I decided to respond to the question:
"Please reflect back on your middle school, high school, and college-level experiences in your content area. Then, please choose one discussion in your content area that stood out to you because it was especially striking, compelling, interesting, thought-provoking, or enjoyable. Please describe that experience. What did the teacher do to facilitate the discussion? How did the teacher's facilitation of the discussion compare to the "five elements of effective discussions" recommended in the Van De Weghe article?"
It was during a college lecture I was in an evolutionary biology lesson. We were talking about all the different forms of evolution. I just really enjoyed all the different types of evolution we talked about. During high school biology we did talk about the different types of evolution but it was different in the college classroom. College has more freedom to talk about evolution during high school they have to be very politically correct in the classroom in order not to offend students or students parents. My college professor guide our discussion along by really just listening to us talk and then offering other options to talk about in even more detail. For example when we were talking about genetic drift he talked about how the distance would affect it as well as the species and we were just able to look at evolution from a completely different perspective.
How my professor used the five effective elements of effective discussion. First off he started the discussion with an authentic question or rather he was checking our knowledge of genetic drift. So first off he would ask us what genetic drift is and with that question he checked out uptake on what we had learned on the previous lesson as well as with the reading that he had assigned early in the week. After that we would listen to us talk about what genetic drift was, then he would give us a scenario and ask us what would happen if organisms were put in this type of environment would genetic drift occur why or why not. We would discuss that with our partner and then we would share some of the answers with the class with that he was evaluating how well we were able to understand the material as well as our cognitive levels of how we are able to apply our knowledge to each scenario. I really think that my professor was able to apply all of the five levels of discussions.
"Please reflect back on your middle school, high school, and college-level experiences in your content area. Then, please choose one discussion in your content area that stood out to you because it was especially striking, compelling, interesting, thought-provoking, or enjoyable. Please describe that experience. What did the teacher do to facilitate the discussion? How did the teacher's facilitation of the discussion compare to the "five elements of effective discussions" recommended in the Van De Weghe article?"
It was during a college lecture I was in an evolutionary biology lesson. We were talking about all the different forms of evolution. I just really enjoyed all the different types of evolution we talked about. During high school biology we did talk about the different types of evolution but it was different in the college classroom. College has more freedom to talk about evolution during high school they have to be very politically correct in the classroom in order not to offend students or students parents. My college professor guide our discussion along by really just listening to us talk and then offering other options to talk about in even more detail. For example when we were talking about genetic drift he talked about how the distance would affect it as well as the species and we were just able to look at evolution from a completely different perspective.
How my professor used the five effective elements of effective discussion. First off he started the discussion with an authentic question or rather he was checking our knowledge of genetic drift. So first off he would ask us what genetic drift is and with that question he checked out uptake on what we had learned on the previous lesson as well as with the reading that he had assigned early in the week. After that we would listen to us talk about what genetic drift was, then he would give us a scenario and ask us what would happen if organisms were put in this type of environment would genetic drift occur why or why not. We would discuss that with our partner and then we would share some of the answers with the class with that he was evaluating how well we were able to understand the material as well as our cognitive levels of how we are able to apply our knowledge to each scenario. I really think that my professor was able to apply all of the five levels of discussions.
Thanks for sharing this example. I really like how you said that your teacher made sure that you understood the concept by asking questions with specific answers and then he asked thought questions. That way you had to apply what you learned. It wasn't just something that you could look up in your book. You had to really understand the concepts in order to answer it. I think that is a sign of a genuine question, like you said. I also think that is where real learning happens.It is hard to ask those kind of questions, but it is how to teach most effectively.
ReplyDeleteHi Rieley,
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad that you had that biology professor! Sometimes, I think we tend to think that discussion is for the English classroom, but I'm glad that your professor showed you how to have stimulating conversations in the context of evolution. I'm also glad that he showed you how to hold discussions in open and non-contentious ways...because sometimes discussions of evolution can lead to some strong opinions. Thanks for a thoughtful posting!