As Discussed in Class

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When I worked with student teachers on developing effective lesson plans, one matter I always asked them to revise was the phrase "We will discuss."

Nosotros will discuss the video.

Nosotros will talk over the story.

Nosotros will discuss our results.

Every time I saw it in a lesson program, I would add a annotation: "What format will yous use? What questions will y'all ask? How volition yous ensure that all students participate?" I was pretty sure that Nosotros volition talk over actually meant the teacher would do near of the talking; He would throw out a couple of questions like "So what did you think about the video?" or "What was the theme of the story?" and a few students would respond, resulting in something that looked like a word, but was ultimately just a chat between the teacher and a handful of extroverted students; a classic case of Fisheye Teaching.

The trouble wasn't them; in most of the classrooms where they'd sat as students, that's exactly what a class give-and-take looked like. They didn't know whatever other "formats." I accept only ever been familiar with a few myself. But when teachers began contacting me recently request for a more comprehensive list, I knew it was time to do some serious research.

Then here they are: xv formats for structuring a course discussion to make information technology more engaging, more organized, more than equitable, and more academically challenging. If you lot've struggled to find effective ways to develop students' speaking and listening skills, this is your lucky day.

I've separated the strategies into iii groups. The outset batch contains the higher-prep strategies, formats that require teachers to do some planning or gathering of materials alee of time. Next come up the low-prep strategies, which can exist used on the wing when you lot have a few extra minutes or just want your students to become more active. Note that these are not strict categories; it's certainly possible to simplify or add more meat to whatever of these structures and still make them work. The last group is the ongoing strategies. These are smaller techniques that can be integrated with other instructional strategies and don't really stand lonely. For each strategy, you'll find a list of other names it sometimes goes by, a description of its basic structure, and an explanation of variations that exist, if whatsoever. To lookout each strategy in activeness, click on its name and a new window will open up with a video that demonstrates it.

Enjoy!

Higher-Prep Discussion Strategies

Gallery Walk >

a.k.a. Chat Stations

Basic Construction:Stations or posters are set up up effectually the classroom, on the walls or on tables. Small groups of students travel from station to station together, performing some kind of task or responding to a prompt, either of which will result in a conversation.

Variations:Some Gallery Walks stay true to the term gallery, where groups of students create informative posters, then act as tour guides or docents, giving other students a short presentation about their affiche and conducting a Q&A about it. In Starr Sackstein's loftier school classroom, her stations consisted of video tutorials created by the students themselves. Before I knew the term Gallery Walk, I shared a strategy similar to it called Chat Stations, where the instructor prepares discussion prompts or content-related tasks and sets them upward around the room for students to visit in small groups.

Philosophical Chairs >

a.k.a. Values Continuum, Forced Argue, Physical Barometer, This or That

Basic Construction:A statement that has two possible responses—agree or disagree—is read out loud. Depending on whether they agree or disagree with this statement, students move to one side of the room or the other. From that spot, students take turns defending their positions.

Variations: Oftentimes a Philosophical Chairs fence will be based around a text or group of texts students accept read alee of time; students are required to cite textual evidence to support their claims and usually concord the texts in their hands during the word. Some teachers set upwardly one hot seat to correspond each side, and students must take turns in the seat. In less formal variations (which require less prep), a teacher may simply read provocative statements students are likely to disagree on, and a debate can occur spontaneously without a text to refer to (I call this variation This or That in my classroom icebreakers post). Teachers may also opt to offer a continuum of choices, ranging from "Strongly Agree" on one side of the room, all the way to "Strongly Disagree" on the other, and take students place themselves forth that continuum based on the strength of their convictions.

Pinwheel Discussion >

Bones Structure: Students are divided into iv groups. Three of these groups are assigned to represent specific points of view. Members of the quaternary group are designated as "provocateurs," tasked with making sure the give-and-take keeps going and stays challenging. One person from each grouping (the "speaker") sits in a desk-bound facing speakers from the other groups, so they form a foursquare in the center of the room. Behind each speaker, the remaining group members are seated: 2 right backside the speaker, then three behind them, and so on, forming a kind of triangle. From higher up, this would expect like a pinwheel. The four speakers introduce and hash out questions they prepared ahead of time (this training is done with their groups). After some time passes, new students rotate from the seats behind the speaker into the center seats and go along the conversation.

Variations: When high school English instructor Sarah Brown Wessling introduced this strategy in the featured video (click Pinwheel Give-and-take above), she used it as a device for talking about literature, where each group represented a unlike author, plus one provocateur group. But in the comments that follow the video, Wessling adds that she also uses the strategy with not-fiction, where students represent authors of different not-fiction texts or are assigned to take on unlike perspectives almost an issue.

Socratic Seminar >

a.one thousand.a. Socratic Circles

Bones Construction: Students prepare by reading a text or group of texts and writing some higher-order word questions most the text. On seminar 24-hour interval, students sit in a circle and an introductory, open-concluded question is posed by the instructor or student word leader. From at that place, students continue the chat, prompting 1 another to back up their claims with textual show. In that location is no item order to how students speak, but they are encouraged to respectfully share the flooring with others. Word is meant to happen naturally and students do not need to heighten their hands to speak. This overview of Socratic Seminar from the website Facing History and Ourselves provides a list of advisable questions, plus more than information nigh how to prepare for a seminar.

Variations: If students are beginners, the teacher may write the discussion questions, or the question creation can be a articulation effort. For larger classes, teachers may need to set up up seminars in more of a fishbowl-like arrangement, dividing students into one inner circle that volition participate in the discussion, and ane outer circle that silently observes, takes notes, and may eventually trade places with those in the inner circle, sometimes all at once, and sometimes past "tapping in" as the urge strikes them.

Low-Prep Discussion Strategies

Affinity Mapping >

a.g.a. Affinity Diagramming

Bones Structure: Give students a broad question or problem that is likely to result in lots of different ideas, such as "What were the impacts of the Great Depresssion?" or "What literary works should every person read?" Have students generate responses by writing ideas on postal service-it notes (one idea per note) and placing them in no particular organisation on a wall, whiteboard, or chart paper. In one case lots of ideas have been generated, have students begin grouping them into similar categories, so label the categories and discuss why the ideas fit within them, how the categories relate to one another, and and so on.

Variations: Some teachers have students practise much of this exercise—recording their ideas and arranging them into categories—without talking at first. In other variations, participants are asked to re-combine the ideas into new, different categories after the first round of system occurs. Often, this activity serves every bit a good pre-writing exercise, after which students volition write some kind of assay or position paper.

Concentric Circles >

a.thousand.a. Speed Dating

Basic Structure: Students grade two circles, ane inside circle and i outside circle. Each student on the inside is paired with a educatee on the outside; they face each other. The teacher poses a question to the whole group and pairs discuss their responses with each other. Then the teacher signals students to rotate: Students on the exterior circle move ane space to the correct and then they are standing in front of a new person (or sitting, as they are in the video). Now the teacher poses a new question, and the process is repeated.

Variations: Instead of two circles, students could likewise class two directly lines facing one another. Instead of "rotating" to switch partners, one line just slides over i spot, and the leftover person on the end comes effectually to the beginning of the line. Some teachers use this strategy to have students teach one slice of content to their fellow students, making it less of a discussion strategy and more of a peer instruction format. In fact, many of these protocols could be used for peer pedagogy as well.

Conver-Stations >

Basic Construction: Some other great idea from Sarah Brown Wessling, this is a small-group give-and-take strategy that gives students exposure to more than of their peers' ideas and prevents the stagnation that tin happen when a grouping doesn't happen to accept the right chemistry. Students are placed into a few groups of 4-6 students each and are given a discussion question to talk about. Subsequently sufficient time has passed for the give-and-take to develop, one or 2 students from each group rotate to a different group, while the other group members remain where they are. In one case in their new group, they will discuss a different, merely related question, and they may also share some of the fundamental points from their concluding grouping's conversation. For the next rotation, students who have not rotated before may be chosen to move, resulting in groups that are continually evolving.

Fishbowl >

Bones Construction: Two students sit facing each other in the center of the room; the remaining students sit down in a circle around them. The ii fundamental students have a conversation based on a pre-determined topic and often using specific skills the class is practicing (such as asking follow-up questions, paraphrasing, or elaborating on another person'southward point). Students on the outside detect, take notes, or perform some other give-and-take-related task assigned by the teacher.

Variations: I variation of this strategy allows students in the outer circumvolve to trade places with those in the fishbowl, doing kind of a relay-style discussion, or they may periodically "motorcoach" the fishbowl talkers from the sidelines. Teachers may also opt to have students in the outside circle grade the participants' conversation with a rubric, and then give feedback on what they saw in a debriefing afterward, as mentioned in the featured video.

Hot Seat >

Basic Structure: I pupil assumes the office of a book character, significant effigy in history, or concept (such as a tornado, an animal, or the Titanic). Sitting in front of the rest of the class, the student responds to classmates' questions while staying in character in that role.

Variations: Give more students the opportunity to be in the hot seat while increasing everyone's participation by having students do hot seat discussions in small groups, where one person per grouping acts as the "character" and three or iv others ask them questions. In another variation, several students could form a console of different characters, taking questions from the class all together and interacting with one another similar guests on a TV talk evidence.

Snowball Word >

a.thou.a. Pyramid Discussion

Basic Construction: Students begin in pairs, responding to a discussion question merely with a single partner. Later each person has had a take chances to share their ideas, the pair joins another pair, creating a group of four. Pairs share their ideas with the pair they simply joined. Side by side, groups of 4 join together to form groups of 8, and so on, until the whole class is joined up in one big give-and-take.

Variations: This structure could simply exist used to share ideas on a topic, or students could be required to attain consensus every time they join upwards with a new group.

Ongoing Discussion Strategies

Whereas the other formats in this list have a distinct shape—specific activities yous do with students—the strategies in this section are more than like plug-ins, working discussion into other instructional activities and improving the quality and reach of existing conversations.

Asynchronous Vocalization >

One of the limitations of give-and-take is that rich, contiguous conversations can only happen when all parties are available, so we're limited to the time we accept in class. With a tool similar Voxer, those limitations disappear. Like a private voice mailbox that you lot set with just one person or a group (but SOOOO much easier), Voxer allows users to have conversations at whatever time is nigh user-friendly for each participant. And so a group of four students can "hash out" a topic from 3pm until bedtime—asynchronously—each member contributing whenever they have a moment, and if the instructor makes herself role of the grouping, she can listen in, offer feedback, or contribute her own word points. Voxer is as well invaluable for collaborating on projects and for having one-on-one discussions with students, parents, and your own colleagues. Similar many other educators, Peter DeWitt took a while to really understand the potential of Voxer, but in this EdWeek piece, he explains what turned him around.

Backchannel Discussions >

A backchannel is a conversation that happens right alongside another activity. The first time I saw a backchannel in action was at my beginning unconference: While those of usa in the audition listened to presenters and watched a few brusk video clips, a separate screen was up beside the chief screen, projecting something called TodaysMeet (update: TodaysMeet has shut down. Use YoTeach! instead.) It looked a lot similar those chat rooms from back in the day, basically a blank screen where people would contribute a few lines of text, the lines stacking up ane afterwards the other, no other bells or whistles. Anyone in the room could participate in this conversation on their phone, laptop, or tablet, request questions, offering commentary, and sharing links to related resources without ever interrupting the flow of the presentations. This kind of tool allows for a completely silent discussion, i that doesn't have to movement at a super-fast pace, and it gives students who may be reluctant to speak upward or who procedure their thoughts more slowly a chance to fully contribute. For a deeper discussion of how this kind of tool tin can be used, read this thoughtful overview of using backchannel discussions in the classroom by Edutopia's Beth Holland.

Talk Moves >

a.g.a. Accountable Talk

Talk moves are sentence frames we supply to our students that assistance them limited ideas and interact with i some other in respectful, academically appropriate ways. From kindergarten all the way through college, students can benefit from explicit instruction in the skills of summarizing another person'southward statement earlier presenting an alternate view, request clarifying questions, and expressing agreement or fractional agreement with the stance of another participant. Talk moves can be incorporated into any of the other discussion formats listed hither.

Teach-OK >

Whole Brain Teaching is a set of teaching and classroom management methods that has grown in popularity over the past 10 years. One of WBT'southward foundational techniques is Teach-OK, a peer teaching strategy that begins with the teacher spending a few minutes introducing a concept to the class. Side by side, the teacher says Teach!, the grade responds with Okay!, and pairs of students take turns re-teaching the concept to each other. It's a bit like think-pair-share, just information technology's faster-paced, it focuses more on re-didactics than general sharing, and students are encouraged to use gestures to breathing their discussion. Although WBT is most popular in uncomplicated schools, this featured video shows the creator of WBT, Chris Biffle, using it quite successfully with higher students. I have also used Teach-OK with college students, and most of my students said they were happy for a change from the sit-and-mind they were used to in college classrooms.

Call up-Pair-Share >

An oldie but a goodie, think-pair-share tin can be used any fourth dimension you want to plug interactivity into a lesson: Simply accept students recollect nigh their response to a question, form a pair with another person, talk over their response, and then share it with the larger grouping. Because I experience this strategy has then many uses and can be manner more powerful than we give it credit for, I devoted a whole postal service to think-pair-share; everything you need to know about it is right there.

Ii MORE YOU'LL Dearest

Since writing this post, I have learned virtually ii more discussion strategies that teachers are finding to be incredibly effective and powerful for getting students to talk, especially about books and other texts:

The TQE Method >

This protocol has students come up upwards with their own Thoughts, lingering Questions, and Epiphanies from an assigned reading. Teachers who have used this method say it has generated some of the richest conversations they take ever heard from students!

Ongoing Conversations >

This strategy places students into one-on-ane conversations, getting them to larn each others' names better and create a rail record of what they talked about. Excellent for classes where you want to assess for give-and-take and assist students get more than comfortable with each other.

Then what else do yous have? I would like to think this is a pretty complete listing, simply I'one thousand sure more than strategies are out there. If yous employ a discussion strategy that'southward not mentioned here, delight share it below.

Come up back for more.
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Source: https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/speaking-listening-techniques/