Blog Two

The Cult of Pedagogy’s podcast/article ‘The Big List of Class Discussion Strategies’ was very eye-opening to me. Jennifer began by talking about how when she has student teachers she tells them to revise their lessons when they say “we will discuss” or “class discussion”. She pointed out that this just leads to the teacher asking questions and the same few kids answering, which isn’t actually a class discussion, it is just a conversation with a few students.

After I heard her say this I reflected on it, and I too am guilty of this. In every lesson I have taught up to this point I did exactly that – ask questions that the same few students answered, and did not evoke deeper thinking. This was a huge AHA moment for me, and made me realize that I have to improve my own practices to better reach all of my students and evoke a deeper level of thinking. This connects to the eleventh UVIC Teacher Competency, which speaks of the importance of implementing pedagogically sound, and contextually appropriate instructional strategies and approaches to engage all students in relevant and personalized learning.

Since listening to this podcast, I have created a unit plan for English Language Arts seven, in which I have included three of the strategies she shared: snowball discussion, concentric circles, and think, pair, share. I chose to stick to just three of them for this unit, to allow me to truly learn them and to not overwhelm myself or my students while teaching a new activity as well as content. I am planning on teaching this unit during my practicum and I cannot wait to use these strategies and see the difference between these and a typical ‘class discussion’.

I am very excited to continue to use these strategies and become more comfortable with each of them as my teaching experience increases, and I implement more of them into my lessons. I have bookmarked the page because I truly believe that this shift in my thinking about classroom discussions will help to me engage all learners!