This is the first in what I hope will be a series of short blog posts that will focus on a single issue or topic in a classroom and then provide easy to implement pedagogical practices that will help your students.
"Teaching your students how to participate in class discussions"
Over the years I've heard a lot from teachers and professors that they do not know what to do when students either 1. do not do the reading or 2. do not participate in class
This post will present some ideas on how you can improve this in your class. I am a literature professor, so my examples are from there, but they apply to any content area where reading is done.
1. Students do not do the reading.
First, ask why. Was the reading large? Did they run out of time? Did they find the content or jargon daunting? Once you know the WHY you can figure out a way to fix. When my students read Beloved, they were unprepared to discuss Part I, which is 190+ pages. I did two things. First, for our next book I put page numbers not just parts/sections, so they could "see" how much they had to do, and second, I gave suggestions about breaking up reading- scheduling time every day, starting the week before, etc.
Second, do not shame students. There can be a variety of reasons why students did not complete the readings and none of them are improve with shaming them about it.
Too often a teacher's response is snarky, mean, and punitive. The only purpose this serves is to show your students how awful you are. That you do not care about them, the barriers and struggles they face. It signals that you are not interested in helping them learn how to do this, or what difficulties they had.
That day my students did not all do the reading I told them that I always prepared a lecture to cover the class time but they would see that class was more interesting and engaging when it focused on what they wanted to talk about.
Third, ask yourself what the pedagogical reason is for assigning that reading. If you assigned an article or short piece because it contains theoretical concepts that are important for your content area then what is important is that they learn those things. So as soon as you can see that students did not do the reading stop what you're doing, tell them you're going to give them time to. Break them into groups, assign sections, have them Jigsaw it (each group reads a section, identifies key ideas, then presents out to the class). Or give them class time to read and assign a short exit ticket response when they leave to check for comprehension- what was one thing that struck you about the reading? What was one thing you didn't understand? What questions did you have?
2. Students don't know how to participate in a class discussion.
First, have you taught them how?
I always make sure my students have copies of texts (hard or electronic) that are theirs so that they can annotate the text. While I don't have them number paragraphs (we just refer to page numbers), I do like the easy concept of
"Marking the Text" because I like presenting to students the idea of ACTIVELY reading the text.
- So I tell them to circle words they don't know
- Highlight or underline what they think is important
- Ask questions
- Make comments
I also encourage them to think of this process as interacting with the text, the author, and the ideas. For larger pieces, like books, I encourage them to at the end of chapters or sections write the main ideas on a Post-It and then stick it at the end.
I teach my students that this is just the first step, the prep work. Next, I tell them before class to review their annotations. They are looking for the lines/quotes, big ideas, patterns they notice. I tell them to write these in their notebooks (with page numbers). These are the things they want to discuss in class.
Once we're in class, students often get excited (or sometimes are covering lack of prep) and start summarizing, "I can't remember where this was but..." or "She says..." I always stop them and ask them where they are in the text. If they have prepped, they can give us the page number so we're always grounded in the text. If they haven't, I tell them to find it and we'll circle back. This ensures that students all have the same context for conversations but it also shows students why the work is important.
Some of my class discussions are whole group, certainly at the beginning of the semester, or to start out a new novel, but once the students have these skills, I spend more time having them talk to each other.
Since Beloved was our first novel in class but I wanted them to start getting used to talking to each other,
I made a worksheet that guided them through a response. I provided the big ideas, and they had to discuss, and respond to HOW they were seen in the book. For our next book discussion I'll pull back on this while also using the formula. So they'll identify the big ideas, they'll track how they are seen in the book, always with an emphasis on textual evidence, citing specific parts, not making generalized statements. This means that when they go to work on responses or papers, they have the ground work for these assignments.
I've provided models for what I'm looking for, and given the students time and support to then follow those models, but also revise them for what works for them.
