Creating Engaging Discussions

Creating Engaging Discussions
Author: Jennifer H. Herman
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 185
Release: 2023-07-03
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1000977161

Download Creating Engaging Discussions Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

If you have ever been apprehensive about initiating classroom discussion, fearing silences, the domination of a couple of speakers, superficial contributions, or off-topic remarks, this book provides strategies for creating a positive learning experience.Jennifer H. Herman and Linda B. Nilson demonstrate how to create the conditions to facilitate deep and meaningful learning as well as to assess the effectiveness of discussions. They identify, analyze, and solve common problems in both classroom and online discussions and in both small and large classes. They take a direct, practice-oriented approach that--in acknowledging common challenges--provides principles, guidance on design, examples of activities and techniques, and eight detailed case studies. These cases demonstrate successful approaches that faculty across disciplines and from a variety of institutions have adopted in their face-to-face, blended, or online courses at the undergraduate or graduate level. The case authors begin by describing the original pedagogical challenge they faced and explain how they addressed it and assessed the results of their innovation. They also offer practical recommendations to readers who may want to try their strategies. Intended for faculty, this book will be equally valuable for educational developers who can use this resource in their programs and private consultations. At the graduate level, this book can serve as a text or workshop resource in college teaching courses and teaching assistant development programs. The final chapter provides a set of resources and activities – including discussion questions on the case studies, writing prompts, and jigsaw formats – that are equally appropriate for individual study or for use in workshop environments. You’ll never again have to suffer such a profound silence that, as described by a contributor to the book, she could hear the crickets chirping outside.

Making Classroom Discussions Work

Making Classroom Discussions Work
Author: Jane C. Lo
Publisher: Teachers College Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2022
Genre: Education
ISBN: 080776664X

Download Making Classroom Discussions Work Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

For the past 2 decades, the field of social studies education has seen an increase in research on the use of discussions as an essential instructional technique. This book examines the importance of using quality dialogue as a tool to help students understand complex issues in social studies. This edited volume provides a collection of well-known, evidence-based discussion techniques, as well as classroom examples showing the methods in use. While using discussion as an instructional method is widely considered a best practice of civic learning, actual high-quality discussions are rare and notoriously difficult to facilitate. Making Classroom Discussions Work is designed to guide teacher educators and classroom teachers in facilitating equitable and productive discussions that will boost learning and democratic engagement. Book Features: Emphasizes the rationale for using discussion in social studies teaching. Collects strategies that have been proposed in disparate journal articles and books in one convenient volume. Presents research-based challenges and supports for conducting and assessing discussions in the social studies. Includes methods and tips to help teachers make discussions more equitable in their classrooms.

Next Steps with Academic Conversations

Next Steps with Academic Conversations
Author: Jeff Zwiers
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2023-10-10
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1003842801

Download Next Steps with Academic Conversations Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Dr. Jeff Zwiers, an educational researcher at Stanford University, has spent the last 15 years analyzing classroom conversations to see how they can be better used and improved in classroom settings. Teachers who have worked with him report significant growth in students’ engagement, content learning, language, creativity, and sense of agency. Zweirs introduced his initial vision for classroom conversations Academic Conversations: Classroom Talk that Fosters Critical Thinking and Content Understanding. His follow-up book, Next Steps with Academic Conversations: New Ideas for Improving Learning Through Classroom Talk , expands the first book with updated classroom strategies and practices. In this new version, teachers will discover: How to introduce buildable ideas and teach students how to develop and support them Equitable classroom discussions and how diverse backgrounds conversing can benefit social skills and emotional intelligence Highlights of new research-based theories on classroom conversation Ways to develop students' confidence in conversation and how classroom skills can apply to real world interactions This resource is the product of his extensive research, co-teaching, and collaborating with a wide range of educators. It was written for busy teachers who want a practical guide for strengthening the quality and quantity of productive conversations in their lessons.

The K-3 Guide to Academic Conversations

The K-3 Guide to Academic Conversations
Author: Jeff Zwiers
Publisher: Corwin Press
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2017-10-25
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1506340474

Download The K-3 Guide to Academic Conversations Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

“For thousands of years people have been using the skills we describe in this book to engage in conversations with others. What isn’t as prevalent, however, is instruction--especially in primary grades—in which we engage students in productive conversations about academic ideas. This book fills that very big need.” --Jeff Zwiers & Sara Hamerla Talk about content mastery . . . Primary teachers, you won’t want to miss this: if you’re looking for a single resource to foster purposeful content discussions and high-quality interpersonal engagement, then put Jeff Zwiers and Sara Hamerla’s K-3 Guide to Academic Conversations at the top of your reading list. Whether your students love to talk or not, all must be equipped with key conversation skills such as active listening, taking turns, posing, clarifying, supporting with examples, and arguing ideas. This ready resource comes packed with every imaginable tool you could need to make academic conversations part of your everyday teaching: Sample lesson plans and anchor charts Guidelines for creating effective prompts Applications across content areas, with corresponding assessments Rubrics and protocols for listening to student speech Transcripts of conversations and questions for reflection Companion website with video and downloadable resources Tens of thousands of students in the upper grades have reaped the benefits of academic conversations: high-quality face-to-face interactions, increased motivation, stronger collaborative argumentation skills, and better understanding and retention of content. The K-3 Guide to Academic Conversations is that resource for providing your primary students with the same powerful learning opportunities.

The Discussion Book

The Discussion Book
Author: Stephen D. Brookfield
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2015-12-29
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 111905091X

Download The Discussion Book Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Build teams, make better decisions, energize groups, and think out of the box Do you need a resource that you can pull out of your pocket to liven up meetings, trainings, professional development, and teaching? The fifty easily applied techniques in this timely manual spur creativity, stimulate energy, keep groups focused, and increase participation. Whether you're teaching classes, facilitating employee training, leading organizational or community meetings, furthering staff and professional development, guiding town halls, or working with congregations, The Discussion Book is your go-to guide for improving any group process. Each of the concrete techniques and exercises is clearly described with guidance on selection and implementation, as well as advice on which pitfalls to avoid. All of the techniques: Offer new ways to engage people and energize groups Get employees, students, colleagues, constituents, and community members to participate more fully in deliberative decision-making Encourage creativity and openness to new perspectives Increase collaboration and build cohesive teams Keep groups focused on important topics and hard-to-address issues Derived from the authors' decades of experience using these exercises with schools, colleges, corporations, the military, social movements, health care organizations, prisons, unions, non-profits, and elsewhere, The Discussion Book will help you guide discussions that matter.

Discussion as a Way of Teaching

Discussion as a Way of Teaching
Author: Stephen D. Brookfield
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2005-08-09
Genre: Education
ISBN:

Download Discussion as a Way of Teaching Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Thoroughly revised and updated, the second edition of the landmark book Discussion as a Way of Teaching shows how to plan, conduct, and assess classroom discussions. Stephen D. Brookfield and Stephen Preskill suggest exercises for starting discussions, strategies for maintaining their momentum, and ways to elicit diverse views and voices. The book also includes new exercises and material on the intersections between discussion and the encouragement of democracy in the classroom. This revised edition expands on the original and contains information on adapting discussion methods in online teaching, on using discussion to enhance democratic participation, and on the theoretical foundations for the discussion exercises described in the book. Throughout the book, Brookfield and Preskill clearly show how discussion can enliven classrooms, and they outline practical methods for ensuring that students will come to class prepared to discuss a topic. They also explain how to balance the voices of students and teachers, while still preserving the moral, political, and pedagogic integrity of discussion. Written for teachers, trainers, faculty administrators, professional developers, facilitators, and other educational leaders, Discussion as a Way of Teaching is a comprehensive volume that offers step-by-step guidance for everything from preparing students to participate in discussion to evaluating its meaning and effect. The chapters in this practical resource contain a wealth of helpful techniques, suggestions, and applications that can be adapted to a wide variety of discussion settings.

Creating Engaging Discussions

Creating Engaging Discussions
Author: Jennifer H. Herman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018
Genre: Classroom management
ISBN: 9781620365601

Download Creating Engaging Discussions Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Jennifer H. Herman and Linda B. Nilson demonstrate how to create the conditions to facilitate deep and meaningful learning as well as to assess the effectiveness of discussions. They identify, analyze, and solve common problems in both classroom and online discussions and in both small and large classes. They take a direct, practice-oriented approach that--in acknowledging common challenges--provides principles, guidance on design, examples of activities and techniques, and eight detailed case studies. These cases demonstrate successful approaches that faculty across disciplines and from a variety of institutions have adopted in their face-to-face, blended, or online courses at the undergraduate or graduate level. The case authors begin by describing the original pedagogical challenge they faced and explain how they addressed it and assessed the results of their innovation. They also offer practical recommendations to readers who may want to try their strategies.

Discussion as a Way of Teaching

Discussion as a Way of Teaching
Author: Stephen Brookfield
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education (UK)
Total Pages: 218
Release: 1999-01-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 033520161X

Download Discussion as a Way of Teaching Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

This book is written for all university and college teachers interested in experimenting with discussion methods in their classrooms. Discussion as a Way of Teaching is a book full of ideas, techniques, and usable suggestions on: * How to prepare students and teachers to participate in discussion * How to get discussions started * How to keep discussions going * How to ensure that teachers' and students' voices are kept in some sort of balance It considers the influence of factors of race, class and gender on discussion groups and argues that teachers need to intervene to prevent patterns of inequity present in the wider society automatically reproducing themselves inside the discussion-based classroom. It also grounds the evaluation of discussions in the multiple subjectivities of students' perceptions. An invaluable and helpful resource for university and college teachers who use, or are thinking of using, discussion approaches.

The Best Class You Never Taught

The Best Class You Never Taught
Author: Alexis Wiggins
Publisher: ASCD
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2017-09-27
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1416624686

Download The Best Class You Never Taught Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

The best classes have a life of their own, powered by student-led conversations that explore texts, ideas, and essential questions. In these classes, the teacher’s role shifts from star player to observer and coach as the students ▪ Think critically, ▪ Work collaboratively, ▪ Participate fully, ▪ Behave ethically, ▪ Ask and answer high-level questions, ▪ Support their ideas with evidence, and ▪ Evaluate and assess their own work. The Spider Web Discussion is a simple technique that puts this kind of class within every teacher’s reach. The name comes from the weblike diagram the observer makes to record interactions as students actively participate in the discussion, lead and support one another’s learning, and build community. It’s proven to work across all subject areas and with all ages, and you only need a little know-how, a rubric, and paper and pencil to get started. As students practice Spider Web Discussion, they become stronger communicators, more empathetic teammates, better problem solvers, and more independent learners—college and career ready skills that serve them well in the classroom and beyond. Educator Alexis Wiggins provides a step-by-step guide for the implementation of Spider Web Discussion, covering everything from introducing the technique to creating rubrics for discussion self-assessment to the nuts-and-bolts of charting the conversations and using the data collected for formative assessment. She also shares troubleshooting tips, ideas for assessment and group grading, and the experiences of real teachers and students who use the technique to develop and share content knowledge in a way that’s both revolutionary and truly inspiring.

Teaching at Its Best

Teaching at Its Best
Author: Linda B. Nilson
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2010-04-20
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0470612363

Download Teaching at Its Best Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Teaching at Its Best This third edition of the best-selling handbook offers faculty at all levels an essential toolbox of hundreds of practical teaching techniques, formats, classroom activities, and exercises, all of which can be implemented immediately. This thoroughly revised edition includes the newest portrait of the Millennial student; current research from cognitive psychology; a focus on outcomes maps; the latest legal options on copyright issues; and how to best use new technology including wikis, blogs, podcasts, vodcasts, and clickers. Entirely new chapters include subjects such as matching teaching methods with learning outcomes, inquiry-guided learning, and using visuals to teach, and new sections address Felder and Silverman's Index of Learning Styles, SCALE-UP classrooms, multiple true-false test items, and much more. Praise for the Third Edition of Teaching at Its BestEveryone veterans as well as novices will profit from reading Teaching at Its Best, for it provides both theory and practical suggestions for handling all of the problems one encounters in teaching classes varying in size, ability, and motivation." Wilbert McKeachie, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, and coauthor, McKeachie's Teaching TipsThis new edition of Dr. Nilson's book, with its completely updated material and several new topics, is an even more powerful collection of ideas and tools than the last. What a great resource, especially for beginning teachers but also for us veterans!" L. Dee Fink, author, Creating Significant Learning ExperiencesThis third edition of Teaching at Its Best is successful at weaving the latest research on teaching and learning into what was already a thorough exploration of each topic. New information on how we learn, how students develop, and innovations in instructional strategies complement the solid foundation established in the first two editions." Marilla D. Svinicki, Department of Psychology, The University of Texas, Austin, and coauthor, McKeachie's Teaching Tips