Improving Classroom Discussions

“When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer, physicist, biologist, and artist

“As Samuel Johnson purportedly wrote, “The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.”
― Adam M. Grant, Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success

I've been listening to Give And Take while I take my dog for walks and am driving. In the book Adam Grant explains the three different types of how we interact with others and shows you why being a giver is, contrary to popular belief, the best way to success in business and life. In one chapter he explains that givers are often more successful as lawyers and salespeople because rather than pushing their ideas on others they lead with empathy and pose questions to better understand the situation and let others draw their own conclusions. As teachers, we are "selling" ideas, concepts and skills. Posing questions can lead our students to see the relevance and make their choice to "buy" what we are selling. Great classroom discussions provide the opportunities for our students to "buy" and "sell" their ideas.

POWERFUL CLASSROOM DISCUSSIONS

Here are 4 Questioning Strategies For Effective & Thoughtful Teaching. I love the ABC idea!

In this video by Michael Matera, a teacher at University School of Milwaukee, you can learn in 10 minutes how to build strong, rich, classroom discussions that are run by students. Watch it here: https://youtu.be/ZUKzf1ICHwE

Alexis Wiggins Book: https://amzn.to/2IwNouP Spider Web Organizer: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1QVn...

Comments

Life grows when...

I am currently reading Art as Experience by John Dewey for an Art History course that I am taking. As you know, Dewey is a revered education psychology contributor. He writes, "Life itself consists of phases in which the organism falls out of step with the march of surrounding things and then recovers unison with it--either through effort or by some happy change. And, in a growing life, the recovery is never mere return to a prior state, for it is enriched by the state of disparity and resistance through which it has successfully passed. If the gap between organism and environment is too wide, the creature dies. If its activity is not enhanced by the temporary alienation, it merely subsists. Life grows when a temporary falling out is a transition to a more extensive balance of the energies of the organism with those of the conditions under which it lives" (13). I have been contemplating a few of Dewey's ideas for awhile now. Here are my app...

Infographics: An Easy Way to Increase Visuals in the Classroom At the Wisconsin Association of Teachers of Foreign Languages conference this past weekend, one of the sessions was about the use of infographics in the classroom. Infographics visually organize information about a topic. Doing a simple internet search for infographics about an idea (world religions, periodic table, derivatives) provides you with a variety of charts and pictures that can help students look at information in a new way. If none of the results give you what you were looking for, you can also create your own on a number of different sites. Infogr.am and Piktochart are two popular ones. Piktochart also has an option that you can use to break down the infographic in visual chunks as an alternative presentational tool for a PowerPoint. You could also have your students use an infographic as an alternative to making the classic poster. As with all material you bring into the classroom, review info...

The More I Lecture, the Less I Know They Understand

Josh S. sent me this interesting article regarding lecturing in a classroom. It is really common to hear that lecturing is bad, and that hands-on inquiry is good. However, this article puts the debate in a new light. It isn't that lecturing is always bad. Sometimes it may be good. However, lecturing prohibits the teacher from truly knowing what the students know.

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