Five things a student can do to keep an academic conversation alive, each with the words to do it. Print it for the wall, or read it here before the lesson where you plan to teach it.
Use all five — then land it. That last move is synthesize.
The stems travel; the examples don't. Every sentence stem below works in any subject — they're frames with blanks in them. The “sounds like this in class” lines are 8th grade US history, because that's the room they came from. If you teach something else, keep the stems and swap that last line for your own content.
Say their idea back in your own words.
Use it whenYou need to be sure you heard the idea right.
So you're saying the Constitution protected slavery without ever printing the word. Did I get that right?
Ask questions until the idea comes into focus.
Use it whenAn idea is fuzzy, too big, or only half-said.
You called the Revolution radical. What do you mean by radical — and radical for whom?
Add to a partner's idea so it grows.
Use it whenA partner's idea is going somewhere. Take it further.
Building on that — if the government kept promising land it did not control, then the treaties were written to be broken.
Back the idea with something you can point to.
Use it whenYou have made a claim. Every claim needs a receipt.
Document C says the mill hired girls as young as ten, which shows the opportunity Lowell advertised ran on the cheapest labor it could find.
Push on the idea. Never on the person.
Use it whenYou see it differently, or the evidence is thin.
I see it differently. Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal and enslaved more than six hundred people. So what did he mean by men?
Pull the whole conversation into one idea.
Use it at the endThe talk is winding down. Land it somewhere.
We disagreed about whether the Constitution was proslavery, but we both landed here: the men who wrote it chose not to settle the question.