Discussion Based Learning - Katrina Van Ruyven and Juli Peterson

Teachers

Katrina and Juli co-teach seventh grade science at Valley View Middle School. Katrina is the EL teacher and Juli is the science teacher. In their class, students are expected to discuss and debate information they have learned from their reading and note taking. These student conversations reinforce what students have read and put them in charge of their learning.

Instructional Strategy

“Whoever is doing the talking is doing the learning” -Jennifer York-Barr. 

Students have better achievement when they have opportunities to discuss the content. Throughout the year, students have practiced having academic discussions and Katrina and Juli have provided supports for them to be successful in their discussions. The teachers also provide scaffolds for students both before and during their academic conversations. Students read and take notes about the topic before they discuss. They also have access to general discussion prompts and sentence frames as well as questions specific to the current topic. Students are encouraged to use their texts, graphic organizers, and notes to support their arguments during the discussion. Katrina and Juli make sure to build in accountability for students when they are talking. Students have three talking tokens that they must use during their group discussion to ensure that everyone is participating in addition to recording what other members of their groups are saying during the discussion.

“We have really noticed an increase in students meeting the learning target when they have the opportunity to talk about the content. They are also much more engaged in their learning.” 

-Katrina Van Ruyven and Juli Peterson

See What It Looks Like

Below are examples of student discussions and supports the teachers have created to help students use academic language and engage in respectful conversations.

Pre-teaching resources to prepare students to discuss the content.



Students each have talking tokens that they must use during the discussion. They have a discussion guide that they fill out when other students are talking and they have sentence starters to help them engage in conversation.

Students’ final project for this unit is a persuasive paragraph about whether humans caused the extinction of fauna.