{"id":169,"date":"2018-03-01T01:05:44","date_gmt":"2018-03-01T01:05:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/nicholabendle\/?p=169"},"modified":"2018-04-08T16:00:59","modified_gmt":"2018-04-08T16:00:59","slug":"pinwheel-discussions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/nicholabendle\/2018\/03\/01\/pinwheel-discussions\/","title":{"rendered":"Pinwheel Discussions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The idea for the pinwheel discussions was passed along to me from @brenthurley\u00a0<\/span>who frequently fires emails my way that have subject lines like \u201cyou might like this\u201d or \u201ccool resource\u201d. It\u2019s awesome, much appreciated and it led me to\u00a0pinwheel discussions<\/a>\u00a0found on the Teaching Channel and created by Sarah Brown Wessling.<\/p>\n

The timing was perfect as my grade 9s had just completed a rather unscintillating discussion on the novel <\/span>Indian Horse<\/span><\/i> by Richard Wagamese. Even worse, was that we had two more discussions to go. I have had great success teaching\u00a0Indian Horse; <\/em>students generally like the book, get attached and are moved by the experiences of the protagonist, Saul\u00a0— I wanted the students to want to talk about their reading. I was afraid our discussion had killed that feeling.\u00a0Don\u2019t get me wrong, they gave it a good effort and brought up some great points\/ideas, but it lacked life.<\/span><\/p>\n

After watching Sarah explain how the discussions worked in her video<\/a>,<\/span> I was sold.<\/span><\/p>\n

For our next discussion, we’d try the pinwheel discussion.<\/p>\n

Before class started on the day of the discussion, I arranged the desks into the pinwheel format and when students entered, they were surprised at the rearrangement. I think this disruption was the first indication that the class would be different and maybe more exciting than usual. I loved the anticipatory energy building as each student entered the classroom.<\/span><\/p>\n

I split the class into groups and gave them 10 minutes to think of questions and passages that connected to a theme that was assigned to them (racism, integrity, perseverance). To one of the groups, I assigned the role of \u201cprovocateur\u201d and their job was to keep the conversation going and ask overarching theme connecting questions. They worked well in their small groups and jumped into the task.<\/span><\/p>\n

After 10 minutes, I got their attention back and did a mini-lesson on how to bring evidence into the discussion in a fluid way. From there, I told them what I was expecting in the discussion this included new ideas, textual evidence, connections and follow-up questions.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

And so, one member of each group made their way to the inner circle, while the others stayed with their teams in the outer circle. Students were instructed to take notes on the inner circle\u2019s discussion. This was not something I had thought of while preparing for the lesson but had them do on the fly. I realized that for some students, it would be killing them that they couldn\u2019t jump into the conversation and they might attempt to if they didn\u2019t have an outlet and for others, they\u2019d be happy for the opportunity to participate via writing in the discussion and not out loud. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The student assigned to the role of provocateur began\u00a0<\/span>the discussion and it lasted\u00a0for the rest of class.\u00a0We switched up the groups in the inner circle every 5-7 minutes, depending on\u00a0the flow of conversation. As students talked, I added a tally mark for each time they used textual evidence, asked a follow-up question, made a connection, or introduced a new idea to the discussion.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It was the best discussion I have had all year.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Things that worked really well: <\/span><\/p>\n