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Next Week:
I like that word Anna used to describe the GI--that it's a "hypothesis". I'd like to see them play around with a GI and see what questions they come up with.

Next Month:
Use that "teacher's note" to be able to better focus their QA section.

Next Year:
Pop the champagne after I upload what they do this next month.

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Next week: I'll ask ss to bring in their own questions with everything they have to read.
Next month: I'll have a discussion of what a GI is and a follow-up couple of lessons on it.
Next year: I'll ask for their IO selection early and have ss plan and practice on it early

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Next week: De-mythologizing the Global Issue. Make it real, open up to the real world
Next month: Global Issue as Hypothesis. What is the problem? Cause/effect. Question the text
Next year: More examples

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1. Next week: I will play with mind maps, in particular mindmeister and worldmapper
2. Next month: I will develop learner portfolio tasks and reflection questions focused on laying groundwork for the IO
3. Next year: I will scaffold the IO, chunking, and implement learning activities to practice focus [global issue] and selection [text examples

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Explain more thoroughly the assessment criteria, introduce new activities to the Learner Portfolio, give students more opportunities for practicing their oral skills by presenting their work more often in class.

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Explain more thoroughly the assessment criteria, introduce new activities to the Learner Portfolio, give students more opportunities for practicing their oral skills by presenting their work more often in class.

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Next Week:
Create group Mind-maps on the GIs detected in the works covered.

Next Month:
Revisit the Mind-map, include specific extracts - maybe create more than one mind-maps by the end of the school year.

Next year:
Encourage students to land on a GI early in the year work on structuring their approach.

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Next week: What is a global issue for you? Define it.
Next month: Find significant moments in the works we've studied so far
Next Year: Practice extracting a well defined global issue from two extracts of your choice

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Next week: begin using the Ah/Um game for quick fun and practice with public speaking
Next month: Use the student practice and checklist as a tool for students
Next year: Develop a stronger structure for the learner portfolio to nurture year-long mind mapping

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in-class activity (pieced out over 2+ days)

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in-class activity (pieced out over 2+ days)

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I took an exemplar IO from online that used a particular Time magazine cover and used that cover as the basis of a whole-class discussion working to analyze the cover and identifying global issues present. I had taken detailed notes on the insights the exemplar candidate made and shared those in the course of the class discussion, as well as my own insights and analysis of the magazine cover. Then we listened to the exemplar oral and students discussed it and evaluated it based on the criteria. Finally we looked at the assessor's ratings and comments.

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Take any unseen extract (not discussed in class) and be able to derive a GI from it.

One bag full of each lit work we studied, one bag of the non-lit BoW, and a bag of 10 random GIs. Then they have to be able to spontaneously put the 3 together and decide on what passage/extract they would use from the 2 works.

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Alexis Wiggins has worked as a high-school English teacher, instructional coach, and consultant. Her book, The Best Class You Never Taught: How Spider Web Discussion Can Turn Students into Learning Leaders(ASCD), helps transform classrooms through collaborative inquiry. Alexis is currently the English Department Chair at The John Cooper School in The Woodlands, TX. You can contact her or sign up for her newsletter at www.ceelcenter.org.

First, tell me how you would describe your current professional title(s).
I'm an English teacher and department chair at the John Cooper School in The Woodlands, Texas. I also write and consult when I can. As a consultant, I work with schools to help them design better assessment practices, developing dynamic curriculum, using essential questions, and implementing effective student-led collaborative inquiry in all kinds of classrooms.
You're most known for your Spider Web discussion practice. Can you tell us a little bit about how that tool developed and what you're valuing about it most these days?
Working at The Masters School (in Dobbs Ferry, NY), which is a Harkness institution, shaped my practice and played a significant role in developing Spider Web Discussion. Long discussions about books were part of my own education; I didn't experience a lot of lectures in high school, so discussion of a kind was a familiar teaching medium for me. I was in my 20s when I started teaching, and entering the classroom as a teacher forced me to reexamine assumptions that I had about discussion. First, I had to think about putting the onus and empowerment on students' shoulders, empowering them to be ones who asked the great questions, rather than waiting for me to ultimately guide the discussion. I learned through Harkness that if you bite your tongue long enough, kids usually get where they need to go on their own. They also value where they land more, because rather than having it spoon fed to them, they found it for themselves. Like most Harkness schools, Masters implemented the Harkness pedagogy in all disciplines. But the English department had a collaborative model that was different from what I'd seen prior or since: the whole class would get the same discussion grade for each discussion. This practice took away the individual element and made the classroom a fully collaborative inquiry. That was very new and different for me as a young teacher.

For years prior to that, I felt like I had been rewarding bad behavior: volume, not necessarily depth of comments; interruption; not listening well; the students who engaged in these less productive ways ultimately earned higher grades. When I considered my values or goals for discussion, I realized that my goal wasn't to have kids speak more, but to encourage them to ask questions, to reference the text often, to be unafraid to say they've rethought and want to follow up with a question. This model - which the English department at Masters had decided on before I got there - was the origin of Spider Web Discussion for me.

I ended up building avenues out from there that better supported the method in schools that weren't Harkness. I couldn't do that group grading in environments that weren't designed for it, and I ultimately don't think that it's best practice.

Spider Web Discussion really empowers kids to do the deep digging and question asking themselves. A good teacher can use it to lay groundwork and protocol and give spaces for feedback and reflection while providing intellectual safety.
What do you value about Spider Web Discussion most these days?
We've never been so divided as a country. The ability to listen to each other in all types of perspectives or interpretations is critical, as we all know. Whatever we're talking about, we have to be able to come together and listen and reason and ask questions that are challenging. At the beginning of the year, I decided to implement a class charter activity that I learned about through my school's partnership with Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. It's an activity where kids write about how they want to feel in class. My students listed these words: comfortable, encouraged, respected, challenged, listened to, free to make mistakes, passionate, relaxed, happy, creative. That kind of answers the question, for me. If students want to feel those things, something like REAL or Spider Web Discussion provides daily opportunities to foster that kind of classroom.
What questions are on your mind as you design for and in classrooms this school year? What do you think teachers should be paying attention to as they foster classroom discussions, perhaps especially if they're in a school in which student-centered discussions aren't common practice?
One of the things that has helped our school and other schools I know develop a more cohesive model, even when they aren't Harkness schools, are essential questions. Having essential questions that frame a course or even a department can be really unifying, providing a wonderful starting point for any kind of teacher. We started this year with our first Spider Web Discussion in several course with essential questions, such as:

"Are people inherently good or evil?"

"What's true? What isn't? How do we know?"

"Is language a weapon or a tool?"

We introduce the questions to frame the year, and we have them write a benchmark essay that responds to one question using their summer reading as evidence. Those questions are the anchors for the year, and we post them on the walls of the classrooms; each course has between 5-8 questions. Not all of the questions come up in every unit; they're an anchor again and again, both for content (like understanding Orwell's 1984) and assessments (writing an exam on a single essential question, using the term's content as possible evidence). Essential questions are a game changer for anyone who's looking for something to center and motivate class discussions.
Can you assess discussion? If so, how?
It depends on every teacher and every context. At a Harkness school, it was appropriate and expected to make discussion performance part of a student's grade. Everybody bought in. Other schools might be standards-based, or have policies that no group grade could ever count. I would also argue that if we want to truly teach, encourage, and develop students who collaborate well, then we need to assess their collaboration. That assessment of collaboration is something I've rarely ever seen. How well are we assessing the act of collaboration? Getting specific targeted feedback on how well you (as a student) collaborate is important if you want to grow as a leader and team player, both in school and career.

In the past five to seven years, as my teaching has shifted and since the standards-based movement has gained ground, I mostly assess discussions as group grades and treat it as a formative assessment that counts as zero percent of the overall average. I think this is more accurate in terms of individual student assessment but it still keeps the focus on the group's collective inquiry through a "symbolic" grade. People always ask if students will still take discussions seriously without the individual grades, but for the past decade, I have seen no difference in quality between discussions that "count" and those that are formative. The rubric works either way in my experience.
What about providing individual feedback to assess individual skill development?
I default to not doing that as much, though I love the way that REAL offers that individual feedback. A lot of our faculty has done the training [for REAL], and we're implementing it in seventh grade. I don't generally give a lot of individualized feedback, though we always do a lot of debriefing together, and I love to shout out a lot of specific students. The potential is there and should be encouraged for anybody who has the time.I think that decisions about how and when to give individual feedback should be site-specific. It's worked so well for me to focus on the collaborative aspects of discussion, but it can be different in other places.
What's one prediction you have for the future of education?
I predict that it'll be one of the most attractive fields to work in in the next generation. I think that there's less job security in so many fields that are traditionally seen as attractive to students. I think that we've also seen the importance of in-person teaching. We've all lived it. Five to ten years ago, everyone was talking about MOOCs [Massive Open Online Courses] taking over the world, but it seems we've really decided that there's something really important about being in person.

Every week, I give my students my "Advice of the Week." One piece of advice I give each year is to "become a teacher. No, seriously." I've never been out of work, I've been able to teach around the world, I am lucky enough to have my own children at the school my husband and I teach at. It has brought me so much personal joy to teach the subject I love to great kids for the past two decades. It's hard work, but it's meaningful work that matters. I wish more young graduates saw the field this way, and I wish there were more funding for schools and educators to ensure equity across all kinds of schools.
I know, from your work in developing CEEL (Cohort of Educators for Essential Learning) that you're interested in creating communities of teachers. How can we, as teachers, support, comfort, challenge one another as teachers of discussion?
I would love to know the answer to that question. Do you have it? There are so many great places to create community, so many opportunities, but I also think I'm still figuring it out. Even just Twitter has been a wonderful space for me; I follow a few journalists, but then everyone else I follow is an educator. Twitter is where I go to see what's new and different - I look at #aplitchat and other spaces that are often active. I especially think that new teachers should enroll and engage on Twitter. It can be a community that still has very low stakes; you don't have to engage, you can just observe. If you don't want to give time and energy to initiatives, it still gives you something.

It's really hard to actually build and find professional communities and teaching beyond your work. Personally, I tried to organize a conference of teachers, and I found it hard. It didn't really work out. Mostly I was creating it because I wanted to benefit from it, but the logistics side of organizing it was beyond what I could do as a teacher. In the absence of that, I've tried to stick to the conferences and spaces that I've found to be amazing when I attend them.

I joined the New York Times Teaching Project this past June. They chose forty educators, and we spent a year together in monthly Zooms. You also have four days in person at the Times, though ours was virtual this year because of the pandemic. The summer week-long institute was amazing, even online. We each create a curriculum project using the Times as a resource. It was by far the best professional development I've ever done in my life. It's so rare to attend professional development where everybody who's attending 100% wants to be there. It's riveting, because during every session you have, you're learning and growing and getting feedback and taking notes. It's so exciting to share spaces with like-minded, energetic people; it doesn't happen for me in every workshop and conference I attend. More specialized, area-specific settings definitely help to create that alchemy.

It's important to find the spaces that speak to your specific needs. That's the most fulfilling. When you find the right people to follow on Twitter, the right network, the right groups, then you can narrow down and find the people you want to work with to learn and grow.

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Office Hours: 30 Minutes with Alexis Wiggins - Real Discussion

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"When I considered my values or goals for discussion, I realized that my goal wasn't to have kids speak more, but to encourage them to ask questions, to reference the text more often, to be unafraid to say they've rethought and want to follow up with a question."

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Various mini approaches such as speaking on a single text, giving students the broader context, etc.

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Quick practice for public speaking--could be done throughout the year

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Ss should work on their IO as they would for an essay, in terms of a solid, well-constructed persuasive argument throughout (as opposed to many secondary ones) that links back to the GI. Also, it's all about balance (structure, cohesion, transitions).

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Structure is important. Some of my students are insightful but they get lost.

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The students who have experience in public speaking do better at that. But the others are self conscious and shy.
Delivery is important and should be practiced in my opinion

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As an organizational tool it can make sense, especially in connecting or transitioning between texts. But I wonder if some students lose sight of the Global Issue and make it too much like the paper 2 approach

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"High-scoring candidates were able to handle a variety of references. They were able to not just mention other works in the collection but focus on specific references or moments (rather than just name titles of other work/chapters, etc.) and such candidates would use these references to convince the listener of their interpretations."

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Use of academic language is also a challenging aspect for most students. Most of them find it difficult to be persuasive and engaging. So, criterion D is also a major challenge for most students.

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Use of academic language is also a challenging aspect for most students. Most of them find it difficult to be persuasive and engaging. So, criterion D is also a major challenge for most students.

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A really useful description I will share with students--it should feel like an overall persuasive argument rather than a series of varying points

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It was helpful for me to read the paragraph about music, and that if students want to use music as the non-literary text they need to use images from the video. I'm curious if they are able to use musicological insights (sound) if they only want to look at the song and not a video (for older music)

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Helping students be specific enough but also adjust for the time limitations and what can be delved into in only 10 minutes on two texts.

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Practice their oral skills so that the delivery of the oral is not too mechanical, avoid summary, description and paraphrasing, upgrade the register of the language they use.

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Practice their oral skills so that the delivery of the oral is not too mechanical, avoid summary, description and paraphrasing, upgrade the register of the language they use.

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they forget the GI and go on to analyse the extract 

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they forget the GI and go on to analyse the extract 

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There is a lot to be balanced: both extracts, body of work, style, etc.

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There is a lot to be balanced: both extracts, body of work, style, etc.

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In my first year teaching DP, I'm struggling to find the balance between single texts and bodies of work. I want them to have a variety of options to use for the IO but I find myself using too many single texts. I tried offering variety through some small group work but also found the students struggled to go as deep as they needed to when they had less guidance (I was rotating between groups)

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clearly define the term "global issue' and give students specific examples (neither too narrow not too wide), help students enhance their time-management skills, provide them with opportunities for practicing their oral skills 

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clearly define the term "global issue' and give students specific examples (neither too narrow not too wide), help students enhance their time-management skills, provide them with opportunities for practicing their oral skills 

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Students tend to lose focus and forget about the extracts in question

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worry that they are trying to "recycle" discussions from class and not looking at our works/bodies of works with fresh eyes

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Guiding students to identify global issues that will enable them to get the right scope of argument for the time and task. Also, providing enough non-literary "bodies of work" options to give students ample choice according to their interests.

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Help students focus on the form aspect--they want to go mostly into the content as connected to the issue rather than looking at form

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Help students focus on the form aspect--they want to go mostly into the content as connected to the issue rather than looking at form

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Students often land on the same Global Issues 

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Students often land on the same Global Issues 

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The students struggle going deep enough in their analysis and meaningfully exploring how aspects of craft specifically present the global issue
-Rachel

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Making the global issue more specific while referring to extracts

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Identifying "just right" global issues and selecting juicy extracts

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Identifying "just right" global issues and selecting juicy extracts

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Keeping an eye on the consequences for the argument

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Keeping an eye on the consequences for the argument

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Should the global issue be stated as a thesis statement?

Should the global issue be an important piece within a thesis statement?

Do candidates need an arguable thesis statement for the oral?

Am I correct in understanding that both the literary text and the non-literary text need to be part of a larger work studied?

If a student selects a 40 line extract from a novel, is the "broader work" the whole novel? Or does the candidate need to reference and make assertions regarding their global issue in other novels written by that author? One exemplar IO on the IBs website has a candidate use Ibsen's A Doll's House as her literary text and the candidate references other Ibsen plays such as Hedda Gabler to discuss the global issue. Is that a requirement or just an option?

If students use a poem or song for their literary text, do they need to reference other poems by the same author to meet the "discuss relevant aspects of the broader work" requirement?

Is "body of work" only in reference to a non-literary text?

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Worldmapper | rediscover the world as you’ve never seen it before

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Mapping our place in the world: The atlas for the 21st century. Worldmapper is a collection of world maps where countries are resized according to a broad range of global issues. Our cartograms are unique visualisations that show the world as you’ve never seen it before. Explore them all!

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Dr. Anna Androulaki-Woodcock has been teaching English since 1988. She started her career in the IB teaching Diploma Programme English and ToK in 2002 and since then she has also taken on the roles of examiner and workshop leader for the IB. Since 2002, her work has had an exclusive IB focus and her perspective has been shaped by teaching in very different and diverse contexts in Greece, Germany, the UK and China.

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Dr. Anna Androulaki-Woodcock has been a professional educator since 1988. BA in English Language and Literature 1988 University of Athens. MA in Linguistics 1991 New York University. PhD in Theoretical Linguistics 2009 University of Reading. Oxford University Press English A: Literature Course Companion for the new

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IB English A: Language and Literature: Individual Oral Assessment Considerations

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Please note: The purpose of this information is to elaborate on the nature of the IB assessment tasks, define and explain the assessment criteria and their implications, share observed challenges in students' submitted assessment work, and offer strategies and approaches for assessment preparation.

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IB English A: Literature: Individual Oral Assessment Considerations

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Please note: The purpose of this information is to elaborate on the nature of the IB assessment tasks, define and explain the assessment criteria and their implications, share observed challe…