Last year, Mr Neblett asked me to consider filming some class sessions, with the aim of making them available to faculty. I agreed to do so. The goal was to follow up on some of our PLC work last year related to the question of "how can students engage in more effective discussions?"
These video-clips are from my 4B English 12 class. The students were discussing the end of Sherman Alexie's novel Flight. We were using a fishbowl discussion technique. The class has been divided into two teams; each team gets about 16 minutes inside the "bowl" to discuss the day's reading. Then the other team has 10 minutes to ask the first group some questions. After that, the teams switch places and we do another 16+10-minute round.These teams have been working together for much of the first semester.
All the students are using their laptops. Each team uses a shared GoogleDoc to prepare for discussion, collecting in it quotations, questions, and ideas for their conversation. They also use the GoogleChat feature to monitor their own participation, making sure each group member contributes, and to keep track of the time. The group in the outer circle is also using a shared doc to brainstorm questions for their upcoming Q&A session. Each group is graded as a group, according to a rubric. As you can see, the conversation does not really involve me at all.
"Let's move on from there."
"Can I ask a question, even though it's over?"
"Are you done now?" "What's the literary effect of this?"
"Let's switch places."
"Good timing."
When we're reading a novel, we routinely spend about 50 minutes of each 90-minute class-period in discussion until we finish it.The students are fairly used to the routine now, and my future plans are to change up the rubric, making it harder to get a good grade. The students will have to use more quotations during the discussion, ask better, bigger, deeper questions, and avoid changing the topic so often. I also plan to start having the students in the outer circle help me assess the conversation that takes place inside the fishbowl. Perhaps after that, they can help me assess their own performance. Up until very recently, I've been providing a template for the shared PrepDocs, as we call them, but with our next novel, I'll ask each group to create its own template.
Please let me know what you think in the comments!
Thanks for sharing this, Susan. The multiple forms of brain stimulation--speaking, listening, responding, monitoring participation, brainstorming--make it very active process even though it may not seem like it at first. I love the idea of involving the students into the assessment process; that makes it even more student-centered. Have you discussed with the students how they see their understanding deepening through this exercise? That meta-cognitive piece might add the next "higher-order thinking" step.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Brandon. I'm considering having the students do a blog-post about their experiences with these discussions.
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