In my foundational reading class today, I had a small group of students I was working with on building discussion skills. They are not accustomed to having academic discussions, and I was pretty sure we were starting from scratch. I showed them how good discussion questions allow for different answers and different opinions and that it’s okay to disagree as long as we do so disrespectfully. We talked about how boring life would be if we always agreed with each other and said the same things. This discussion was punctuated with “I’m hungry” and “Bruh, let me use your eraser,” and me reminding them to sit up and make eye contact. It was slow going.
Deep breaths. I pushed them to the next phase and posed a discussion question from the book we have been reading. After a few beats, one student shared a thought.
“Great! Can someone use one of the sentence starters to build onto what he just said?”
A few more beats, a scuffle over a pencil, reminders to sit up straight…
“I want to add onto what he said. I kind of disagree because…”
Yes! This is the stuff!
“Who else has an opinion to share?” I asked the group. We were on a roll.
Giggles, slouching, distracted. Finally, another student shared.
“I think you’re both kind of wrong because…” and he proceeded to use the same evidence from the book they had used but for the opposite stance.
It was messy and frustrating, but we have to start somewhere.
My Corner of the Village 