This HLTP is leading a group discussion.
In a group discussion, the teacher and all of the students work on specific content together, using one another’s ideas as resources. The purposes of a discussion are to build collective knowledge and capability in relation to specific instructional goals and to allow students to practice listening, speaking, and interpreting. The teacher and a wide range of students contribute orally, listen actively, and respond to and learn from others’ contributions.
The first discussion is a debate-style discussion, planned out in a specific format. The second discussion is more closely aligned to the whole class collaboration in an analysis of a primary source.
The discussion below is in a debate format, moderated by me. I had the students read a few short scholarly paragraphs that argued the benefits and the consequences of homework. Then I had them group up based on whether they thought homework was more beneficial or harmful. I ended up with three students in the middle, but this provided a good middle ground in our discussion. These students had many things to say about homework and much of what was said was linked to evidence they had interacted with. Prior to opening up the discussion to the whole group, I had both sides collaborate with each other about what to say and how to say it. The clip I have linked below is only a brief excerpt of the discussion that happened. I do limit some students because of how often some of them were contributing or their group was dominating the discussion. Outside of these two things, I did not inhibit the conversation that was developing. I did call on students who were not talking very much to include more than half the class. I call on students who were quiet and redirected students who were too loud. I shut down side conversations that distracted from the main discussion that was happening. I also made sure to differentiate the gender that I called on to make sure we were having an equitable conversation.
Although I was worried when I picked the topic to be homework and had them base their opinions on scholarly sources, there was such a variety of information and a high level of motivation that this discussion would have lasted much longer than the fifteen minutes I had planned for. All of the students engaged in the discussion and although I did prompt certain perspectives to ensure a variety of different arguments, this discussion was mainly student lead.
This discussion is a part of my Student Learning Analysis where the objective was to help students hone the skills of civil discussion. Homework was one of the early discussion topics, although students wanted to continue to talk, moderation was a check on dominating the discussion. It was not their first discussion and there was a Powerpoint slide with instructions on how to have a civil discussion and the driving question, "Is homework beneficial or harmful?" on the board, so the students understood what was expected of them. I based this discussion skill-based activity around standards for constructing arguments, interpreting different points of view and arguments and analyzing evidence.
For this lesson, the students did a short reading about campaign ad techniques. We talked about them in depth and went over both non-political/corporate ads and campaign ads so that there was a plethora of examples for the students to connect to. After we went over the definitions and examples, I showed a series of campaign ads, starting from President Eisenhower's 1952 famous "I like Ike" ad. In this particular ad, there are many techniques being used for Eisenhower's campaign. It is arguable the most successful campaign advertisement since he won by landslide this election.After having an in-depth conversation about techniques, we dissected this famous advertisement as a class. The following class discussion is a good example of getting a range of ideas from nearly all of the students in the classroom during an informal class activity. I encourage all students to participate and call on students who were not as active as their peers. I tried to encourage girls to talk as this is a class with a majority of boys in it. I feel that sometimes the girls get lost in the noise, so I always make a point to create a safe and equitable learning environment. There are many different voices as we collaborate on this video. We were able to cover every campaign advertisement technique used in this video. Applying all that knowledge would have been improbable if the assignment had been individual. I like to encourage collaboration since learning is a social practice and it helps build skills necessary in and out of the classroom.