The Communication Effect: How to Enhance Learning by Building Ideas and Bridging Information Gaps

by Jeff Zwiers

The “communication effect” is what happens when we saturate our classrooms with authentic communication, which occurs when students use language to build up ideas and do meaningful things. For starters, authentic communication deepens and increases language development, learning of content concepts and skills, rigor and engagement, empathy and understanding of others’ perspectives, agency and ownership of core ideas across disciplines, and social and emotional skills for building strong relationships. And these are just the starters.



With The Communication Effect , Dr. Jeff Zwiers challenges teachers in Grades 3 and up to focus less on breadth and more on depth by grounding instruction and assessment in authentic (rather than pseudo-) communication. This book







Our students deserve to get the most out of each minute of each lesson. Authentic communication can help. As you read The Communication Effect and apply its ideas, you will see how much better equipped and inspired your students are to grow into the amazing and gifted people that they were meant to become.

210 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 21, 2019

Reviews

[Diz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is about how to shift classrooms from pseudo-communication, where students are going through the motions to complete assignments for grades, to authentic communication, communicating to build ideas. It covers reading, writing, listening, and speaking. It is a book that teachers who are focused on developing a growth mindset would appreciate.

The advice given in the book spans from easy to implement to advanced, so not all of the advice will be suitable for your classroom. However, there will be something here for all levels of engagement. Perhaps the reading and writing ideas would be easier to implement while the speaking ideas are probably the most challenging to implement.

Overall, I was satisfied with the book as it helped me to consider different approaches to some of the things that I was doing in my own classroom.

[Rachel]

Helpful tangible examples on how to amplify your lesson plans. Not a challenging read while still being super useful. Highly recommend for teachers and educators!