Modelling collaborative discussions
Modelling effective discussions is vital to allow students to understand what a successful and productive group discussion looks like.
Use the challenge discussion questions to model this with the whole class or in a ‘fishbowl’ to demonstrate.
Here are some useful prompts you could suggest or display to explicitly teach effective language:
When you agree try
I agree because…
A part of the text that shows that is…
What you said is important because…
That matters because…
An example of that in the text is…
A new idea that gives me is…
When you want others to participate try
Does anyone have something to add?
When you disagree try
I disagree because…
I thought something different…
The way I see it is…
But I’m thinking…
I wonder…
I thought…because…
When you want to clarify try
In other words…
I have a question about what you said…
Why do you think that?
Assessing collaborative discussions
Once students are having independent discussions, get them to record and reflect as a group to assess their success.
Pose questions such as
Did everybody have a chance to contribute ideas?
Was one person speaking at a time?
Were you able to stay on one topic at a time?
How well were you able to use eye contact?
Rubrics
Some of these key collaboration skills are outlined in the challenge rubrics.
Continue to allow students to revisit the language prompts and success criteria while they work on their challenges.
Good resources
This blog post by Brookings outlines some useful strategies for explicitly teaching collaboration skills:
Collaboration (one of the 4Cs of 21st-century learning) is an important skill to prepare students for the future.