Small Group Scored Discussion: Beyond the Fishbowl, or, Everybody Reads, Everybody Talks, Everybody Learns

Jessica Young Oak Park and River Forest High School, Oak Park, Illinois
HISTORY TEACHERS are frequently frustrated in their efforts to promote class discussion. Class discussion is useful to deliver or reinforce content and to explore or share ideas. Yet teachers learn quickly that they cannot expect good discussion, especially good whole-class discussion, to take place when they want it to. Vociferous kids dominate discussion. Quiet kids decline to participate. Kids come to class unprepared. Every teacher has experienced that awful and apparently endless silence after posing a question, even an opinion question, to his or her classes. Teachers end up lecturing by default. It is especially frustrating when the teacher knows that the reading for the discussion is rich and interesting, yet somehow the kids do not see the places to play with the ideas or their implications. One approach to the problem of discussion favored in recent years has been the "fishbowl" style of monitored discussion. In this activity, a small group of students is assigned to discuss the assignment while the rest of the class watches and listens. The students who participate in the discussion are evaluated by their teacher according to some pre-announced criteria. The criteria address some combination of discussion skills and mastery of the content. In some variations the observing students judge the participants in the discussion as a technique to keep their attention. While some teachers report that students respond positively to this activity, informal reports from my students suggest that such a response is by no means universal. Students object to the "fishbowl" style because the student participants are always on the spot and the ones who are observing are easily bored, especially if the discussion is not particularly strong. Furthermore students do not like to judge or be judged by their peers. Participants fear being judged harshly for personal reasons and they already feel uncomfortable as the center of attention. Observers do not like to judge either. They are tempted to be extremely generous because they do not want to hurt their friends' grades and because they do not wish to be judged harshly when it is their turn. On the other hand, some are tempted to judge harshly because they dislike a participant. The "fishbowl" method poses disadvantages to the teacher as well. If only some of the class is participating, other activities must be devised to keep the observers engaged and not disruptive. Furthermore, those students will need a comparable activity to earn their points, requiring more time to complete the unit, or more record keeping to ensure that the observers get their chances in subsequent units. The problem is to create a student-friendly, teacher-friendly activity that results in prepared students, universal participation, and creative responses to the material. Small Group Scored Discussion offers a good solution to these problems. In Small 1

Group Scored Discussion every student in the class participates in a student-led discussion of a reading or collection of readings, the point of which is to engage with the ideas. One could certainly organize such a discussion for the purpose of delivering content but I prefer to use this activity to give students the opportunity to engage with the material and with each other. Such an approach also ensures that there is more opportunity for legitimate disagreement and interpretation. As a result, the quality of discussions is improved. Here is how I organize a Small Group Scored Discussion. I determine the length of the discussion according to the skills of the students. My Advanced Placement students and Honors students can talk productively for a full fifty-minute class period. My colleagues who teach Regular levels report success with fifteen-minute and thirtyminute discussions. The length you choose will determine how many points the discussion is worth towards a student's final grade, because it must be long enough to give each student a fair chance to earn his or her points while you are sampling the discussion of all the groups. You do not want the scored discussion to count for too many points because you need a fair chance to evaluate every student in a single class period. For a fifty-minute discussion in a class of about twenty-five students, for example, somewhere between ten and fifteen points has worked well for me. For each reading or collection of readings I provide a set of questions. Some of the questions are to ensure comprehension and highlight the most important points. Other questions, the ones that will provoke the best discussion, are open ended. I instruct the students to read, annotate and think about the readings with the questions in mind. Student leaders and group participants are encouraged to bring their own questions to the discussion as well. I have, however, made sure that they attend to the parts that I deem the most important, or the most fun, to discuss. I then pick the student leaders. This activity is a good opportunity for less vocal kids to take a leadership role, but over the course of the year almost everyone gets the opportunity to lead. One of my colleagues instructs all his students to prepare to lead the discussion and then announces the leaders on the day of the discussion. I give my leaders a short list of expectations. These expectations include eliciting participation from each member and moderating participation from more vocal members. I emphasize, however, that the student leaders are not responsible for teaching the content of the readings to their group members. The Small Group Scored Discussion is a collaborative enterprise in which the student leader is temporarily the first among equals. I also pick the groups. Groups range from three to five members, never more. A three-person group can sometimes be too few to sustain a rich discussion, depending on which students comprise the group. For a typical class there will be five or six groups of not more than five students each. I balance the groups for gender and loquacity. There are arguments for putting students of similar reticence or similar ability in the same group. The organizing principles behind these decisions are readily discerned by students and so I do not group by either of these methods. I do not want to stigmatize anyone. I try to insure that the students work with a large number of their classmates over the course of the year. For the discussion, students gather in their groups in various parts of the classroom and I walk around with a class list and listen. I score the quantity and quality of

participation by "sampling" the discussion in each group. Each student needs the assigned number of good contributions to earn his or her full points. Of course I do not let the students know when they have fulfilled their quotas. They keep on talking. As more and more students fulfill their quotas it is easier to attend to scoring the remaining students. Though it is not my practice, some forms of scored discussion use a rubric listing specific student behaviors but I find that it is faster and less distracting just to make tally marks next to the student's name upon hearing a good contribution. After the period set aside for discussion is over, the students can "debrief" the activity or report interesting parts of their discussions to the whole class. Students like the Small Group Scored Discussion. They frequently report that it is 10 "fun," and that they learn a lot, both from the readings and from each other. There are good reasons why the Small Group Scored Discussion is effective and pleasant. First, I choose readings that are inherently interesting and discussable. Good readings give students the chance to make connections, relate historical ideas to their own lives, disagree with each other, or be surprised about something. Second, the discussion questions are carefully prepared. Students do not always realize the implications of, or relationships between, facts and ideas. A teacher's discussion questions should help them see where there are openings to extrapolate, to interpret and to disagree. If you tell them what to look for, they will have a much better chance of finding it. Third, because my readings are good, the groups are kept small, and the activity is graded, kids are extremely likely to prepare. Good preparation enhances everyone's feeling of competence and chance for success. One may award student leaders with extra points, although it is not necessary to do so. If a teacher has chosen to designate leaders ahead of time, they will be even more likely to prepare because they have extra responsibilities, and have been publicly recognized as a leader. They probably will not want to let you or their classmates down. Finally, this method ensures that the exercise is positive and engaging for almost 11 every student the whole time. Everyone participates; no one watches. When students are busy they are not disruptive. Small Group Scored Discussion is relatively unpressured compared to other forms of public participation. Even reticent students usually feel comfortable talking with two or three of their classmates without the burden of officially "teaching" anyone anything and without fearing judgment from their peers. Carefully arranged, Small Group Scored Discussion is content rich, easy to organize and grade, and pleasant for students. When students are provided with engaging readings and useful guidance through the discussion questions that accompany them, it consistently results in well-prepared students talking steadily about some interesting question in history. Everybody reads, everybody talks, everybody learns. Appendix: Small Group Scored Discussion Materials WHAT I AM LISTENING AND LOOKING FOR The informal rubric for the Small Group Scored Discussion 1. Students commenting on what they liked, did not like, found exciting in the

readings. Students asking each other for clarification or explanation. Students building on each other's comments. Students disagreeing with each other. Students relating the larger issues of the readings to modern problems, literature or their own lives. 6. Students posing their own questions from the readings to the group. 7. Body language, hand movements, for instance, or leaning forward to make a point, indicate when students are engaged with each other. They alert me to head over to that group to hear what is going on. 2. 3. 4. 5. INSTRUCTIONS FOR SCORED DISCUSSION STUDENT LEADERS 1. Read aggressively the packet or packets and the accompanying discussion questions and think about them. 2. Add any questions of your own. 3. Your mission is to facilitate a 50-minute discussion in which all your group members participate actively. It should cover most of the important content of the packet or packets. 4. It's okay to let the discussion move to connections with other parts of history or contemporary society as long as it remains primarily focused on the packet ideas. 5. Your mission is NOT to 'teach' the packets. 6. You should elicit participation from reticent group members. You may even just come out and ask someone what he or she thinks about something. Remember, everyone needs active participation to earn his or her maximum score. 7. You should gently moderate the participation of vociferous group members so that no one dominates the discussion. 8. If there is more than one packet you may use your judgment to decide when to move from one to the next. If I care about how much time is spent on each, I promise to tell you.