PERTS Elevate Resource Library

Chalk Talk

Students communicate with each other silently through writing, drawing, diagramming, or other written strategies.

Grades 3-5, 6-8, 9-12 All subjects

Overview

A chalk talk is a way to get everyone in a group participating—to reflect on complex issues, provide feedback, or generate ideas. In chalk talks, students are given the opportunity to share their thoughts in written form, essentially "talking" to each other without verbally communicating. The written expression of thoughts can take on many forms in a chalk talk, including writing, drawing, diagramming, editing, etc. Chalk talks can be an effective way to get even the most timid students to engage in an activity, and can provide more processing time for students than verbal conversations often do.

Through this activity you will be able to:

  • Promote participation from all students.
  • Provide opportunities for students to share ideas and provide feedback.
  • Provide flexibility/choice for students to express their ideas in a variety of ways.
  • Increase processing time for students before verbal share-outs.

Conducting the Practice

  1. Introduce the chalk talk by saying:

    • We are going to "talk" to each other with our pencils without talking out loud for about __ minutes. You can write. You can draw, use emojis, punctuation marks (e.g., exclamation points, question marks), anything!
    • We will not talk out loud at all.
    • You may add to the chalk talk however you want. If someone writes something that raises a question for you, a comment, or if you just want to express agreement, draw an arrow to that comment.

  2. Write one or more guiding questions on the chart paper and post them around the room. You might choose a prompt to elicit thinking about what students are learning in class, classroom norms and behavior, or even deeper philosophical questions or current events. We recommend using simple prompts early in the year, and moving on to deeper prompts as the year unfolds and trust is built among students in the class. A few examples are below:

    • What did you learn about in __ today?
    • How are decimals used in the world?
    • How can we keep the noise level down in this room?
    • What teacher moves would have been helpful to you in your learning today?
    • Post a concept for response: e.g., "Power doesn't corrupt. Fear corrupts."

  3. Encourage students to write down their responses and read responses from other students. Note: it is important to let students know ahead of time that they will be discussing their responses with peers, so that they include information they feel comfortable sharing. If there are multiple guiding questions for students to consider, prompt them to rotate between the chart paper to respond to all of the questions.

  4. After everyone has had the chance to respond, give students the opportunity to work in small groups to identify themes and document questions.

  5. Facilitate a whole group share, giving each breakout group the opportunity to share.

This practice was adapted from the Classroom Community Guide developed by the Learning and Development Group at the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research in partnership with PERTS.