In primary-grade classrooms, young children are expected to participate in rich conversations as they build their speaking and listening skills. One way to support students' success with these types of conversations is to explicitly teach them academic conversation skills. Academic conversations are intentional, focused on school-related topics,…

The goal of this activity is to equip students with skill sets for overcoming unfair experiences at work, drawing on interactional justice theory that is developing in organizational communication. Students reflect on their interactional injustice experiences and then proceed to generate response strategies to cope with such injustices. In doing…

Courses: Introduction to Human Communication, Interpersonal Communication, Relational Communication, Intercultural Communication, special topics courses related to listening and conversation. Objectives: The learning objectives for this unit-long activity are for students to: (1) practice active, empathic listening with others; (2) identify…

Transform mathematics instruction with the comprehensive mathematical competencies (CMC) framework--a research-based model that integrates seven essential competencies: conceptual and procedural integration, problem solving, logical reasoning, communication, tool use, pattern recognition, and student engagement. Through practical classroom…

How do you take the passion and chatter that K-5 students bring to the classroom and turn it into conversation skills that make them better learners? Academic conversation can help hone speaking and listening, critical thinking, and social-emotional skills, as well as deepen content knowledge. But despite its effectiveness, this kind of…

Digital literacy skills are crucial twenty-first-century skills that are required for the successful use of technology and active engagement in today's world. However, there is a lack of effective resources and guidelines for developing English as a second language (ESL) learners' digital literacy skills. Due to their increasingly important and…

Courses: Interpersonal Health Communication, Communication in Health Care Settings. Objectives: This lesson is designed for health profession students whose work will involve direct interaction with patients. It is designed to help students (a) better understand how to diagnose patients' needs for both informational and emotional support when…

Math coach, Kassia Omohundro Wedekind, and literacy coach, Christy Hermann Thompson, have spent years comparing notes on how to build effective classroom communities across the content areas. "How," they wondered, "can we lay the groundwork for classroom conversations that are less teacher-directed and more conducive to…

This paper shares ideas with teachers about the integration of students' social and emotional skills with science instruction to fully implement the Next Generation Science Standards. In this article, we share a sequence of lessons that teachers thought were especially useful to produce effective science discourse and promote student…

This article describes an activity that will allow students to practice using greetings by creating a brief skit. The goals of this activity are to practice common greetings; to use appropriate greetings with different community members; and to understand when to use informal and formal greetings

Teachers at all levels have reported a stark decline in students' ability to interact with others face-to-face in a technology-driven world. In the world of work, communicative soft skills have surfaced as both a concern and focal point for potential employers. Schools can teach these skills using an approach called S.P.E.C.I.A.L, which focuses on…

In order to further understand what educators can do - and are doing - to build strong relationships, Transforming Education (TransformEd) has produced a series of briefs or "stories from the field" that are intended to share student and educator perspectives about developing and sustaining strong relationships within the classroom and…

The role of talk in developing understanding in science has been well documented and the recognition of this in the new National Curriculum for England is very positive. The curriculum outlines the need for quality and variety of language in order for children to develop their scientific vocabulary and to articulate scientific concepts clearly and…

Classroom conversation plays an important role in the development of children's language and reasoning. However, studies show that classroom talk relies too much on directives and close-ended questions. "Conversation Compass" provides the tools to strengthen your language-learning environment: (1) The Compass: guide high-quality…

The Widget design task is an in-class, experiential exercise that affords students the opportunity to develop interpersonal skills in group negotiation. Students engage in new product design in committees of two dyads where one dyad represents Consumer Research and the other represents Strategic Management. Task information creates different…