Promoting Active Participation
The students were provided with a prompt and then asked to separate themselves into one of the four corners of the classroom based on their response. Even though the students physically moved around the classroom, the subsequent discussion was lacking. I wanted students to think critically about the prompt, but they weren’t moving past the surface. I wanted to make sure that the students had the space to properly analyze the question, but I didn’t know how to both give them the space and encourage them to participate in the discussion.
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Jared
11th Grade
Psychology
Third Year Teaching
- What is the teacher's dilemma? Consider the teacher's goals, possible actions, beliefs about the situation and the students, and their own self-perceptions.
- Complete or modify the following sentence in a way that captures the teacher's central tension in the situation: "While on the one hand, the teacher believed/wanted/felt/did __________, on the other hand, they believed/wanted/felt/did __________."
- Thinking about your use of discussion structures, how do you decide if you should utilize a new structure to encourage deeper comments versus pressing students to go deeper within the existing planned format?