Before PD: What teachers preview dilemmas and nominate key dilemmas.
Have teacher or teachers tape discussions, do collaborative co-observations, or write a memo articulating the challenges for themselves
These slides introduce the DISCUSS Philly project and emphasize that discussions are interactive, center student sensemaking, and help build collective knowledge. They can take many forms, but differ in substantial ways from IRE or serial share-outs from groups or individuals.
During PD:
- Introductory Video (10 min)
- What do discussions look like in your classroom?
- What challenges have you encountered when facilitating discussions in the social studies classroom?
- Present Introductory Slides on Dilemmas (10 min)
These slides emphasize that dilemmas reflect arguments that happen within yourself between two things (goals/beliefs, etc.) that are difficult to resolve. You may never completely resolve them, but you can figure out the source of the tension, and manage your dilemmas more deliberately.
- Walkthrough a website dilemma with teachers (30 min)
- Read and/or view the classroom video of the dilemma you have selected and discuss DISCUSS website prompts (see below for additional guidance.)
- Facilitate a discussion about whether this is a dilemma the teachers in the room experience or observe, what aspects of the dilemma are relevant to them, and how they feel with the tensions provoked by this dilemma when facilitating discussions.
Once you have a chance to inhabit the presenting teacher’s perspective, you can move to teachers’ own perspectives on this dilemma as discussion facilitators and discuss the questions:
- Rehearsals
These slides introduce the DISCUSS Philly project and emphasize that discussions are interactive, center student sensemaking, and help build collective knowledge. They can take many forms, but differ in substantial ways from IRE or serial share-outs from groups or individuals.
- Facilitate a "Turn and Talk" on what our staff finds challenging about making social studies discussion-based (10 min)
- What do discussions look like in your classroom?
- What challenges have you encountered when facilitating discussions in the social studies classroom?
As you debrief the turn and talk, you might consider what is surfaced: what beliefs do teachers’ express about discussion, what goals do teachers have around discussion, how do they tend to conduct discussions, and what is their degree of self-efficacy as discussion facilitators? How might the challenges they describe relate to the dilemma theme you have chosen for the workshop?
- Wrap-up (10 minutes)
These slides introduce the DISCUSS Philly project and emphasize that discussions are interactive, center student sensemaking, and help build collective knowledge. They can take many forms, but differ in substantial ways from IRE or serial share-outs from groups or individuals.
- Facilitate a "Turn and Talk" on what our staff finds challenging about making social studies discussion-based (10 min)
- What do discussions look like in your classroom?
- What challenges have you encountered when facilitating discussions in the social studies classroom?
As you debrief the turn and talk, you might consider what is surfaced: what beliefs do teachers’ express about discussion, what goals do teachers have around discussion, how do they tend to conduct discussions, and what is their degree of self-efficacy as discussion facilitators? How might the challenges they describe relate to the dilemma theme you have chosen for the workshop?