Sentence Stems in Structured Conversations

Student-to-student interaction focused on lesson concepts have been shown to have a significant effect on student achievement (Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001). The use of sentence stems in structured conversations provides an opportunity to increase the number of exposures to academic vocabulary following direct vocabulary instruction. Students need at lease six exposures to a word before they can remember its meaning. Below are some sentence stems to help you get started.

Sentence Stems

Purpose	Stem
Summarizing	·         I learned …
	·         Today I realized …
	·         I still wonder …
	·         The most significant thing I learned today was …
	·         I would summarize my learning by saying …
	·         My initial thought was ___ and now I’m thinking ___ because ___
Sharing	·         I feel…
	·         In my opinion…
	·         I predict that…
	·         I agree/disagree that…
	·         My view in the matter is _____ because …
	·         My initial reaction is ____ because …
Justifying	·         I think ___ because …
	·         I agree/disagree with ____ because …
	·         ______ proves that …
	·         Another idea might be _____ because …
	·         I was thinking that ____ should be …
	·         ____ corroborates the idea that …
Accessing Prior Knowledge	·         I already know ...
	·         ____ reminds me of …
	·         My experience with …
	·         I would like to know more about …
	·         I would compare ___ to ____ because …
	·         Discussing ____ made me consider …
Elaborating	·         ____ is important because …
	·         I chose _____ because …
	·         The answer might also be _____ because
	·         I would agree or disagree with ____ because …
	·         Another reason could be …
	·         I would add ____ because …