🗑 Discussion-rich (AI-resistant) learning

📺 The Ditch Summit is coming!

Our free online conference for educators is coming! The Ditch Summit (ditchsummit.com) runs from Dec. 16, 2024, to Jan. 10, 2025.

We’ll have more than 90 sessions to watch — including lots of new featured speakers on fantastic, practical topics. (Read our speaker reveal in Tuesday’s newsletter.)

Good news: You’re already registered!

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🎁 Bonus: You can get free certificates of completion for professional development credit.

Know someone who would like to attend? You can copy/paste the text out of this document to invite them.

(Psst: We might have a contest soon where you can win prizes for inviting colleagues … keep an eye out for it!)

Get more details about the summit at DitchSummit.com.

💡 THE BIG IDEA 💡

🗣 Discussion-rich (AI-resistant) learning

"I want to tell you something about <insert topic>."

"Let's have a discussion about <insert topic>."

Which of these two would draw you in most?

A discussion is a two-way street. You participate in a discussion instead of just sitting through it.

Research shows that discussion can increase student learning, motivate students, help teachers assess learning better, and provide student agency.

All good things!

Plus, as we mentioned in this newsletter’s introduction … it can encourage students to interact interpersonally (instead of plugging a prompt into AI as a “demonstration of learning.”)

How can we create a discussion-rich classroom? In our updated post “24 ideas for creating a discussion-rich classroom”, we break it down into three sections …

1. Creating a discussion-rich culture

A big part of successful discussion in class has to do with how students feel about discussion. Call it “discussion-rich culture.”

How do you create that kind of culture?

• Give students a say. Let them help decide on the topic. Or if you have a topic you need to cover, let them choose a focus area, how the discussion is organized, etc.

• Gather student opinions with surveys — and let them choose with voting. These can be a simple hands-up survey, a Google Form, or even paper/pencil. Giving students a voice with small things can make them feel seen and heard.

• Use discussion mapping. This helps monitor who is contributing to discussions so it doesn’t get lopsided. Discussion logs can be a way to quantify this.

2. Ideas for teaching active listening in class

What we see as common sense might be new to our students.

Or maybe it’s new information — all of it or maybe just a couple of tips they hadn’t considered.

When it comes to active listening, maybe they haven’t been given any best practices.

But when they understand the impact of it — and that it’s how they’d like to be listened to — it might make a difference.

I’ve been impressed by this Forbes article by Dianne Schilling about active listening strategies.

3. Discussion strategies for class tomorrow

How does discussion show up in a classroom — in activities, in pairs, in a large group setting?

Here are some ideas from our post on discussion strategies for the classroom …

• Use sentence stems to get students talking or writing

• Use the “Friends without Pens” protocol: discuss without notes, then write afterward

• A fishbowl strategy (inner circle talks, outer circle listens/takes notes … then switch)

• Question Formulation Technique (develop lots of questions about a topic)

• Visible Thinking Routines (sets of questions/steps to support student thinking)

Learn more: 24 ideas for creating a discussion-rich classroom

🗄 TEMPLATE 🗄

⌛️ The Now, Then, Way Back template

You can use this simple protocol as a bell ringer or exit ticket. It has three parts:

• Now: Something they've learned recently

• Then: Something they learned not too long ago

• Way Back: Something they learned a while ago

The teacher can choose the topics, or the students can. The topics can all be related to something students are learning right now, or they can be completely separate. Students recall three things in each category.

When students get in the habit of using this activity, it encourages spiraling — bringing old concepts back to mind to reinforce them in long-term memory.

🗄 Get the Now, Then, Way Back template in Google Slides and PowerPoint

👋 How we can help

There are even more ways I can support you in the important work you do in education:

1. Read one of my six books about meaningful teaching with tech.

2. Take one of our online courses about practical and popular topics in education.

3. Bring me to your school, district or event to speak. I love working with educators!