Finding 1: Teachers need to put specific structures and systems in place to explicitly teach students how to have meaningful discussions about text.
So much of my learning has come from ECI 541: Content Area Reading. Vacca et al (2001) remind us that good discussions will not run by themselves (p. 159). Teachers need to be mindful of arranging the classroom to facilitate discussion, establish goals for discussion, focus the discussion, guide the discussion, and teach the students how to speak to one another (p. 160-161).
If teachers want their students to be engaged in meaningfully discussing text, they need to purposefully plan for discussion just the way they would plan a reading lesson. This means creating space and time for discussion and for teaching students how to:
A fishbowl discussion is a very effective method, I believe, for creating authentic and meaningful discussion. It allows students to identify what makes a solid discussion and then analyze it in their fellow classmates. I believe that the value of a fishbowl lies in the debrief afterward, when students critique the inner circle's discussion abilities and make class goals about how to improve discussion. An "in the moment" adaptation I used in the fishbowl was to use student facilitators in the inner circle. I was so proud of my students who jumped right into cold calling on one another and asking, "Can you build on that?" or "Can you go deeper?" or "Where did you find that in the text?" These are questions I frequently ask them, and they modeled after me. However, I also explicitly taught them how to use sentence starters to engage in discussion.
If teachers want their students to be engaged in meaningfully discussing text, they need to purposefully plan for discussion just the way they would plan a reading lesson. This means creating space and time for discussion and for teaching students how to:
- listen to one another
- respond to one another
- build off each other's answers
- prompt each other
- question each other
- ask for clarification
- encourage each other to go deeper
A fishbowl discussion is a very effective method, I believe, for creating authentic and meaningful discussion. It allows students to identify what makes a solid discussion and then analyze it in their fellow classmates. I believe that the value of a fishbowl lies in the debrief afterward, when students critique the inner circle's discussion abilities and make class goals about how to improve discussion. An "in the moment" adaptation I used in the fishbowl was to use student facilitators in the inner circle. I was so proud of my students who jumped right into cold calling on one another and asking, "Can you build on that?" or "Can you go deeper?" or "Where did you find that in the text?" These are questions I frequently ask them, and they modeled after me. However, I also explicitly taught them how to use sentence starters to engage in discussion.
Students engage in a fishbowl to discuss themes in the memoir The Other Wes Moore.