Classroom Discourse: An Essential Component in Building a Classroom Community.
IntroductionGrasping copies of the book, Across Five Aprils, a fifth grade teacher and six of her students gather at a round table in the back of the classroom. Responding to the teacher's utterance, "Are these not the most exciting two chapters? Tell me in your own words what happened!" a student says, "My favorite part was." to which the teacher responds, "Hah! Why was that important?" Without further teacher prompting, other students add to the conversation, looking intently at one another as they acknowledge and expand on each other's comments. At one point the teacher interjects, "What events happened before this that led you to believe this would be the outcome?" Again, without additional teacher direction, the students converse on topic. Listening intently, the teacher comments, "I would never have dreamed that he would get a letter back! I was shocked. Were you?" Repeatedly, each student, independent of the teacher, contributes to the lively conversation.The vignette described above was captured in the field notes and observational data of a recent qualitative study (Lloyd, 2016) While observing multiple teachers during literacy instruction in exemplary schools, researchers noted several commonalities among the teachers' practices, including creating a community of respectfulness and the extensive engagement of students in classroom discourse. In these well established learning communities, student discourse, resulting from careful planning and teacher talk, was a part of the classroom culture in which teachers clearly welcomed student opinions and questions and valued a conversation like approach to classroom dialogue. According to Kent and Simpson (2012) a benefit of such an approach is the opportunity it provides teachers to better understand their students; in fact, they suggest that "allowing students time to discuss, analyze, and reflect on the reading in small groups or pairs..is a great way to facilitate community" (p. 30) Structuring the class to support these rich conversations or community building activities also helps promote a sense of belonging within the classroom (Chakraborty Stone, 2010) In these supportive environments, teachers can purposefully promote independent thinking and self efficacy among their students.Haney, Thomas, and Vaughn (2011) discuss the complex process of building community within the classroom; we echo their statements by urging teachers to create classroom dialogue and develop communities in which students can "see themselves in others" (p. 55) Additionally, Haney et al. advocate that building classroom community "fosters belonging rather than isolation" (pp. 56 57) Teachers interested in orchestrating classroom discourse may benefit from implementing thoughtful directives and questions such as those shown in Figure 1.Discourse Defined Within the Context of Classroom CommunityAs defined by Van de Walle, Karp, Lovin, and Bay Williams (2014) classroom discourse includes "the interactions between all the participants that occur throughout a lesson" (p. 20) Gonzalez (2008) further defines classroom discourse as an essential component of learning that includes teacher student interactions as well as student student interactions. Because a healthy exchange of ideas may include opposing viewpoints, it is necessary to create a classroom community that is inclusive and supportive of all its members (Sanchez, 2008) Booker (2008) suggests that this type of supportive environment is reciprocal in nature: "when students are allowed to voice opinions, collaborate. they have more positive views of the class environment" (p. 13).Although classroom discourse may include students' representations of knowledge through both written and oral forms, for the scope of this article, we will focus on oral discourse, also known as dialogue, in the spirit of fostering a sense of community within the classroom.Approaches to DiscourseRather than promoting interactive, student to student discourse, teachers often use a traditional approach known as the Initiate Respond Evaluate (IRE) model (Gonzalez, 2008; Moss Brookhart, 2009)