skills in reading, thinking, and communicating. They use interpretive discussions and construct inferential and thematic meanings from the text.
Seventh is literature circles, wherein a group of four students collaborates to select a book to read. The teacher assigns each member one of the four roles: (1) discussion director, (2) literary luminary, (3) vocabulary enricher, and (4) checker. In this way, all students are involved deeply in the process.
Eighth is grand conversation, which is a strategy that involves authentic, lively talk about text. The teacher initiates the discussion with a big, overarching question or interpretive prompt. The talk pattern is conversational, and the teacher provides authentic responses to students’ statements.
The final strategy is book club. In this strategy, students choose what to read and establish their own schedule for reading and discussing books. The key for this strategy is having students read for the sheer joy of it.
One technique Murphy et al. (2009) do not touch on is the Socratic seminar, which can be used for both fiction and nonfiction texts. Within the Socratic seminar, it is important to understand the teacher’s role.
• Be the facilitator, not the director.
• Pose well-thought-out, open-ended questions.
• Give no response, positive or negative, to students’ discussions.
• Pose questions to move discussion past stalemate positions.
The teacher also needs to explain the guidelines to the students if they are not familiar with a Socratic seminar. The guidelines typically include the following.
• The group sits in a circle, allowing all to make eye contact.
• Students must be prepared!
• Everyone must be respectful of all opinions.
• One student speaks at a time.
• Students should direct comments to classmates (not the teacher).
• Disagreement is fine—as long as it is respectful.
• The speaker should support opinions with textual evidence.
• There is no single right answer.
Lengthy and deep discussions are characterized by complex webs of positions, supportive reasons and evidence, and counterarguments against those reasons and evidence, and the Socratic seminar is one way to prompt such discussion.
Even equipped with these strategies, however, it’s helpful to know how to start an engaging conversation with students. Based on the work of Nonye Alozie and Claire Mitchell (2014), William Ewens (1986), and Hale and City (2006), we’ve put together several easy approaches for beginning a class discussion.
• Start the discussion by posing a broad, open-ended, thematic question that has no obvious right or wrong answer but that genuinely puzzles students and will stimulate thought.
• Begin with a concrete, common experience; a newspaper story; a film; a slide; a demonstration; or a role play.
• Analyze a specific problem. Ask students to identify all possible aspects of the topic or issue under consideration.
• Be benignly disruptive. Start the discussion with a controversy by either causing disagreement among students over an issue or by stating objectively both sides of a controversial topic.
• Help students start to think about what they will learn, and help them access their prior knowledge and understanding of a topic.
• Come to a consensus on the rules for participation, listening, and acceptable ways of interacting. It is important to clarify that students are supposed to address each other with statements and questions rather than directing them to the teacher.
• Establish, or have students brainstorm, accepted criteria for evidence and ways of reasoning. Clarify how the evaluation of the learning and the process will work.
Consider a ninth-grade English teacher’s reflection of her lesson using discussion.
Our discussion lesson on Romeo and Juliet had a theme of decisions and consequences. This was the third time this year we had a full discussion lesson. I reviewed a few slides with students at the beginning of the lesson so they remember the rules, and I included the prompts for student discussions on the last slide. I’ve found that the students enjoy the discussion, though at first it is difficult to get them to speak up. Students using graphic organizers to take notes during their reading (such as the bubble maps on the characters in Romeo and Juliet) are more prepared and better able to discuss. Some students have complained that they would rather just talk and not have to cite their evidence in the text, but I have explained to them that this is English class, so citing from the text is the purpose—we’re not just here to discuss philosophy (although that can be part of it). I think this type of discussion is great for students to practice their critical thinking and communication skills.
Compared to one-way lecturing, discussion is an effective way to encourage greater levels of student participation. High-quality discussion also means that students have time to reflect and prepare thought-provoking comments.
Techniques for Improving a Discussion
Once the discussion has started, there are several techniques teachers can use to improve it. Here, we synthesize and present a number of practice tips to help facilitate classroom discussion (Alozie & Mitchell, 2014; Barton, 1995; Henning, McKeny, Foley, & Balong, 2012; van Drie & Dekker, 2013; Worsley, 1975). For instance, when introducing listening strategies to students, the teacher mentally prepares them to listen by encouraging them to consider the context of the upcoming discussion and to establish a purpose or goal for listening. The students stay in communication when another person is talking by actively signaling their listening engagement both nonverbally and verbally.
It’s important to note that because students usually need time to think before speaking, the teacher should wait until a student breaks the silence instead of rephrasing or asking a new question. Similarly, aggressive students tend to monopolize discussions, while teachers need to call on shy students. To avoid these scenarios, the teacher can ask an overly talkative student to help by remaining silent. In addition, it is usually easier for shy students to speak in small groups than large ones, and once students have spoken in small-group situations, they will be less reluctant to do so in a larger group. With shy students, teachers can provide cues, give hints, suggest strategies, or draw attention to salient features or particular points of interest to support students as they get into the discussion. Teachers should also assure students that there is no one right answer. Most students are accustomed to discussion situations in which there is a single correct answer or conclusion, and once they realize that there are multiple correct answers, they will be less timid about responding creatively.
Students need to feel that their opinions are valued. If a student makes an astute point that is ignored by the class, the teacher should point it out. Teachers should promote an appreciative atmosphere in the classroom; everyone—teachers and students alike—should value and really listen to what students say. Along those same lines, the discussions should be relevant to students’ lives and concerns. Teachers cannot and need not make everything seem immediately relevant, but whenever possible, they should apply the field of inquiry under discussion to everyday living.
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