing statements about the book using a prompt. -
Emily and her second grade students begin a lesson focused on summarizing the events from the book "A Pocket for Corduroy."
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Jenna and six kindergarten students share what they remember about the geometric shapes they have been studying.
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Jenna and five kindergarten students begin a discussion about triangles and quadrilaterals.
Considerations for Use
Several classroom routines need to be set in place to facilitate the use of the Turn and Talk strategy:
- Decide on which children would pair effectively and assign partners. Students can come to the whole group experience with their preselected partner.
- Set up a signal for the Turn and Talk exchange.
- Practice both sharing out and not sharing out after the partner discussion.
- Decide when the sharing out will support understanding and when the discussion in partners is sufficient.
- Plan to use the strategy with different sized groups (whole class, small group) during Read Aloud, Shared Reading, Literature Discussions, Guided and Small Group Reading, and during Center and Workshop times.
- Be willing to change partners based on observations as well as normal events such as the absence of one member of a pair.
Things To Keep In Mind
This is an easy participation structure to establish and use in the full range of settings in classroom instruction in all content areas. The Turn and Talk provides for the prevalent social speech of peers to become part of the regular classroom procedures.
Observing during the times students are engaged in peer talk is an excellent opportunity to join a pair and then notice who is talking, how the pair is working, and quickly assess the learning about the content that is being discussed.
Questions to Consider
