Accountable Talk Bulletin Board and Student Notes

The ability for students to justify their thinking is an important skill that must begin in the early grades and be refined in later grades. Students need many opportunities to practice building on others’ thoughts, asking for clarification and showing evidence for their thinking. I have found that providing these sentence frames for students sets a foundation for these skills. Sentence stems refocus students’ attention so they think about what they want to say, but also take into account what others have said about a topic, building on those ideas. Using accountable talk is not only relevant for classroom conversations, but also provides an important connection between the speaking and listening standards and the writing standards, where students must support their opinions and statements with evidence from the text.

INCLUDED IN THIS RESOURCE:

BULLETIN BOARD:

To create your bulletin board, simply laminate the accountable talk speech bubbles and cut them out! You can put them all up at once, or add them one or a few at a time as you discuss them with your students!

STUDENT NOTES:

I have also included a page of student notes that your students can put in an interactive notebook or keep as a reference on student desks or binders! These reference pages may be especially helpful as your students are beginning to learn how to use accountable talk!

© Molly Maloy 2016

Lessons with Laughter