Group Discussion Format

[Najla Ondik]

Oneweek I brought my friend and artist Ivan Cash to participate. He loved the format so much, he decided that he needed to start a discussion group for his network of creative professionals. Since these artists lived in different cities, he had to host virtual discussion groups. They decided on a monthly format and after some experimentation, decided to remove the topic-based discussion so they could focus on sharing highs and lows, and give each member a chance to ask for feedback on a challenge. The group has now been running for over a year and has become another staple in my life.

With that, since a lot of folks are dipping their toes into virtual discussion groups, events, and breakouts for the first time, I wanted to offer some advice for facilitating virtual discussion groups from my experience, and called on some other experts to share their words of wisdom as well.

This can greatly impact the kind of experience that your group discussion has. Both are totally cool, and both are valuable. Obviously, bringing the same group together consistently over time will help those people form strong bonds and develop a community.

Who you bring to your group is critical. Is everyone there for the right reasons? Do they all have the same level of experience? Do you have a mix of people with something to teach and people who have a lot to learn?

Whatever the rules, make them clear up front. Not only does this communicate the rules, it also immediately lets your attendees know that you are the facilitator (definition of roles), and communicates to them that this will be a curated experience.

To start off a discussion, you may not want to open up with vulnerability. It can feel a bit aggressive. So start off with a simple, easy, and fun question that everyone can answer. This gets everyone to step up and feel like a participant in the discussion.

That said, not everyone follows that policy. Melissa Emler from Modern Learners has found that having everyone on mute can really stifle free-flowing conversation. In a small enough group, it can be really beneficial to keep everyone off mute.

At our CMX Summit birds-of-feather tables, we let a community volunteer facilitate a discussion and we provide them with guidance on how to be a great facilitator. We share the rules and format with them and make sure they feel prepared.

Basic Structure: Stations or posters are set up around the classroom, on the walls or on tables. Small groups of students travel from station to station together, performing some kind of task or responding to a prompt, either of which will result in a conversation.

Variations: When high school English teacher Sarah Brown Wessling introduced this strategy in the featured video (click Pinwheel Discussion above), she used it as a device for talking about literature, where each group represented a different author, plus one provocateur group. But in the comments that follow the video, Wessling adds that she also uses the strategy with non-fiction, where students represent authors of different non-fiction texts or are assigned to take on different perspectives about an issue.

Basic Structure: Students prepare by reading a text or group of texts and writing some higher-order discussion questions about the text. On seminar day, students sit in a circle and an introductory, open-ended question is posed by the teacher or student discussion leader. From there, students continue the conversation, prompting one another to support their claims with textual evidence. There is no particular order to how students speak, but they are encouraged to respectfully share the floor with others. Discussion is meant to happen naturally and students do not need to raise their hands to speak. This overview of Socratic Seminar from the website Facing History and Ourselves provides a list of appropriate questions, plus more information about how to prepare for a seminar.

Basic Structure: Students form two circles, one inside circle and one outside circle. Each student on the inside is paired with a student on the outside; they face each other. The teacher poses a question to the whole group and pairs discuss their responses with each other. Then the teacher signals students to rotate: Students on the outside circle move one space to the right so they are standing in front of a new person (or sitting, as they are in the video). Now the teacher poses a new question, and the process is repeated.

Basic Structure: Students begin in pairs, responding to a discussion question only with a single partner. After each person has had a chance to share their ideas, the pair joins another pair, creating a group of four. Pairs share their ideas with the pair they just joined. Next, groups of four join together to form groups of eight, and so on, until the whole class is joined up in one large discussion.

An oldie but a goodie, think-pair-share can be used any time you want to plug interactivity into a lesson: Simply have students think about their response to a question, form a pair with another person, discuss their response, then share it with the larger group. Because I feel this strategy has so many uses and can be way more powerful than we give it credit for, I devoted a whole post to think-pair-share; everything you need to know about it is right there.

Since writing this post, I have learned about two more discussion strategies that teachers are finding to be incredibly effective and powerful for getting students to talk, especially about books and other texts:

This protocol has students come up with their own Thoughts, lingering Questions, and Epiphanies from an assigned reading. Teachers who have used this method say it has generated some of the richest conversations they have ever heard from students!

These are some great strategies. Not a lot applies to the virtual classroom in science. The online, live classroom is similar to a discussion board. Students talk to each other as well as to the teacher. They can ask questions in the moment and not wait to raise their hand. They can ask privately to each other or the teacher. This is similar to the Backchannel discussion. The class activity is happening alongside the chat discussion.

The Teach-Okay is a great strategy and can apply to all kinds of classrooms. This is a great teach-reteach method that helps to identify in-the-moment misconceptions and provides students the opportunity to help each other in a very positive way.

Have you heard of the Harkness Discussion method? It has helped my ELLs develop critical thinking skills and strengthen their communication skills. Because language is a social experience, using the Harkness Discussion is one of the most effective methods to help ELLs develop their literacy skills.

Having a class discussion in Mathematics class can be challenging. Students who are not comfortable with Mathematics are not likely to speak up. If you force students to stand and deliver, it can lead to feelings of embarrassment, shame and unnecessary discomfort. So in my search to find new ways to have students discussing Mathematics in Mathematics class I happened upon this podcast.

Keep in mind that the Teach-Okay method can really apply to any classroom and any activity. If planned right, it can be fast and break up the monotony of the classroom. It will help those kids understand the black/white concepts and help break up misconceptions. You might be surprised what they still think, even after being told. Teaching HS science and biology never ceases and to amaze me.

I have a question about the Teach-Okay strategy. What happens in between the teacher teaching and the student teaching? How does the teacher know that the students are ready to teach their peers? Does the teacher do more than the basic checking for understanding?

Wanted to ask for your advice on a 40-student classroom. We face the challenge of engaging every student given the constraints of the class size and time. What would, in your opinion, be the best strategy for engaging a class of that size in meaningful discussion?

Hi Ian! Quite a few of these would work beautifully with a large class, because they offer many students the opportunity to talk at the same time, rather than waiting for one student to talk at a time. I would say Gallery Walk, Conver-Stations, Concentric Circles, and good old Think-Pair-Share will give lots of students a chance to have meaningful discussions.

Hi Jennifer, I am going to be going into my Student Teaching soon and then hopefully into a career teaching Math at the high school level and I really enjoyed reading all of the possibilities there are for alternative classroom management other than having the teacher be the focal point of the room. One of the strategies that I thought could be really interesting was to have Conver-Stations in a Math class where students could be in groups of 4-6 and, perhaps as a chapter review, each student could be assigned a different but related problem form that chapter. Then, after every rotation in Conver-Stations, each student has to teach their group the problem they have been assigned in order to better solidify their understanding of the problem. This sounds good as an aspiring teacher, but opinions from experienced teachers as to whether you think this may work would be very appreciated!

Jennifer You are creating a new zone of teacher education.

Are you familiar with ThinkTrix? The strategy gives students back their minds. I have a book with Kagan for teachers on ThinkTrix. Lynda Tredway is familiar with the strategy. Hope to connect with you. your Think Pair Share treatment with the responses was great.

Frank, I had not heard of ThinkTrix until right now. I just looked it up and have found the book. I will definitely put it on my list of things to learn more about. Thanks so much for mentioning it here!

Hello Jennifer Gonzalez

Thanks for the wonderful list of strategies!

As a teacher in Eklavya School Jalandhar, I had faced many problems in the classroom discussion. Your article helped me to improve our discussion and I will share this with a colleague.

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