ABSTRACT
When we first started thinking about classroom discourse together many years ago, we thought a lot about our role as teachers and our talk. What should we say to students? What practice should we provide? What talk prompts should we use? But over time, our focus has shifted. We have found that the best teaching and learning moments come from the times when we focus less on what our next teaching move will be and instead focus more on truly listening to our students. We have learned that the most productive way to nurture student discourse is to trust that our students are capable and are already making sense of their world. Our work, as teachers, is more about uncovering what students are already thinking about and building on these ideas rather than transferring any knowledge or skills we have.
