In continuing our study of Jeff Zwiers Building
Academic Language, this month we will focus on how to create
environments where students can develop their academic language through whole
class discussions.
To start with, Zwiers
points out how important it is to get students involved in classes. And
though this has been generally accepted by the community in theory, in practice
this does not seem to be the case. Zwiers offers research that found 85%
of our class time today is devoted to lecture, recitation and seatwork.
Part of the problem stems from the very structure of our environments,
where we try to “cover” content and material within a given timeline.
Class discussions take time, and they often aren’t easy to control so
they might shoot off into unrelated tangents. Teachers aren’t always
comfortable with the uncertainty that comes with open ended classroom dialogue,
preferring to ask quick, low-level questions versus deeper, more thought
provoking ones. Research also indicates that teachers employ implicit
bias when feeding questions to students, generally hand picking low, level
questions for English Language Learners-- for example-- which assumes that
these students don’t have the capacity to understand higher thinking.
Here are some guidelines for
creating a better space for classroom discussion, some of them taken from Zwiers,
and some taken from earlier AVReading Newsletters.
Find ways to engage
all students. Sharroky Hollie suggests that the vast majority of our
questions should be involuntary, where teachers call on students versus
voluntary where teachers allow students to choose to speak on their own.
Finding a way to randomize and track the students you call on is helpful
and it ensures an equitable and fair system for calling on students, as well as
ensuring that the quieter students will-- at least occasionally-- get called
upon to speak. However, these systems of calling out students can
also have a chilling effect. Sometimes classes become almost too
dependent on the randomizing process and instead wait to be called on. So
having some variety in your approaches is helpful.
Second, we need to shift the culture of our
classrooms. Zwiers states that too much of our classroom culture is
dependent on “pleasing the teacher”. Too often, students grow to expect
positive affirmation from teachers when they make comments. A better
model is one that is perhaps more de-centralized. Students talk to the class,
not to the teacher. They seek to communicate, to inform, and to persuade their
peers versus attain the approval of the instructor. It also means that
there is a shift away from questions or structures within the class that make
the discussion or dialogue feel like it is competitive in nature. This can
happen, again, when the questions
being asked come off as educational “trivial pursuit” or “Jeopardy,” when the
prompts should perhaps offer students the chance to explore and develop their
thoughts.
Finally,
we can transform the actual act of group discussions by becoming more creative
with how we hold them. This means moving more freely between the levels
of interaction; reflection, paired conversation, small groups, whole groups and
back again. This also could mean using manipulatives. For example, give
students yarn, twine, and small blocks and ask them to construct a
representation of an event, idea, or process. Then ask the groups to
share out to the larger group, to listen to another group and to provide
feedback about similarities and differences in the way they expressed the
event, idea or process. Zwiers also talks about using intentional errors,
discrepancies and miscues to motivate or engage students to speak and
providing “target terms” for student responses. In other words,
show them two to four phrases or terms you want them to employ while
formulating their ideas to the class.
Class discussions are a tricky
business. Think of how often you have facilitated a truly remarkable
conversation in one period, only to have that same conversation fall very flat
the next hour. So much of it depends, as Zwiers states, on little nudges
that we give throughout the discussions. These nudges could be well
placed questions, re-direction, or even carefully worded prompts that inspire
students to respond to one another versus to talk with the teacher. Like
many elements of our job, creating the proper atmosphere for a class discussion
takes a lot of work and maintenance. But, in the end, doing so can
greatly enhance the learning opportunities of all students.
See the full newsletter here.
