Learning is an active process. The more students are using the academic language of your class, the more likely they are to remember and understand it.
One great instructional practice to encourage student conversations around content is an activity called Wheel within a Wheel. This is a great activity to implement the active listening practice outlined in a previous post.
It's basically speed dating, and it's simple to set up.
Arrange your chairs in two circles. An inner circle with students facing outward, and an inner circle facing inward. Then decide who's going first. Give students a predetermined amount of time to talk (Use a timer students can see), and let them talk. If they're taking turns, have them switch.
Then, have the inner circle stand up and rotate. Repeat. If taking turns speaking, and the inner circle started last, then have the outer circle start talking.
When done, now have the outer circle stand and rotate the other direction.
The gif below shows what this would look like:
One great instructional practice to encourage student conversations around content is an activity called Wheel within a Wheel. This is a great activity to implement the active listening practice outlined in a previous post.
It's basically speed dating, and it's simple to set up.
Arrange your chairs in two circles. An inner circle with students facing outward, and an inner circle facing inward. Then decide who's going first. Give students a predetermined amount of time to talk (Use a timer students can see), and let them talk. If they're taking turns, have them switch.
Then, have the inner circle stand up and rotate. Repeat. If taking turns speaking, and the inner circle started last, then have the outer circle start talking.
When done, now have the outer circle stand and rotate the other direction.
The gif below shows what this would look like:
via GIPHY
Ideas for implementing it:
- Teach active listening. Have students practice talking for different intervals of time.
- Ice breakers: A great way at the beginning of the year for students to have a face to face with many people in the class.
- Jigsaw: Have student read different articles. This is a way for them to share their reading with other people. They get practice describing their article, and get to hear from multiple sources.
- Presentation Prep: Are they going to be giving a speech, saying some lines, or giving some sort of pitch? This a great way to get those reps in.
- Giving Feedback. After students take turns speaking, they can give each other feedback on how they could have done it better.
- Any time you want EVERYONE in the class talking about something YOU want them to talk about, this is a great structured way to do it.
By keeping the conversations short and your questions varied, it tends to keep kids on task. There's less chance of them drifting off topic.
Personally, I'm a big fan of this strategy. It's not something I do all the time. I use it maybe 3 or 4 times a year, but paired with the right activity, it can be extremely effective. It's both content focused and SEL focused because of the community building you gain by having students talk to many people in a session.
Credit to Laura Weaver and Mark Wilding, who reference wheel within a wheel in their book The 5 Dimensions of Engaged Teaching.
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