Small-Group Discussion
Effective group discussion builds group cohesiveness and helps groups thrive. “Because talking is so important, you need to ensure that it is part of all group activities and allow time for it to occur,” say Susan Imel, Sandra Kerka, and Sandra Pritz, authors of More Than the Sum of the Parts: Using Small Group Learning in Adult Basic and Literacy Education. But how do you get the talking started, and how do you keep it going in a way that helps students learn?
Personalize Discussions
The more a tutor or teacher is familiar with the individuals in a group—their interests, goals, dislikes, work experiences, and family makeups—the better able the tutor and members of the group will be at picking up threads from students’ lives and weaving them into reading or writing activities. As students get to know one another, encourage them to draw one another out on topics.
In the early stages of a group’s development, take time each session for participants to get to know one another better. Use five minutes to give each person time to talk about something good that happened since the group last met or to tell the group about something he or she is planning to do. Another idea is to play Two Truths and a Lie, where each person makes three statements about himself or herself and the others in the group have to guess which statement is not true.
Encourage Questions That Spark Discussion
You can start and sustain a discussion through effective questioning. Some questions stall discussion because they have only one answer. The answer may be “yes” or “no” in response to a question like “Did you see the basketball finals last night?” or it may be a particular fact given in response to a question like “What part of town do you live in?” These questions are examples of closed questions. Once a brief answer is given, the conversational spark grows dim.
Open questions, on the other hand, keep the conversational spark glowing brightly by allowing more than one short response. Such questions can elicit varying viewpoints and encourage all members of a group to contribute if they choose. Questions that ask “What do you think?” and “How is your experience alike or different from...?” are examples of open questions. Use such questions when you’re helping students predict what will happen next in a story or discussing why the writer of an article took a particular stand on an issue.
You may want to point out the difference between open and closed questions if students aren’t aware of it and want to practice using them in class.
Use Various Discussion Options
Discussions can have various purposes. Sometimes the purpose is to solve a problem. Other times it’s to draw out personal experiences related to a topic or to wrestle with ideas or opinions. Tutors and students need diverse discussion options to meet different needs. Conversation between an instructor and one student in a small group is sometimes the only form of discussion that groups try, however. Here are some other options:
1)Experiment with discussion configurations like diads (pairs) and triads (threesomes) that give students more of a chance to participate and that can also give them practice in summarizing their discussions for the whole group when they report back.
2)Try a round-robin technique to allow each person one chance to express his or her ideas before anyone gets a second chance to talk.
3)Assign different discussion roles, or jobs, to members of the group before they begin a discussion. These roles or jobs give students a specific activity that they try to perform as they’re discussing a topic.
Rotate the roles from class to class to ensure that students get practice with a variety of discussion strategies. For example, in his book The Skillful Teacher, adult educator Stephen Brookfield suggests roles like the detective (who works to uncover the facts and ask probing questions), the summarizer (who summarizes the main points that have been made in some interval of time), the proposer (who suggests a new approach or line of thinking on an idea from time to time), and the opposer (who occasionally tries to offer ideas that challenge those discussed in the group). Maybe you can think of other roles students can play to stimulate rich discussion, such as the encourager or the “What if?” person.
Be Realistic
Discussions can be daunting for many students, even in small groups. Don’t hesitate to let students know that you realize discussions can be scary and that it’s OK if people are quiet—that a quiet person won’t be judged as being stupid or uninterested. In addition, give students some time to think about, list, or map their ideas before the group starts talking. This helps each person be ready to contribute.
Expect discussions to be messy—even with good ground rules set by the group. To expect that you can anticipate and prepare for all possibilities is a sure route to creating artificial discussions.
Outfitted with some good questions, knowledge, and trust of the students, along with some topics students are ready and willing to think about, you’ll see a good return on the time you invest in small-group discussion.
11-04.Small-Group Discussion
ProLiteracy Information Center1