Chapter 6 focuses on enhancing students' academic conversation skills by covering several key areas. It emphasizes teaching students to construct paragraphs with clear topic sentences and supporting evidence, which helps in expanding their ideas coherently.
Academic vocabulary development through and for conversation
connect the word cards: this helps students to solidify there understanding of words. Put words on rectangular cards and then have students connect words to a main content word that you are studying
explore one word: explore one key term and have students talk with each other about it using questions such as why is it important? to me? to all of us? key examples from text, what would happen if the term didnt exist? how does this term compare to...?
decide and debate cards: choose a controversial topic then pick out key vocabulary words that you want students to learn. create cards that use these words to take a position on the issue. then students try to persuade others of there position on the card they are given using the academic word.
grammar building conversation activities
model sentences: students can find sentences of interest in a text and then discuss why this sentence is interesting and the meaning of this sentence in the context of what they are reading. also you can give model sentences and then have students create similar sentences with key vocabulary to make sure they understand the meaning.
practicing cohesion devices with pro-con: this activity teaches students to use transition words and to argue for there point someone says pro and student gives a pro to a topic then someone says con forcing the next student to use a transition word then argue the opposite side.
talking in paragraphs with topic sentences: This teaches students to expand on their ideas and trains students to support their ideas with evidence.
Teach high leverage grammar
terms that express uncertainty: These are important because often students use all or nothing statements and this helps them move away from that
transitions and connectives: teaching students higher level transition words that are more complex than but is important in them holding academic conversations
Complex sentences: when students use complex sentences they get used you to emphasizing the main clause when they speak
