The Schoenblog

My students are pretty good at answering questions, but they aren’t always great at asking them. Questioning is a hard skill, involving critical thinking, creativity, and inquiry. Simply put, we don’t do enough to teach students how to ask good questions. At least I don’t.

After watching groups of students awkwardly flail in silence in lieu of meaningful Socratic discussion and questioning, I realized this dilemma: how can we expect student to ask high level questions to promote critical thinking and discussion when school prepares them for the opposite? Too often, our system prepares students to answer more than ask and to consume instead of create.

At the end of every unit of learning this year, I ask my students to self-assess and reflect. I’ve explored different self-assessment protocols and strategies with my students, and am still trying to find out what works best for me and my classes.

At the end of our unit focusing on the graphic novel Maus II by Art Spiegelman and different forms of discussion, students completed a Google Form. This form asked students to assess their work in live class participation, online discussions, and in their projects. They selected a percentage of success and then supported their choices in writing.

In this work, students were asked:

Last week, I reflected on promoting student voice by incorporating technology in discussion. By blending discussion with technology, we provide students with more opportunities to engage with, process, and to think about their learning. In Blending Discussion: Using Technology to Enhance Student Voice and Audience, I also discussed my desire to get some students more actively involved in the face-to-face learning, too.

Since then, my English 10 students have completed a week of reading, analysis, and discussion on Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel, Maus II. We examined the book through whole class discussions, backchanneling, group discussions, fishbowl, and a Socratic Seminar. And it went pretty well. As always, there are things to improve, chiefly the active engagement of some reluctant students.

In this post, I explore Google Communities, Today’s Meet, and Twitter as three powerful tools for blending discussion with a brief look into our classroom use. In upcoming posts, I want to try out some new tools and explore students’ reflection on the experience.

Google Communities

I love Google Communities. For my classes, our Communities are the perfect mix of message board, social media, and an artifact of learning. The service is only open to students 13 years or older, but many high schools don’t allow access to students, in my experience. And those schools are missing out on a powerful tool.

I’ve written about using Communities with students, so read articles like Building and Extending Student Knowledge with Google Communities for more information. You can also check out all of my posts related to Communities here.



As the screenshot above shows, we used Communities to post a brief response related to annotations of Maus chapter 2. Students made connections between Spiegelman’s anthropomorphic characters and the story’s themes and setting. You can do similar activities on most any online platform, but I love the +1 and commenting features that the Community offers. My students clicked +1 on the most interesting topics to select the responses that would spark our class discussions.

Through these Community posts, students were able to write, read, and share ideas purposefully with technology so that they were better prepared to engage in the full class discussion that followed.

Today’s Meet

Today’s Meet is a powerful tool for backchannels and conversations. Students can log in with Google accounts, and teachers can open a secure chat room for free for up to a year. In this activity, students discussed the text both online through Today’s Meet and live in class in a fishbowl discussion.

In English 10, we are backchannelling with @TodaysMeet to discuss #Maus #OssiningPride #SchoenTell pic.twitter.com/j6Gl7CSaEq

— Adam Schoenbart (@MrSchoenbart) October 27, 2016

While an inner circle of five students responded to a question, the other students in the outer circle, responded in the chat room. They answered the question, followed up on what they heard, and made more connections to the text. We rotated groups every five minutes, and as students entered the inner circle, they left their Chromebooks behind. All you need on the inner circle is a book and a voice. Over time, I’ve also learned the importance of giving students time to prep and prepare for the discussion; five minutes of wait time before starting to review questions and annotations can do wonders to promote meaningful discussion.

Twitter

Twitter is a versatile tool and has such power and potential in education. One of my favorite posts is my Why I Want My Students Using Social Media series, where I explore using Twitter to connect and crowdsource, to build community, and to share our awesome.

Last year, I had some real success with social media, and our backchanneling work was even featured on CNN (see #SchoenTell on #CNN: Promoting Student Voice & Audience With Social Media). This year, it’s been more of a slow burn.

I teach more freshman, and we simply need more time to develop norms and routines with our online spaces. Still, we’re starting to branch out. My sophomores will be using Twitter this weekend to share their final thoughts about Maus II. In doing so, we open our discussion up beyond the classroom walls and begin to interact with the world around us.

I didn't really like how Maus ended because I wanted to read more about Anja's story. #schoentell pic.twitter.com/JNOj0d0EEg

— Lauren Herran (@lauren_herran) December 10, 2015

Student Voice, Audience, and Choice

I love the ideas we’ve explored lately in promoting student voice and choice. Now I want to work more on bringing choice into our classroom. I also want to explore some new tools--Verso and Answer Garden are often recommended. These are just some of the ideas I’ll look forward to in my classroom and on the Schoenblog coming soon.

What are you favorite blended learning tools? How do you promote active learning and engagement in class discussions? Share in the comments or on Twitter @MrSchoenbart.

Today we began a week of discussion and analysis of Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel, Maus II. In the past, I’ve broken the text down for students with a chapter a week to complement our study of Elie Wiesel’s Night. This year, I decided it was time to change things up--and I was excited. We would focus on discussion and critical thinking and devour the text in a week, with a chapter a day. I was excited to explore a high-interest text with a focus on students’ voices and ideas.

But after ten minutes of discussion--of pretty strong discussion--I noticed that the same handful of voices were all I heard. Eight awesome students shared high level observations, discussed symbolism, and deconstructed the comic book form. Three or four more jumped in from time to time, and a small group just didn’t say a word. And today, I let that happen. I made it okay to sit back and listen. After all, some of these students were clearly engaged--I saw note taking, head nodding, and the wheels of critical thinking turning. But not everyone.

And while public speaking, discussion, and clear communication is essential in all classes, I think we need to find ways to engage students on multiple levels. That’s where technology can be an asset: to amplify every student’s voice for an audience. I value the traditional discussion, but also see the importance in teaching students how to have meaningful discussion in online spaces to complement and to supplement face-to-face conversation.