In my classroom I see mostly recitation type interactions between the class and teacher. I see my mentor teacher ask a lot of recitation type questions as she completes social studies lessons. She will ask students to define words, or asks questions from the book that have specific answers she is looking for. The conversation is mainly conducted by her asking questions and choosing students. As Wienstein Romano suggests pulling sticks or marking a seating chart to ensure every student gets chosen to talk, my mentor teacher tends to pick on the same few students willing to raise their hand in class. I also see some interaction each day during the weather report and morning helper. During this time a student or two gets to come to the board in order to do their daily weather or morning question task. Then the class has chances to ask questions and participate. During this time the student becomes responsible for becoming the "facilitator" in a recitation. For example: the weather students will ask the class to guess what today's temperature is in Celsius. This does not allow for the students to engage in higher level thinking.
I think that in order to get my students to begin engaging in meaningful discussions it would be best to start out by putting them in groups. I would group them with students varying academically and varying personalities ( I wouldn't put all the shy ones in one group.) In these small groups I would have them begin discussions using discussion prompts and questions. I would also give the students roles in their discussion to help the students stay on track and thinking. I know that all of the students have many things to say and have the social skills to actively engage in discussion. I think starting them off in a smaller group would help them to gain confidence in sharing their ideas, feelings, and connections, before discussing as a whole group.
The learning resources that are available in my classroom are their poetry and writing journals. I have not seen them all read the same book, but I could collect a passage for them to read and discuss. I think their journals would be great places to start with discussion.
There are a few specific students in my class that rarely participate. I think that in order to help them participate in class is to get them to pay attention. I like the idea of pulling sticks because students never know when they could get called on so they are encouraged to pay attention. I also enjoyed the idea of having students write their response even if they get their stick pulled. I think that incorporating social justice discussions, like in the Moller article would help students to participate. I enjoyed how she had personal conversations with students involving their experiences, like the students who shared knowledge about the Klu Klux Klan, and scaffold the student to discussing it in his group on his own. I think doing this with my struggling students would be really helpful to them in order to validate their thoughts.
Finally, I think that holding back as a teacher can help me to encourage all students to participate. In order to have a proper discussion it is important that the students are encouraging others to talk and the teacher is not the one asking questions. I think it will be very hard for me to bite my tongue as students discuss away. I think that by working is smaller groups will help to encourage my students to have a discussion amongst themselves and not between myself and the students. This way I can interject when necessary, and listen to each groups ideas.
The way your class works sounds similar to mine. My classes also does the weather and calendar thing in the morning but they are not really participating like it sounds like your class does. In my classroom, the teacher goes through the date and has the children help her write out the date (Today is January 29, 2013) and they tell her what they think the weather is and the teacher graphs it. It would be interesting to see if a child or two would be able to facilitate this part of the day sense they have watched the teacher do this all year.
ReplyDeleteI also have a few children who do not participate in large group discussions but I think pulling sticks would not work as well in my classroom. There are several students that will participate and answer questions when sitting with their table group or asked a question face to face by a teacher but will not participate in whole class discussions. It seems as though pulling sticks would make these children uncomfortable. I think in order all my class participating, having them each write their answer on a white board and hold them up would be a better option when shy children are involved. Another option would be to give this child a warning ahead of time and "pick" their stick to answer a specific question.