Leading Group Discussion Abstracts

Symbolism: Leading Group Discussion about Symbolism

As the teacher candidate you will lead a group discussion related to the content and the avatars will work on specific content together, using one another’s ideas as resources. The purposes of this discussion are to build collective knowledge and to allow students to practice listening, speaking, and interpreting.

The teacher candidate’s focus during the lesson will be symbolism in the poem Fire and Ice by Robert Frost. In today’s lesson you will lead a group discussion related to the content.

 

Mathematics: Leading Group Discussion about Long Division

The teacher candidate will lead a group discussion related to the content and the avatars will work on specific content together, using one another’s ideas as resources. The purposes of this discussion are to build collective knowledge and to allow students to practice listening, speaking, and interpreting.

The teacher candidate will first review avatar responses to a prompt from the previous class, then lead a discussion in today’s lesson related to the content.

 

English Language Arts: Leading a Group Discussion – Using Explicit and Implicit Questions

In this simulation, candidates will have the opportunity to plan and lead a group discussion for intermediate elementary students centered on the first two chapters of “Because of Winn Dixie” by Kate DiCamillo.  

Teacher candidates will create a variety of explicit and implicit questions that will allow them to increase or decrease cognitive demand based on the responses of the students in the group. Keeping students engaged and facilitating respectful discourse while fostering a thorough understanding of key components of the text is the goal of this simulation.  

In groups of five, teacher candidates will each serve as lead discussion facilitator.  

English Language Arts: Leading Group Discussion about Themes

In this simulation, the teacher candidate will lead a group discussion related to the content and the avatars will work on specific content together, using one another’s ideas as resources. The purposes of this discussion are to build collective knowledge and to allow students to practice listening, speaking, and interpreting.

In today’s lesson the teacher candidate will lead a group discussion related to Paul Revere’s Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The teacher candidate’s students may initially take part in the discussion with the expectation that the teacher candidate is the expert, but your challenge is to build collective knowledge among your students. During the discussion, avatars may challenge each other’s ideas but will not be able to clearly articulate why they agree or disagree.

 

English Language Arts: Leading a Group Discussion about a poem

Previously your students had recently read Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost and were asked to parse the text and come to the next class ready for a discussion. They’ve arrived and settled into the class, and now it is up to you to lead a group discussion about their findings within the poem.

Note that they all may have differing opinions as to what the poem means and how it affected them. You should launch and orchestrate a discussion using appropriate talk moves, allow students to build on one another’s ideas, and make space for the students to do the bulk of the intellectual work.

 

English Language Arts: Leading a Group Discussion about a poem

Students recently read the poem “The Sadness” by Jason Reynolds (2017, p. 6). They annotated the text and discussed the poem in partners. Now it is up to you to facilitate a group discussion about their interpretations of the poem, including what lines stand out to them, what the poem accomplishes structurally, what the central image/metaphor does to/for readers, and why writers choose to tell stories via poems instead of other forms. You should frame, launch, and orchestrate the discussion using appropriate talk moves that engage students as sense-makers, orient students to the text, orient students to each other, and orient students to the interpretative practices of readers of literature (Reisman et al., 2018).

Alongside orchestrating this text-based conversation, you will practice building and sustaining respectful relationships with and among students by actively valuing each student’s humanity, making each student feel “known” and “seen,” and prioritizing student agency and dignity.

 

English Language Arts: Leading a Group Discussion about a poem

You are an ELA teacher. Your students have read the poem “The Rose that Grew from Concrete” by Tupac Shakur for homework the previous night and have annotated the margins with their own notes on what they think the poem means. They have just finished pairing with one another to discuss their notes and are ready for a group-based discussion.

Your task is to facilitate a better understanding of the poem by eliciting a group discussion between the students and yourself. Note that they all may have differing opinions as to what the poem means and how it affected them.

 

Special Education: Leading a Group Discussion about holiday traditions

Previously your students had two trade books, My First Kwanzaa and The Night before Hanukkah read to them in class. In this less, you are going to lead two group discussions that promote inclusivity for two students with exceptional learning needs, including ADHD and autism. The discussion topics will focus on the students’ own family traditions and how these are similar to and different from one another, and the similarities and differences between Hanukkah and Kwanzaa as depicted by the texts.