All Things CLASS

When I teacher is reading a story with two children and asking questions about the story and the children are answering and are acting out the story. Can that be considered a back and forth conversation under frequent conversations. There is no peer conversation happening. The questions that are asked are keeping the children involved and their responses have are more then one word answers. I am always questioning myself in this domain (is it enough) Hope someone can help

------------------------------
kathleen werner
Forked River NJ
------------------------------

When the teacher asks a question, does it become a conversation between him/her and the student? Or does the teacher allow the student to answer then moves on? The back- and -forth exchange should be deepening the students' understanding. If a student's response isn't followed by further questioning/conversation about their response, then it would be considered low quality. I guess the thing to keep in mind is how the teacher converses with each child to increase understanding, versus the teacher asking question after question about the book to the group without following up on their responses.

------------------------------
Shyanne Carpenter
Breathe...it's only preschool!
------------------------------

Are you thinking specifically about frequent conversations in Language Modeling? It may be most helpful to reread the low, mid, and high descriptive paragraphs. For instance, in the mid-range, I see "The teacher talks regularly with and to the students and appears somewhat interested in the students; however, conversations typically are limited to one or two back-and-forth exchanges rather than developing into prolonged conversations." And then it has an example of a conversation around a book. Comparing this level of back and forth conversation to what you're picturing, may be helpful. 

It also sounds like you may be thinking about back and forth exchanges in Quality of Feedback. in which case, these blog posts may be helpful: https://info.teachstone.com/blog/coding-quality-of-feedback and https://info.teachstone.com/blog/what-s-contingent-responding-all-about-anyway

------------------------------
Liz Savage
Community Manager
Teachstone
------------------------------

How old are the children? I say depends on their age, language skills, and interest, if they prefer to have conversation with teacher and they are more engaged that way, as long as it is deep conversation and has open ended questions, it should be enough. The main purpose for reading especially the comprehensive and language enhancing reading, is to increase vocabulary, deep conversation/discussions, remembering details of story, retelling story, and even at times, think about different incidents or setting that could have happened in the story to increase the critical thinking in children and promote creative thinking and using imaginations. If the conversation between teacher and student is as involving and as rich as the purpose of reading needs to be, then the children don't necessarily need to have peer conversations if they are not too interested in or too young to have such interactions yet. Although, the peer conversations can be encouraged in many indirect ways for preschool & pre-k students due to its benefits for that age range.

------------------------------
Persheng Neynavaei
------------------------------