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Building Classroom Community Through Daily Dedications

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When students share stories about those who have inspired and impacted them, the whole classroom feels more connected.

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Implement Round Table Circles in the Classroom - Model Teaching

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When you want your students to engage in lively discussion, use Round Table Circles, a powerful tool that will keep your students engaged.

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The way one sees, understands, and feels about a situation makes up his/her point of view. Often we make the mistaken assumption that others share or should share our own POV. In reality, we all see and feel in our own unique way. We may not agree with another's POV. Some of the things that shape our POV's are:

Where and how we have grown up,

What experiences we have had,

What we have learned from others.

Autograph Exercise: This exercise encourages students to get to know one another and to lay the groundwork for understanding POV's.

Several days before doing this exercise have each student give you a fact about him/herself that no one else knows and that s/he is willing to share with the group. Type these facts into a numbered list, leaving a blank after each fact with enough room for the owner's autograph. Make enough copies for everyone.

Pass out the sheets to the students and give them 10 minutes to walk around the room and see how many people they can match with the facts. When they find a match they get that person's autograph.

Debrief this exercise by asking how many matches were made; if there were any surprises; and what role assumptions played in this exercise.

Source: Excerpted from Conflict, Resolution and Diversity by E.J. DeBenedetti

CRE Calendar Usage: 3rd Edition

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The way one sees, understands, and feels about a situation makes up his/her point of view. Often we make the mistaken assumption that others share or should share our own POV. In reality, we all see and feel in our own unique way. We may not agree with another's POV.

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Main content

This activity gives participants experience with civil discourse skills and complex decision making.

Civil Discourse and Difficult Decisions is a national initiative of the federal courts that brings high school and college students into federal courthouses for legal proceedings that arise from situations in which law-abiding young people can find themselves. These court hearings (not mock trials) now are being conducted in the distance-learning environment. In some cases, all students serve as jurors who listen to the student attorneys' arguments, then actively deliberate in the courtroom. Students are jurors in and New Jersey v. TLO. In other cases, all students serve as judges who ask questions of the student attorneys, then have a case conference to come to a decision. Students are judges in Tinker v. Des Moines.

About These Resources

Get started by downloading the agenda and complete activity package (doc). This activity can be used with any case in the Educational Resources section. In this program, is the landmark case.

Roles and Resources

This activity includes a tailored description and detailed guidance for each role:

Facilitator (doc): The facilitator manages the courtroom program and gives everyone an opportunity to speak during the jury deliberations.

Judge (doc): The host judge presides over the simulation and converses with the students in the courtroom after the event.

Volunteer Attorney Coaches

Students

Attorneys (doc): These students present arguments before the judge.

Jurors (doc): These students deliberate and work toward an evidence-based decision.

Time Commitment

Teachers' time commitment: No classroom preparation for students or teachers. All preparation is incorporated into the courtroom event.

Courtroom Program: Approximately three hours - from orientation to adjournment.

Note to Teachers: There is no reading or pre-court preparation on the part of students or their teachers. All preparation is incorporated into the courtroom event.

Learning Objectives

Students leave the program before lunchtime with sharpened tools for civil discourse and decision making.

They have a heightened awareness of situations they may not realize can have legal and long-term consequences.

They experience the differences between media portrayals and real courtroom situations.

They interact with the human face of the justice system - judges, attorneys, and other professionals - and they gain exposure to careers in the courts.

Their courtroom experience motivates them to serve willingly on juries when called.

What Happens in the Courtroom Program?

1. Reality Check Quiz and Discussion Starter
Students start by taking an attention-getting Reality Check Quiz (doc) that tests their knowledge of situations that can put them in legal jeopardy.

2. Civil Discourse Skill Building
This activity has two parts:

Students fill out a civility self-reflection tool to prompt self awareness and discussion.

Participants are guided through a process for establishing ground rules and group norms for civil discussion.

3. Courtroom Simulation
Student jurors are featured in the program as they decide a contemporary Supreme Court case that is modified with a scenario that applies to their lives. The abbreviated hearing gives them a realistic experience of what happens in court.

4. Reality Check Discussion
The program concludes with a candid conversation with the host judge about the real-life scenarios in the Reality Check Quiz (doc) - situations in which law-abiding people can find themselves facing legal and long-term consequences.

DISCLAIMER: These resources are created by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts for educational purposes only. They may not reflect the current state of the law, and are not intended to provide legal advice, guidance on litigation, or commentary on any pending case or legislation.

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Students practice civil discourse skills and evidence-based decision making while dealing with teen-relevant issues in realistic courtroom simulations. Judges preside and volunteer attorneys coach the students.

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Differences and disagreements are normal in a democracy. Teach kids about civil discourse and compromise through song! In this music video, Carla and Jade disagree about their school mascot, and Max helps them work it out.
Check out the resources below the video for discussion questions, activity ideas, and a lyrics sheet.

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Differences, Disagreements, and Democracy (Ages 6-11)

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/*-->*/ Differences and disagreements are normal in a democracy. Teach kids about civil discourse and compromise through song! In this music video, Carla and Jade disagree about their school mascot, and Max helps them work it out. Check out the resources below the video for discussion questions, activity ideas, and a lyrics sheet.

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Developed by the Right Question Institute, the Question Formulation Technique, or QFT, is a structured method for generating and improving questions. It distills sophisticated forms of divergent, convergent, and metacognitive thinking into a deceptively simple, accessible, and reproducible technique.

The QFT builds the skill of asking questions, an essential - yet often overlooked - lifelong learning skill that allows people to think critically, feel greater power and self-efficacy, and become more confident and ready to participate in civic life.

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What is the QFT? - Right Question Institute

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The Question Formulation Technique (QFT) is a simple but rigorous step-by-step process designed to help […]

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by Valentina Gonzalez Do you feel like there is just so much curriculum to teach that you don’t have time to ask students to stop and talk? Let’s think about that. Why don’t we allow students to di…

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by Diane Kue

Step 3 of Seidlitz and Perryman's (2021) 7 Steps to a Language-Rich, Interactive Classroom is all about randomizing and rotating student responses during whole-class instruction and group tasks to maintain engagement and accountability. Although I spend more time training other steps, the Step It Up! differentiation for Step 3 on page 40 is my favorite page to present to educators (Seidlitz & Perryman, 2021). In lieu of teachers randomizing and rotating which students speak, students self-regulate using Talking Chips. The purpose is to engage all participants within a group with the opportunity to express their thinking.

The Evolution of Talking Chips

Talking Chips were first developed by Spencer Kagan (1992) as a tool for cooperative learning . Over the past thirty-plus years variations in application have evolved, but its purpose of engagement and accountability of the individual within a group dynamic remains steadfast. The sentence stems, "I respectfully disagree. I think..." and "So far we've talked about..." enrich whole-class discussions as each student would "cash in" their unique discussion chip.

As a classroom teacher, the novelty of individual, unique sentence starters for each student contrasted with my previous structure of all my students using the same sentence stems, such as, "I think... I wonder... I noticed..." It transformed group engagement and gave me a new lens for teaching reading response. I perpetuated the success with mathematics- and science-focused Talking Chips as well.

Exploring a New Purpose

Heckman (2023) writes, "Discourse is language beyond a sentence" (p. 66). With practice, the shift from one-sentence responses to engaged academic conversations was a thrill to observe in my students. I began to brainstorm further. How might I use Talking Chips not only to normalize academic discourse but also to raise language proficiency?

When I worked for my district's ESL Department, I collected data from a collection of school's student language progressions over time. Results from the Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System (TELPAS) showed that the average scores of students who entered U.S. schooling at the beginning level for speaking rapidly rose to an intermediate level within their first year. However, they would consistently plateau between their first and second year, remaining at the intermediate level before gradually rising towards another proficiency level.

Heckman (2023) writes in greater detail, research about the intermediate-level plateau and the need for explicit language instruction, and this need is what I will address with Talking Chips. If you, your school, or your district have similar issues-that is, you have a cohort of students whose language acquisition seems to have reached an impasse-then you might find applying Talking Chips with a focus on raising proficiency levels beneficial.

Fostering Communicative Skills By Raising Language Proficiency

I began by categorizing my sentence stems into four levels: beginning, intermediate, advanced, and advanced high*. I created sentence stems with simple present tense for students at the beginning of acquiring English.

For the intermediate level speaker, I created sentence stems with simple, present, present continuous, and past tense for students who can speak in simple present tense. The word because is important to these sentence stems because the speaker must reflect on their understanding before explaining or justifying their response. It requires more language.

For the student speaking at the advanced level, I created sentence stems with a variety of sentence tenses and more complex grammatical structures, such as future tenses and prepositional phrases, to explain their reasoning. These stems include idioms and figurative language and have more abstract prompts.

Speakers using the advanced Talking Chips usually do not start the conversation as the chips move from concrete to abstract sentence stems that prompt explanations. Speakers at the advanced level understand the language of a concept enough to paraphrase it or be able to give comparative or contrasting examples.

For students with an advanced high speaking level, I created sentence stems with a variety of sentence tenses and more complex grammatical structures, such as dependent clauses, for students who can explain their thinking abstractly.

Speakers cannot begin conversations with these stems. Instead, they absorb the language of the conversation as it evolves and abstractly make connections to ideas and perspectives within the conversation before communicating.

Application

There are a variety of ways to employ the use of Talking Chips, and I present three-hour sessions that focus solely on methods for manipulating the chips. One simplified version is to let the students select which chips they want to use during their conversations. It was a way I could evaluate their self-assessed comfort levels and speaking proficiencies. I would record their choices and find ways to encourage the next proficiency level Talking Chips over time. There was much more to this process, but my point is to give you an idea of how raising proficiency can be implemented. Other ways Talking Chips can be implemented are:
Diane Kue is the author of *This assessment system is similar to what states outside of Texas use to measure growth in English proficiency (WIDA, ELPA21, etc.). Solved: A Teacher's Guide to Making Word Problems Comprehensible.

During Talk #2 in Motley's (2016) Talk, Read, Talk, Write structure

To support mini-lessons in reading and writing (Gonzalez & Miller, 2020)

As a means of surpassing the "developing writer's threshold" (Heckman, 2023, p. 22)

To explain process thinking when jigsawing a word problem (Kue, 2023)

To engage in science-specific academic discourse (Fleenor & Beene, 2019)

By strategically focusing on sentence tenses and sentence starters that practiced engaging in discourse, students not only acquired language, but they also acquired communicative skills applicable to success beyond the classroom.

Sources

Fleenor, S., &Beene, T. (2019). Teaching science to English learners. Seidlitz Education.

Gonzalez, V., &Miller, M. (2020). Reading & writing with English learners. Seidlitz Education.

Heckman, N. (2023). Building better writers. Seidlitz Education.

Kagan, S. (1992). Cooperative learning. Kagan Cooperative Learning.

Kue, D. (2023). Solved: A teacher's guide to making word problems comprehensible. Seidlitz Education.

Motley, N. (2016). Talk read talk write: A practical routine for learning in all content areas (K-12) (2 ed.). Seidlitz Education.Seidlitz, J., & Perryman, B. (2021). 7 Steps to a language-rich, interactive classroom. Seidlitz Education.

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by Diane Kue Step 3 of Seidlitz and Perryman's (2021) 7 Steps to a Language-Rich, Interactive Classroom is all about randomizing and rotating student responses during whole-class instruction and group tasks to maintain engagement and accountability. Although I spend more time training other steps, the Step It Up!

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This article describes how a Harkness discussion supports ELLs to develop communication and critical thinking skills by discussing a shared text. This article was updated on December 19, 2019

Why is student talk so important?

Talking allows students to construct meaning instead of being told the meaning, and it requires them to do various mental moves when engaging in a discussion. Students can:

Teachers that empower students to engage in discussions allow them to construct knowledge while simultaneously fostering social and communication skills.

Student-led conversations can be used everywhere

(Smith, Johnson & Johnson, 2005; Huxham, 2005; Jackson, 1995). As Samantha Benett said, " Student-lead conversations are versatile instructional practices because they can be used with large classes, small groups, and in between activities The person doing the talking is doing the thinking " (as cited by Salva, 2018).

Furthermore, discussions can be used across content areas since all teachers, regardless of their content expertise, want students to develop critical thinking and communication while also acquiring content (Shen, n.d).

Discussions are particularly helpful for MLs
For 4 reasons:
1. They help students better internalize concepts and form connections (Hestenes, Wells & Swackhamer, 1992). Because of their collaborative nature, discussions support ELs as they work through content rather than simply being given the answer. Discussions contextualize the content through the examples that are brought up during the conversation.

4. Academic achievement. Talking about content also advances academic language, and, when English is cultivated, ELs' academic achievement also increases (Gottlieb, 2013; Echevarría, Vogt, & Short, 2008; Kaufman & Crandall, 2005; Chamot & O'Malley, 1994; Mohan, 1986).

In short, there's a clear positive, reciprocal relationship between discussing content and language acquisition. As one grows, so does the other.

Why teacher-centered discussions don't work

A typical teacher-centered discussion checks only for students' understanding, as shown in the diagram below.

Usually, when I would ask a question, a single student would answer, while the other 25 just zoned out. I would evaluate the answer, assess the correctness and then move onto another question. If the response was incorrect, I would ask it again and search for another student to respond.

If you were bored just reading me type that, imagine how your students feel trying to engage with it. It wasn't only boring, it also failed to help ELs generate their own questions, which are an important sign of higher-level thinking.

Who does all work in a discussion like this? Me. Or that one smart kid. Certainly not the students who needed it. Clearly, my antiquated discussion strategy was ineffective at building my ELs' ability to think and communicate authentically.

They were playing a monotonous guessing game, and they usually lost.

Why student-centered Harkness Discussions work

The move away from the teacher-led discussion to student-controlled conversations invigorated the learning experience, principally because the desire to talk came from students asking each other questions. It was both surprising and exhilarating to find.

Here is a quick tutorial on how to facilitate a Harkness discussion.

You might be thinking, "This is just a normal student discussion about the text." For me, I see:

1. student-centered instruction

2. students listening to each other

3. students answering each other's questions

4. students strengthening interpersonal skills

5. students developing critical thinking skills

Implementing a Harkness Discussion

Step 1: Examine a Stimulus

If students are doing all the talking, what's the teacher supposed to do? Our role as educators is to give students a focus for their discussion. The focus is often a stimulus such as a written text, a video, a song, or a performance. A stimulus can even be an activity or an event.

I find the text for students to discuss, which is arguably the most important role as a discussion becomes stagnant when a poorly-chosen text does not drive thinking and questioning. A stimulating text, in contrast, will produce many questions about the events and concepts.

In an English class, we often stop to discuss a significant chapter or an excerpt from a text. While all students should have access to the text at least the night before, I have found that it is best to discuss a text immediately after we have read it in class because it's fresher in students' memories and guarantees that all students have attempted to access it.
If we don't ensure that all students have processed the text, we guarantee that only some students will participate.
Step 2: Generate Questions

Next, I have students generate questions on our classroom Padlet. The only caveat is that they must NOT know the answer to their questions . We want the discussion to be driven by the ELs' desire to seek answers and construct meaning.

Real questions create engaging discussions because they require students to pay careful attention to each other's responses. You might even help structure this step further by providing sentence starters such as:

Why did...?(infer)

Which is most...? (evaluate)

How does this connect to...? (apply)

What is the meaning of...? (interpret)

How did X feel about...? (empathize) (Zwiers & Crawford, 2011)

Step 3: Sit in a Circle

In each classroom at Philip Exeter, there was a large wooden oval table where it is easy for the students to face one another in conversation. Facing each other rather than the front of the room fostered more engaging student-to-student conversations.

Sitting together in a circle also prevented less confident or less prepared students from hiding in a row of desks.

However, most classrooms in the world do not have the luxury of a cherry wood table that can fit 15 people plus the teacher. When I first implemented Harkness into my New Orleans public school, I was only equipped with those horribly uncomfortable chairs connected to small desks.

Nevertheless, I could still recreate a Harkness Discussion using smaller groups as shown in the image below. I would usually direct my students to form groups of 4 or 8, as anything smaller than a group of 4 would often produce less dynamic conversations.

You should sit outside the circle to teach students that they should be addressing one another, not you. Once the students internalize the process, you can return to the circle as an observer, but not as an active participant. I'm usually writing down students' responses and making note of their contributions. More on the teacher's role below.

Please consider using a Fishbowl Harkness Discussion with a large class

The remaining students are given an observation task and form the outer circle. For example, you can tell them to observe the contributions of one person in the inner circle.

Ask the students in the outer ring to look for:

Who talked to the most?

What kinds of contributions were made (questions, clarifications, connections, opinions, etc.)?How relevant were their assigned student's contributions?

How respectful did the student disagree with opposing ideas?

How often did the student use textual evidence to support their ideas?

A Fishbowl Harkness Discussion is great for a large class because all students are either actively engaging in the discussion or observing the participants.

Please note: Observation is not a cop-ou t. First and foremost, because observing practices meta-cognitive thinking, the questions they're thinking about are substantial and evaluative.

Moreover, students' reflections help those in the inner circle reflect on how well they engaged in the discussion. It's a form of student-based feedback.

Tip: I often place the students with more developed language skills in the inner circle first to model the type of contributions for the outer circle to help those who may need the peer-based modeling.

Step 4: Discuss the Questions

Once I've projected the Padlet questions on the board, anyone can ask the first question. Usually, one question will lead to another, so after the initial look at the Padlet questions, we don't have to return to them until there's a lull in the conversation.

Your role is as a referee, not a leader

At first, students tend to look to me to respond after they pose a question because they're so used to a traditional discussion method. In an effort to break their learned-helplessness, I simply remain quiet and let the uncomfortable silence grow until students respond. No one likes uncomfortable silence.

Because my younger students need more support understanding how to have a classroom conversation, I refer them to this graphic from Jeff Zwiers and Marie Crawford's book entitled, Academic Conversations: Classroom Talk that Fosters Critical Thinking and Content Understanding (2011). It helps ELs engage in academic conversations because the different forms are clearly identified and associated with images.

No longer the lead participant, the teacher's role is now as a referee.

While students are free to express their ideas and opinions, sometimes they turn against one another instead of one another's ideas. As a referee, I intervene when a person is attacked instead of their ideas.

Just as a referee does not tell an athlete how to play but makes sure that the rules are followed, your role is to make sure that students follow the discussion structure and interact with each other respectfully.

The role that I play most frequently is actually that of a bird watcher: unobtrusively entering into the environment and trying not to disturb the birds as they go along their business.

Just like bird watchers, we need to quietly and observantly wait for those moments when our patience is rewarded with a glimpse of deep thinking, ideas being connected, and insight being formed.

Let the silence do the work.

Now that I'm working at an elementary school, I have to scaffold Harkness for students more than I did when in secondary school. To do that, I have created speaking cards like the one below.

I tell my students to pick a goal before we engaged in the Harkness. Some of the cards have a sentence starter to help them when they are speaking. Others are just reminders of the speaking behaviors expected during student-led discussions. Once they choose a goal, they clip their clothespin to the bottom of the goal card.

At the end of the discussion, if they felt like they have achieved their goal, they move the pin to the top of the card. If they have met it partially, then they move the pin to the side of the card. If the goal was not attempted, then they leave the clothespin at the bottom.

Step 5: Discuss the Interactions
Option 1: From notes drawn with pen and paper
Traditionally in our Harkness Discussions, I draw a circle and write the names of students on the place where they are sitting. Then, I draw an arrow between the person who asked the question and the person who has responded and note either what they said or the type of thinking they used.

Below are the notes of Ms. Suzi, a 12th grade English language teacher, which was taken when her seniors talked collaboratively about an article discussing medical marijuana use.

Midway through the discussion or at its conclusion, I like to show students the notes that I took. This tracker then becomes a visual tool to show students themselves how they are participating. I also point out if students made connections to ideas, identified a contradiction, posed a genuine question or asked for clarification.

This is a form of praise for students who have made these types of contributions and encouragement for other students to do the same. The ability to discuss in those ways is so important because a collaborative Harkness Discussion mirrors that of productive adult conversations that occur in board rooms, legislative halls, community centers, or online conference calls all over the world.
Option 2: From notes drawn electronically
As of this school year (August 2016), I've changed the way I take notes in a Harkness discussion. I find that I simply cannot write fast enough, or I find my handwriting almost illegible to decipher afterward.

So my new approach is to open a Google Drive Word Doc, and I quickly write the ideas students share. Each student has a cell within the table. I simultaneously categorize them as collaboration, question, explain, paraphrase, or question to show the type of thinking.

Moreover, this document can be projected at the end of the talk, and we can have a conversation about the discussion - so meta!

Socratic Vs. Harkness

I will admit that there are some great benefits to Socratic Seminars. The teacher-created questions are effective in helping students develop critical thinking skills, practice communication skills, and cultivate a deeper understanding.

However, those questions are also its Achilles' Heel. In a Socratic Seminar, students are there to collaboratively answer the questions with their peers. But, in a Harkness discussion, students are expected to formulate questions themselves . In discussions, forming questions is as important as answering them.
"the students were not wrestling with ideas by listening to each other and pressing for more information or a new angle on the argument. They kept dropping compelling questions as they surfaced one new idea after another. I wanted them to see how much fun it is to play with an idea."
It is fun to play with an idea. And, moreover, when students ask questions, we also teach them that questions are often more valuable than answers because of the thoughts that questions provoke.

Takeaways

After teaching ELs the Harkness Discussion, I see them becoming more independent learners because the habits of collaborative discussion have been scaffolded and modeled for them.

I am often just struck by students' thoughtfulness and their growth through this practice. Their conceptual understanding of a topic deepens and their academic language grows through multiple discussions.
The content becomes contextualized and the thinking done while talking is made visible. And when something is visible, it can be observed and followed.

Next Post

The next article will be about implementing a micro-writing structure that develops ELs' writing stamina, supports the synthesis of content information, and cultivates the writing thought process.
Have you used Harkness Discussions with your students? Share your tips and tricks in the comments below.
Bibliography

Bierman, P., Butler, E., & Reuter, J. (n,d). Earth Hazards: An introductory class combining the sciences of education and geology at the University of Vermont . Retrieved from http://www.uvm.edu/~earthhaz/hazards/Discussion.html .

Hestenes, D., Wells, M., & Swackhamer, G. (1992). Force concept inventory. The physics teacher , (3), 141-158.

Menninga, A. (2015, June 10). "If you want them to HEAR it, you talk. If you want them to LEARN it, THEY TALK." Retrieved from http://mindwise-groningen.nl/if-you-want-them-to-hear-it-you-talk-if-you-want-them-to-learn-it-they-talk/

Smith, K. A., Sheppard, S. D., Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (2005). Pedagogies of engagement: Classroom‐based practices. Journal of Engineering Education , (1), 87-101.

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#7. The Harkness Discussion: Where Everyone Has a Voice at the Table - ELL Strategies | TanKHuynh

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This article describes how a Harkness discussion supports ELLs to develop communication and critical thinking skills by discussing a shared text. This article was updated on December 19, 2019 Why is student talk so important? Talking allows students to construct meaning instead of being told the meaning, and it requires them to do various mental moves when engaging in a discussion.

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ScienceDirect.com | Science, health and medical journals, full text articles and books.

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ScienceDirect is the world's leading source for scientific, technical, and medical research. Explore journals, books and articles.

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Conversation Agreements Want to some more help understanding the "why" behind each agreement? Click here to unpack the Conversation Agreements. Be curious and listen to understand. Conversation is as much about listening as it is about talking. You might enjoy exploring how others' ex

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Pedagogical Rubric for Student-Driven Discourse

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Fostering Civil Discourse Facing History

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Fostering Civil Discourse Facing History

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Listen to this post as a podcast:
When I worked with student teachers on developing effective lesson plans, one thing I always asked them to revise was the phrase "We will discuss."
We will discuss the video. We will discuss the story. We will discuss our results.
Every time I saw it in a lesson plan, I would add a note: "What format will you use? What questions will you ask? How will you ensure that all students participate?" I was pretty sure that We will discuss actually meant the teacher would do most 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 discussion, but was ultimately just a conversation between the teacher and a handful of extroverted students; a classic case of Fisheye Teaching.

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

So here they are: 15 formats for structuring a class discussion to make it more engaging, more organized, more equitable, and more academically challenging. If you've struggled to find effective ways to develop students' speaking and listening skills, this is your lucky day.

I've separated the strategies into three groups. The first batch contains the higher-prep strategies, formats that require teachers to do some planning or gathering of materials ahead of time. Next come the low-prep strategies, which can be used on the fly when you have a few extra minutes or just want your students to get more active. Note that these are not strict categories; it's certainly possible to simplify or add more meat to any 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 alone. 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 any. To watch each strategy in action, click on its name and a new window will open with a video that demonstrates it.

Enjoy!
a.k.a. Chat Stations
Basic Structure: Stations or posters are set up around 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 poster and conducting a Q&A about it. In Starr Sackstein's high 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 teacher prepares discussion prompts or content-related tasks and sets them up around the room for students to visit in small groups.
a.k.a. Values Continuum, Forced Debate, Physical Barometer, This or That
Basic Structure: 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: Often a Philosophical Chairs debate will be based around a text or group of texts students have read ahead of time; students are required to cite textual evidence to support their claims and usually hold the texts in their hands during the discussion. Some teachers set up one hot seat to represent 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 have students place themselves along that continuum based on the strength of their convictions.

Basic Structure: Students are divided into 4 groups. Three of these groups are assigned to represent specific points of view. Members of the fourth group are designated as "provocateurs," tasked with making sure the discussion keeps going and stays challenging. One person from each group (the "speaker") sits in a desk facing speakers from the other groups, so they form a square in the center of the room. Behind each speaker, the remaining group members are seated: two right behind the speaker, then three behind them, and so on, forming a kind of triangle. From above, this would look like a pinwheel. The four speakers introduce and discuss questions they prepared ahead of time (this preparation is done with their groups). After some time passes, new students rotate from the seats behind the speaker into the center seats and continue the conversation.

Variations: When high school English teacher Sarah Brown Wessling introduced this strategy in the featured video (click Pinwheel Discussion above), she used it as a device for talking about literature, where each group represented a different author, plus one provocateur group. But in the comments that follow the video, Wessling adds that she also uses the strategy with non-fiction, where students represent authors of different non-fiction texts or are assigned to take on different perspectives about an issue.
a.k.a. Socratic Circles
Basic Structure: Students prepare by reading a text or group of texts and writing some higher-order discussion questions about the text. On seminar day, students sit in a circle and an introductory, open-ended question is posed by the teacher or student discussion leader. From there, students continue the conversation, prompting one another to support their claims with textual evidence. There is no particular order to how students speak, but they are encouraged to respectfully share the floor with others. Discussion is meant to happen naturally and students do not need to raise their hands to speak. This overview of Socratic Seminar from the website Facing History and Ourselves provides a list of appropriate questions, plus more information about 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 joint effort. For larger classes, teachers may need to set up seminars in more of a fishbowl-like arrangement, dividing students into one inner circle that will participate in the discussion, and one outer circle that silently observes, takes notes, and may eventually trade places with those in the inner circle, sometimes all at once, and sometimes by "tapping in" as the urge strikes them.
a.k.a. Affinity Diagramming
Basic 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 Depression?" or "What literary works should every person read?" Have students generate responses by writing ideas on post-it notes (one idea per note) and placing them in no particular arrangement on a wall, whiteboard, or chart paper. Once lots of ideas have been generated, have students begin grouping them into similar categories, then label the categories and discuss why the ideas fit within them, how the categories relate to one another, and so on.

Variations: Some teachers have students do 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 organization occurs. Often, this activity serves as a good pre-writing exercise, after which students will write some kind of analysis or position paper.
a.k.a. Speed Dating
Basic Structure: Students form two circles, one inside circle and one outside circle. Each student on the inside is paired with a student 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 outside circle move one space to the right so 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 also form two straight lines facing one another. Instead of "rotating" to switch partners, one line just slides over one spot, and the leftover person on the end comes around to the beginning of the line. Some teachers use this strategy to have students teach one piece of content to their fellow students, making it less of a discussion strategy and more of a peer teaching format. In fact, many of these protocols could be used for peer teaching as well.

Basic Structure: Another great idea from Sarah Brown Wessling, this is a small-group discussion strategy that gives students exposure to more of their peers' ideas and prevents the stagnation that can happen when a group doesn't happen to have the right chemistry. Students are placed into a few groups of 4-6 students each and are given a discussion question to talk about. After sufficient time has passed for the discussion to develop, one or two students from each group rotate to a different group, while the other group members remain where they are. Once in their new group, they will discuss a different, but related question, and they may also share some of the key points from their last group's conversation. For the next rotation, students who have not rotated before may be chosen to move, resulting in groups that are continually evolving.

Basic Structure: Two students sit facing each other in the center of the room; the remaining students sit in a circle around them. The two central 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's point). Students on the outside observe, take notes, or perform some other discussion-related task assigned by the teacher.

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

Basic Structure: One student assumes the role of a book character, significant figure 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 group acts as the "character" and three or four others ask them questions. In another variation, several students could form a panel of different characters, taking questions from the class all together and interacting with one another like guests on a TV talk show.
a.k.a. Pyramid Discussion
Basic Structure: Students begin in pairs, responding to a discussion question only with a single partner. After each person has had a chance to share their ideas, the pair joins another pair, creating a group of four. Pairs share their ideas with the pair they just joined. Next, groups of four join together to form groups of eight, and so on, until the whole class is joined up in one large discussion.

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

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

One of the limitations of discussion is that rich, face-to-face conversations can only happen when all parties are available, so we're limited to the time we have in class. With a tool like Voxer, those limitations disappear. Like a private voice mailbox that you set up with just one person or a group (but SOOOO much easier), Voxer allows users to have conversations at whatever time is most convenient for each participant. So a group of four students can "discuss" a topic from 3pm until bedtime-asynchronously-each member contributing whenever they have a moment, and if the teacher makes herself part of the group, she can listen in, offer feedback, or contribute her own discussion points. Voxer is also invaluable for collaborating on projects and for having one-on-one discussions with students, parents, and your own colleagues. Like 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.

A backchannel is a conversation that happens right alongside another activity. The first time I saw a backchannel in action was at my first unconference: While those of us in the audience listened to presenters and watched a few short video clips, a separate screen was up beside the main screen, projecting something called TodaysMeet (update: TodaysMeet has shut down. Use YoTeach! instead.) It looked a lot like 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 one after the other, no other bells or whistles. Anyone in the room could participate in this conversation on their phone, laptop, or tablet, asking 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, one that doesn't have to move at a super-fast pace, and it gives students who may be reluctant to speak up or who process their thoughts more slowly a chance to fully contribute. For a deeper discussion of how this kind of tool can be used, read this thoughtful overview of using backchannel discussions in the classroom by Edutopia's Beth Holland.
a.k.a. Accountable Talk
Talk moves are sentence frames we supply to our students that help them express ideas and interact with one another 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's argument before presenting an alternate view, asking clarifying questions, and expressing agreement or partial agreement with the stance of another participant. Talk moves can be incorporated into any of the other discussion formats listed here.

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's foundational techniques is Teach-OK, a peer teaching strategy that begins with the teacher spending a few minutes introducing a concept to the class. Next, the teacher says Teach!, the class responds with Okay!, and pairs of students take turns re-teaching the concept to each other. It's a bit like think-pair-share, but it's faster-paced, it focuses more on re-teaching than general sharing, and students are encouraged to use gestures to animate their discussion. Although WBT is most popular in elementary schools, this featured video shows the creator of WBT, Chris Biffle, using it quite successfully with college 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-listen they were used to in college classrooms.

An oldie but a goodie, think-pair-share can be used any time you want to plug interactivity into a lesson: Simply have students think about their response to a question, form a pair with another person, discuss their response, then share it with the larger group. Because I feel this strategy has so many uses and can be way more powerful than we give it credit for, I devoted a whole post to think-pair-share; everything you need to know about it is right there.

TWO MORE YOU'LL LOVE

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

This protocol has students come up 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 have ever heard from students!

This strategy places students into one-on-one conversations, getting them to learn each others' names better and create a track record of what they talked about. Excellent for classes where you want to assess for discussion and help students get more comfortable with each other.

So what else do you have? I would like to think this is a pretty complete list, but I'm sure more strategies are out there. If you use a discussion strategy that's not mentioned here, please share it below.

Come back for more.
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The Big List of Class Discussion Strategies

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Here they are: 15 formats for structuring a class discussion to make it more engaging, more organized, more equitable, and more academically challenging.

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Discourse By Design: Student-Driven Discussions That Bring Students Together