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​Student-Led Discussion: Setting up Success + What Does an Observer Do?

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Welcome back to our ongoing discussion series. If you missed the first two episodes, covering five types of discussion worth trying and introducing the Harkness method for student-led discussion, you might want to pause and go back to the last two episodes before continuing with this one.

Today we’re diving deep into student-led discussion, specifically setting up a structure that will let you be successful.

I’ll be sharing both highlights from what I learned at the Exeter Humanities Institute about helping students be successful – which, by the way, I couldn’t recommend more as a summer PD opportunity – and also, what I learned personally working with twenty-five different classes of students as their skills with the method evolved over the course of our year together.

You’ll walk away from this episode ready to run your first student-led discussion, whether you choose the full Harkness method or create your own twist on student-led discussion.

The Physical Set Up

One of the core elements of Harkness is that students need to be facing each other, whether it’s around a big oval table (as at Exeter) or with desks pulled to the edges of the classroom or tables grouped together to make a big rectangle, etc.

I’ve never had an actual Harkness table, but I’ve approximated one in four different classrooms and they all worked just great. It’s very hard to have a student-led discussion if the desks are facing towards you as the teacher, so your very first move in setting up your success is figuring out how you can move your seats, go outside, book a space, or whatever you need to do to create workable seating.

Telling The Community Story

When you introduce student-led discussion for the first time, I’d like to suggest a little game that I learned at the Exeter Humanities Institute. Bring in a beanbag and tell the class you’re going to tell a story together. You’ll toss the beanbag to the first student, who will start a story about a character on a journey. Then they’ll pass the beanbag on to the next person and the next, until everyone has told a part of the story. The last student will wrap up the story and bring the character home. Finally, they’ll pass it back to any student in the class, who will re-tell the story with help from the whole community as needed.

When the story is complete, and has been retold, the beanbag can come back to you. Now take a second to reflect, as a group, on how the experience is like a discussion.

Everyone participated, and told a part of the story that probably no one else would have thought of.

In order to tell a part of the story, students had to hear what came before.

In order to re-tell the story, students had to listen to all its parts.

Everyone needed to be pretty quiet and respectful throughout for the story to happen.

See the underlying metaphor here?

The power of this creative story is something you can return to throughout the year, when you’re reinforcing the positive elements everyone is working towards with your student-led discussions.

Creating a List of Discussion Goals

Next, I suggest you work on a list of qualities of a good discussion with your students (which will probably flow right out of what you’ve just talked about).

I invite a student to take notes as we throw out possibilities.

Usually, students are able to come up with almost everything I have in the back of mind, except for the idea of making eye contact with each other. So I always end up bringing that one up with a little joke. I stare deeply into the eyes of just one student and talk about how important it is to make eye contact with more than one person so that everyone feels equally valued. Invariably, that student gets super uncomfortable, everyone else is weirded out that I’m only talking to one of them, and I make my (joking) point effectively, that if they only look at me when they speak during a discussion, it seems like they only care about my reaction and everyone else feels left out.

If you’re happy with the student-created anchor chart, you can post that on your wall for the year. If you want larger print or colors, etc., you can turn it into a printed version. You can see examples of both below.

The Role of the Observer in Student-Led Discussion

The next key element is to set up the role of the observer, maybe the most important part of the structure of Harkness.

On any given day, the observer you choose will sit outside the circle and create a chart of the discussion.

The most common form of chart is just a simple oval with everyone’s names written around it where they are seated. At the basic level, the observer simply puts their pencil on the circle where the discussion starts, then draws a line to the next person who speaks, then the next, then the next. This form will show the volume of comments from each person, which is a place to start when it comes to finding a balance in the community.

As the year goes on, with your help (and often with their own ideas), observers will eventually chart more complex things.

Take a look at the circle charts on the left here. In many of them, you’ll see that the observer chose to mark a type of comment, putting a question mark next to the name of students who asked question, or a “T” to represent a text reference. In one chart, the observer changed color of marker with each new topic, so the class could see how long they were addressing each new question as it came up. (Maybe the observer felt the class was switching topics too often and not going deep, or that the class was going too deep and getting stuck on a topic for too long, and so chose to chart the patterns in order to test that theory and provide feedback to the class).

In the chart on the right, the observer focused on different types of comments, charting how often students made text references, asked questions, or made connections to other material or other people’s ideas.

There are so many ways for an observer to track a discussion, and they tend to become much more nuanced as the year goes on.

At the end of any discussion, the observer should report back to the class, letting the group know what they did well and giving one clear recommendation for improvement in the next discussion. The observer should never call out anyone by name, and should think of themselves as an encouraging coach (not a lecturer).

Provide Scaffolding with Discussion Warm-Ups

Now that you’ve got your room set up, the foundation laid, and the observer ready to go, there’s just one more puzzle piece I want to share today that helps your discussion run smoothly, and that’s the discussion warm-up.

Giving students a few minutes at the start to write down a question, look at a passage with a neighbor, hear 2 minutes of a podcast or Ted Talk and then write about its connection to a character, etc. will give them a helpful building block to launch from into the discussion.

Kicking off Student-Led Discussion

You’re about to go quiet, but you can make the last thing you say meaningful as you kick off your first student-led discussion.

Remind everyone to listen thoughtfully and add to what was said, ask follow up questions, introduce text, etc. based on the chart of good discussion elements you’ve now got up on your wall.

Remind them that you won’t jump in during the first pause, even when it gets awkward…

….Even if it gets really awkward.

That’s a chance for someone to raise a new topic or question.

Then invite someone to kick things off with an idea, question, or comment from the warm-up.

During the discussion, take great notes. Don’t jump in during awkward silence. Participate if they absolutely need you because they are falling down a false rabbit hole or saying something inappropriate, but in general give them a long time to self correct. 

When it feels like a good time to end the conversation, end it. Better a short, successful discussion at first than one that spirals down.

Remember, at the end, invite the observer to give one specific compliment and make one clear recommendation for improvement next time, without any specific names. Have the observer write down the recommendation on the chart and tape it to the wall in an area reserved for that class, so kids can look at it, see what they contributed, and note the evolution of their discussions over time as more and more charts go up on the wall, in order.

Building on your First Student-Led Discussion

Using student-led discussion is a commitment to a process. Doing this once a month or a couple times a year won’t give your students the time they need to learn about each other and master the form. I liked to use Harkness about twice a week in the classroom. At Exeter, where the form originated, they use it almost every day. Whatever is right for you, just make it a regular part of your class if you really want to make the form work.

When it’s time for your next discussion, follow the same routine, except begin by reminding everyone of the new goal based on the observer’s feedback. All the better if you ask the previous observer to remind everyone of that goal, and the new observer to keep that goal in mind as they make the day’s chart.

Which reminds me, over time, remember that you can work individually with the observer during the discussion warm-up to start charting more complex things. You can add “T” for text reference, “Q” for question, “I” for interruption as the first layer of increased complexity. Then brainstorm together on next levels of nuance. 

That’s all for now! In the next episode of our discussion series, we’ll be diving into two of the most common challenges to come up in student-led discussion – helping silent students get in, and helping discussion dominators make space for others.

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