Accountable Talk

As we start to transform our classrooms into what is expected of us based on the new common core standards, we need to begin looking at how collaboration amongst our students looks and sounds like.  This post will specifically focus on what it should sound like.  Below is a list of sentence stems that can be used during group discussions to foster deeper and more meaningful conversations.  Creating an anchor chart of these stems is the perfect way to allow easy access for all of your students.  

1. How do you think .... changes in the story?
2. What do you think is going to happen after ...?
3. Why do you think the author chose to use rich language in paragraph ...?
4. How do you think ... is feeling?
5. What do you think ... will do next?  
6. This reminds me of a time when ...
7. This reminds me of a book I read ...
8. I wonder why ...
9. What you said made me think about ...
10. I agree with ... because ...
11. I kinda disagree with ... because ...
12. What do you think this means?
13. Where can I find that in the book?
14. So, what you're saying is ...
15. Couldn't it also be that ...
16. Can you explain what you mean?
17. Can you tell me more?
18. What you said made me think ...
19. I was confused when ...
20. This reminds me of ...
21. I would like to add ...
22. How can you prove that?
23. Another example is ...
24. If I was the character ...
25. Do you have another solution?
26. How do you know your answer is correct?
27. My strategy is like yours because ...

In the beginning, you can tell each group the expectation is for each person to use one-two stems during the conversation (depending on what they are doing).  As the stems begin to be used automatically, you can start upping the number of stems used or you can start making the stems more challenging by removing the ones that are being used too often.  You could even have your students come up with sentence stems to add to the list to add ownership amongst the class.

What are some ways you hold all students accountable during group discussions?