CHALK TALK GUIDE
Teaching it
- Give the students a few minutes to write in response to a prompt or set of prompts.
- Ask the students to write their answers on the board. **Note: Although you may allow them to write short phrases, or even full sentences, this exercise works best with one-word answers.
- Give the students a few minutes to read their classmates’ answers.
- Lead the class in discussing the answers on the board. Have the students look for patterns and themes, as well as conflicting ideas.
Taking notes: When they are not up at the board, have the students take notes on what their classmates are writing (observations, comments, and questions). Consider giving the students a few examples of what you expect their chalk talk notes to look like. These notes will help facilitate conversation afterwards.
Mobile “chalkboard”: Using sticky notes or a large piece of paper instead of a chalk/white board allows you to move and save your students’ work more easily. If you give a sticky note to each student, this can also prevent congestion in one part of the room.
Forbidding duplicates: Oftentimes, allowing multiple students to write similar answers on the board is beneficial – it can reveal themes and patterns. In some cases, however, it might be better if every student has to write a unique answer (e.g. a brainstorming session).
Leave your mark: If you are planning on using a chalk talk for individual assessments, be sure to have your students write their names (or some other identifying mark) next to their answers. In some cases, however, it might be better if the students’ answers are completely anonymous. You could even turn this exercise into a guessing game!
Word web: Consider turning your chalk talk into a word web by drawing lines and arrows between related ideas.
Small group discussion: Rather than discussing the chalk talk board as a class, you could also have the students talk about it in small groups. This might give more students a chance to share their thoughts out loud.
Intro to discussion: One of the best uses of the chalk talk exercise is to launch a broader discussion about topics that the students are going to explore/have just finished exploring.
ASSESSING IT
The chalk talk exercise may be used to gauge students’ familiarity with certain topics and skills prior to completing a lesson or lesson activity. Collecting this kind of information can help you fine tune your activities to different students’ needs.
The chalk talk exercise may be used to measure students’ mastery of the knowledge and/or skills they were meant to obtain during a lesson or lesson activity.
Content-based criteria for specific chalk talk activities can be found within the Protecting Our Waters lesson plans.
Chalk talk prompt: Who are our “stakeholders”? Which groups of people are affected by our chosen problem?
Assessment criteria:
- Do the students understand what a stakeholder is?
- Can the students connect personally to their chosen problem and share how the groups they are a part of are affected by this problem?
- Can the students use their perspective-taking skills to infer how groups they are not a part of might be affected by this problem?
- Do the students have a thorough enough understanding of their chosen problem to list multiple ways that it is affecting people?