Building on student contributions (also known as “uptake”) is an effective teaching tool, one that research has linked positively to student learning and achievement.

This practice builds a dynamic that signals to students that they are essential to the classroom learning community.

Students feel heard when their contributions are used. They form connections to the content, their teacher, and their peers.

In this post, I’ll introduce you to six strategies for building on student contributions -- acknowledgement, revoicing, reformulation, clarification, follow-up, and guiding.

Research demonstrates that students who talk more learn more when that talk is focused on higher-order thinking. A fourth grade teacher…

The big takeaway from the TeachFX feature in EdWeek is simple: Get students talking about what they’re learning. Doing so gets students…

I was in my colleague’s world history classroom, and I was flabbergasted. “Look at the damage you did to our nation, Germany! You’ll pay…

Check it out! TeachFX is featured on NeverBore, the fantastic teaching and learning blog from Martha Rush. Martha is an award-winning…

Normally I shy away from posts like this. Ever since creating TeachFX, teachers have continually asked me what their student talk and…

In our TeachFX workshops, we guide teachers through rewriting questions from their lessons to be more open-ended. A couple of my favorite…