The Mechanics of In-Class Discussion

Follow-Up Questions

Ian Wilkinson defines authentic follow-up as "questions that the teacher is genuinely interested in exploring and that evoke a variety of responses from students (in other words, the answer is not pre-specified)." Good follow-up questions expand the conversation and require students to:

• Clarify their answers: Tell me more about that.
• Support their answers: What about the reading made you think that ___?
• Argue: Convince us that __.
• Examine their responses more fully: In what other context does that idea play out?
• Consider different perspectives: What would you say to someone who thought ___?
• Predict: What do you think that we will discover in the next chapter?
• Hypothesize: How would handle a situation like ___?
• Decide: So, this leads to you to what conclusions?
• Compare: How is your answer different or the same from others?
• Generalize: What did you discover?

Avoid the Following

• Trick questions
• Inadequate wait time (less than 3-5 seconds)
• Lectures disguised as questions
• Sarcasm
• Questions with obvious answers
• Asking multiple questions before allowing response
• Rhetorical questions
• Yes or no questions

Set Parameters

Many learners need to be taught how to engage in an academic dialogue -- particularly ELL/ESL students. Provide conversation stems on a poster board or notecards:

• "Could you tell me more about why ___?"
• "Let me explain why I see that differently."
• "Have you considered ___?"
• "What we both agree on is ___."

A Handy Playbook

Lastly, I've provided a general checklist of items to consider when planning a discussion:

• Room layout (ensure discussants can see each other)
• Clarify objectives, purpose, relevance and ground rules
• Front-load rehearsal activities:
  • Think-pair-share
  • Quickwrite
  • Survey questions
  • Mindmaps
  • Text annotation
• Engage students with the first question
  • 10 Ways to Start a Discussion
• Vary the whole class format:
  • Fishbowl
  • Future's Wheel
  • Socratic Seminar
  • Round Table
  • Case Study
• Conduct formative assessment with these questions:
  1. What conclusions have we drawn so far?
  2. What part of our discussion is the most confusing?
  3. What questions should we focus on next?

• Plan for exigencies
  • Strategize how you will deal with students who dominate, are off topic, inaccurate or unresponsive?
  • Managing Hot Moments in the Classroom
• Plan how you will end the conversation
  • See Carnegie Mellon's section on closure
  • Summarization techniques
  • The One-Minute Paper
• Assess the conversation with these discussant rubrics:
  • Example 1
  • Example 2