Classroom Conversation

1. Classroom Conversation What do you think? No, you’re wrong! • Discussion Types • Preparing Successful Discussions • Common-sense Rules • Benefits & Problems • A Discussion Rubric He’s wrong. Well, what about me? How would you feel? YES!

2. Types of Discussions • General (gives students a chance to develop thinking, clear oral expression, and experience in posing and responding to questions) • Guided or Directed (used to guide students through a series of questions to discover some relationship, principle, or result) • Reflective(used to assist students in analytical skills, arriving at alternative explanations, finding solutions, or classifying ideas into major categories) • Inquiry (used to help students employ reasoning skills to acquire new information with a minimum of help from the teacher) • Exploratory (used to enable students to discuss controversial issues without fear of censure)

3. Preparing Successful Discussions • set realistic goals • determine type of discussion • pay attention to thought processes required to achieve goals • outline questions in light of required thought processes • provide for variety of questions • questions should be at student level • prepare a novel introduction • follow common-sense rules

4. Common-Sense Rules • use wait time effectively • move from divergent to convergent questions • reinforce student answers • throw back questions • provide appropriate praise • interrelate previous comments • maintain positive atmosphere • clarify statements with follow-up questions • restate goal periodically • engage all students • take your time

5. Unresponsive Groups • From time to time you will encounter unresponsive groups. • Unresponsiveness will generally result from: • Students not having read the assigned reading or • Students having forgotten what they have read. • When encountering an unresponsive group, call on people. • NB: To make this course more enjoyable: • Always read the assignments and take notes before class. • Review the notes immediately prior to class. • You are expected to INTERNALIZE the information, not merely read and forget.

6. Benefits & Drawbacks • Benefits • motivates individual students • more likely to develop inquiry behavior in students • teacher receives feedback from students • an opportunity to engage all students in thinking • scope of discussion can be rather broad - integration • a good way to provide for review • Drawbacks • hard to conduct well • might go astray • can be time consuming • might be monopolized

7. Critical Components • All discussions conducted in this course must clearly include an alignment between the following components: • Goal statement – at the very outset the discussion leader should state the goal of the discussion, and avoid stating the conclusion at which the students are expected to arrive. • Discussion activities – the discussion leader should demonstrate those approaches described in the discussion scoring rubric. • Informal summative assessment – at the end of the discussion the leader should attempt to ascertain if the stated goal has been achieved by the students.

8. A Rubric for Evaluating Discussions • Defines important aspects of a good discussion • effective initiation of discussion • educational objective stated / achieved? • equitable student participation • quality of student responses • students answer the questions • question types / skills • Uses an even-numbered scoring scale. • Characterize quality performance from good to fair to poor to unacceptable.