Next up in our Fostering Student Led Discussion series… GET UNCOMFORTABLE! When trying to build a culture of student led discussion, you have to be ready for it to be uncomfortable. There will be awkward silences and you will want to jump in and start the conversation. As uncomfortable and as awkward as it is, you don’t want to rush to fill the silence…
- let the silence go
- repeat the question/ phrase in a different way
- you don’t want to give the answer
BUT, how can you prepare your students for discussion? You want to do as much preparation as possible so that there isn’t too much of an awkward silence.
- Give the question or the problem in advance for students to answer
- This helps all students prepare for discussion. It also gives an opportunity for students who are really shy and quiet to share their thinking. Now that they have work prepared, they will feel more COMFORTABLE to add to the discussion.
- Provide students with prompts to enter the discussion
- Sometimes students just don’t know what to say and having prompts provided to them may help them feel more COMFORTABLE to add to the discussion.
- Make sure the questions are open-ended
- For students to effectively participate in a discussion, the question should allow for more than one answer, perspective, and/or strategy.
In this series, we have talked a lot about whole group discussion to foster student led discussions. Come back next week for: Small Group Discussion!
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