“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
– Rumi
I wonder, what are your responses to these questions?
- Would you like to facilitate comprehension conversations that uncover, clarify, and extend students’ thinking?
- Are you frustrated by surface level student responses during comprehension conversations?
- Are you wondering how you can help improve students’ abilities to have deep, meaningful, and thoughtful conversations?
If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, it may be time to reflect on your listening orientation. What do you listen for during comprehension conversations? The answer to this question might be the key to facilitating conversations that evoke and foster deep, meaningful, stimulating discourse during whole group, small group, and individual conversations.
Do You Listen to Evaluate?
A listening to evaluate orientation goes something like this: teacher asks a question, a student responds, the teacher judges the response as right or wrong. Teacher moves on to the next student’s response. Repeat. Hattie and Sharratt share in Learning to Listen & Listening to Learn: Empowering Visible Clarity that “Teachers typically occupy around 90 percent of speaking time, often posing hundreds of questions that prompt brief, less than three-word responses” (p. 1).
By posing questions in this fashion and then judging students’ answers as right or wrong, conversations do not go very far. One of the consequences of this is that students begin to believe that the teacher holds all the “right” answers and their job is to give the teacher the answer he or she perceives as correct.
There have been times when I have asked groups of readers, “So, what are you thinking?” and the children sit in silence looking confused. They shrug their shoulders. They look around at their classmates. They visibly do not feel comfortable with this question. It takes a while for them to believe that I am interested in hearing their thinking, and more importantly, that I have no preconceived “correct” answer that I want to hear.
When we listen with the intention to evaluate, we end up testing students, and we miss valuable opportunities to foster thinking through discussion and collaboration.
Do You Listen to Facilitate?
So, what type of teacher listening can support students’ abilities in comprehending at deeper levels and help them feel comfortable answering questions like: “So, what are you thinking?” I believe that a facilitative listening orientation can help us support deeper comprehension. When we listen to facilitate, we “silence our inner chatter” (Lambert et al., 2002) and focus our full attention on understanding the thoughts, ideas, and responses of our students. By doing so, we put a priority on students’ thinking.
In Creating Cultures of Thinking: The 8 Forces We Must Master to Truly Transform Our Schools Ron Ritchhart shares: “Good listeners ask authentic questions to clarify points, unearth any assumptions they may be bringing to the situation, and be sure of the speaker’s intent” (p. 83). When we listen to facilitate, no preplanning is necessary; genuine questions come naturally. Student voices begin to occupy more of the speaking time as we listen and use facilitative language that cultivates thoughtful, curious, engaged learning environments.
Nurturing a Facilitative Listening Stance
As educators we are the facilitators and models for thinking. Our facilitation either keeps conversations at a surface level or it can take students’ comprehension to deeper levels of understanding. The next time you are facilitating a comprehension conversation try listening with the following intentions:
Belief. Believe in yourself as a facilitator and believe in the students. Remember comprehension conversations are not about answering questions; they are about fostering thinking. Facilitative language that comes naturally when you believe in yourself and the students you work with might sound like:
- Who would like to get us started?
- What are you thinking?
- What have you noticed so far?
Curiosity. Set your intention on listening with curiosity. Be interested in everything the students share. Genuine questions will come with this curious stance. Some facilitative language that comes naturally with curious listening includes:
- Share more about what you are thinking.
- What makes you think that?
- What else do we want to think about?
Openness. Being open to a variety of thoughts, ideas, and responses sends a message that there can be multiple perspectives. When you listen with openness you send the message that thinking will not be categorized as right or wrong. Facilitative language that comes naturally with open listening might sound like this:
- Who has a different way of thinking about this?
- What is another way we can think about this?
- Is there something else we should take into consideration?
Respect. Listening is the foundation of positive, thoughtful, collaborative classroom interactions. The way we model listening matters. By respecting others’ thoughts and feelings, we are showing students ways to listen to each other. With respect as a guiding listening principle, the following statements and questions send a message of respect:
- You are helping us think about ________. Who can add onto _____’s thinking?
- Thank you for getting the conversation started. Who can build onto _______’s thoughts?
- How have ______’s thoughts helped us to think differently about this?
Trust. Building trust is the result of effective, facilitative listening. Classroom learning environments are cultivated through the interactions that take place within them. Listening is the foundation for thoughtful, supportive, and trusting relationships. Everyone truly does “grow into the intellectual life around them” (Vygotsky, 1978). The following statements and questions foster trusting relationships:
- Let’s think and talk together about _________.
- That’s helpful, share more of your thinking about that.
- What else might be important for us to think about right now?
Conclusion
Comprehension conversations rely on what we listen for and how we respond to what is being shared. As teachers, we need to listen differently. We need to listen with the intention of building and fostering communities of thinkers. Preplanned educational materials do not teach children to think, nor do they lead to deep meaningful conversations. Only teachers can do this constructive work every day as they listen and engage with students. Remember, the way you listen and what you listen for does matter and when we move beyond listening for right and wrong responses, we create space for deep, expansive, ever-evolving thinking.
An Invitation
Would you like to think more about deepening students’ comprehension during classroom conversations? Join us at our Summer Literacy Institute, 4 Days, 4 Ways to Impact Every Reader, July 21-24, 2025.
References
Hattie, J. & Sharratt, L. (2025). Learning to listen & listening to learn: Empowering visible clarity. Corwin.
Lambert, L., Walker, D., Zimmerman, D.P., Cooper, J.E., Lambert, M.D., Gardner, M.E., Szabo, M. (2002). The constructivist leader (2nd ed.). Teachers College Press.
Ritchhart, R. (2015). Creating cultures of thinking: The 8 forces we must master to truly transform our schools. Jossey-Bass.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in Society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press.
