Ways to Start a Discussion
There are many ways to start a classroom discussion. Murphy et al. (2009) review nine such approaches (the effect sizes of which can be seen in table 1.1).
First is collaborative reasoning. In this strategy,
the teacher poses a central question deliberately chosen to evoke varying points of view. Students adopt a position on the issue and generate reasons that support their position. Using the text, as well as personal experiences and background knowledge, students proceed to evaluate reasons, to consider alternative points of view, and to challenge the arguments of others. (Murphy et al., 2009, p. 742)
Table 1.1: Effect Sizes of Discussion Approaches
Text-Explicit Comprehension: Comprehension requiring information that is explicitly stated, usually within a sentence
Text-Implicit Comprehension: Comprehension requiring integration of information across sentences, paragraphs, or pages
Scriptally Implicit Comprehension: Comprehension requiring considerable use of prior knowledge in combination with information in text
Critical Thinking and Reasoning: Reasoned, reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do, drawing inferences or conclusions
Argumentations: Taking a position on an issue and arguing for that position on the basis of evidence
Metacognition: Students’ understanding of their own thinking
Source: Murphy et al., 2009.
Next is philosophy for children, in which students share reading, listening, or viewing with their teacher and devise their own questions. They choose one question that interests them, and with the teacher’s help, discuss it together. The teacher encourages students to welcome the diversity of initial views and then involves them in questioning assumptions, developing opinions with supporting reasons, analyzing significant concepts, and applying good reasoning and judgment.
Third is the Paideia seminar. This strategy fosters critical and creative thinking through seminar dialogue, intellectual coaching, and mastery of information. It usually involves three steps: (1) a preseminar content preparation session, (2) a seminar to discuss the ideas, and (3) a postseminar process to assess participation and application of ideas.
Fourth is questioning the author, which aims to engage students deeply in the process of deriving meaning from text and in questioning the author’s position as an expert. The teacher encourages students to pose queries to the author while reading a given text, rather than after reading. The queries may look like “What is the author trying to say?” “Why does the author use the following phrase?” or “Does the author explain this clearly?”
Fifth is instructional conversation. This strategy resembles a paradox. It is instructional and aims to promote learning but is also conversational in quality, with natural and spontaneous language interactions free from the didactic language normally used in teaching. In an instructional conversation, the teacher listens carefully, makes guesses about students’ intended meanings, and adjusts responses to help students better construct knowledge.
Sixth is junior great books. Students work with complex ideas and rigorous texts to develop 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