Build Text-Based Insight Through Academic Discourse: From Checking to Constructing

Does classroom discussion feel like pulling teeth? Or maybe your students are talking, but the conversation still isn’t as deep, insightful, or meaningful as you know it could be. If you’ve ever imagined a classroom where you and your students can truly get lost in a text—wrestling with ideas, building insight, and shaping understanding together—this session is for you.

Skilled readers capture the essence of a text, and discussion plays a critical role in helping them make sense of it.

In this session, Dr. Mitchell Brookins will show how to move beyond questions that check for understanding and toward using academic discourse to construct it. You’ll learn how to identify critical ideas in a text, guide student thinking using cognitive routines, and press for clarity so students move beyond first answers to deeper, text-based insight.

You’ll Learn how to:

• Identify the critical ideas in a text that are worth stopping and building around
• Use cognitive routines to probe student thinking and generate strong inferences
• Press and refine responses so students develop clear, text-based understanding

Please join us!