In this final posting on questioning, I will explore Teacher Guided Discussion: Teachers as Coaches during five stages of discussion. I had planned on devoting more time to this topic of questioning, but sometimes the books you think will take you somewhere, take you somewhere else. I will look for a new topic next week.

In teacher-guided discussions, teachers strategically engage and instruct students in classroom conversation while deepening their understanding of content. Students become apprentices to their teachers as they develop and refine skills for productive disciplined discussion.

The teacher must focus on his intentionality and his explicitness. Intentionality relates to teacher decision making about which discussion skills will be the primary focus for student development during the discussion. Teachers must decide this before they come to class. Explicitness means teachers thinking out loud with students as they intentionally highlight certain skills, disposiotns and productive discussion moves. The teacher shares with the students which discussion skills they will be working on and why these skills are important to a good discussion.

Walsh and Sattes develop five states to the discussion process: Preparing, Opening, Sustaining, Closing, and Reflecting.

1. Preparing - preparing for a discussion involves five tasks

Frame the question - how doe this relate to students? Do the students have the depth of knowledge to discuss this topic?
Determine which skills and disposition to spotlight - consider social skills, cognitive skills, use of previous knowledge skills.
Assign student prep work - ask them to read, write or generate questions to prepare for the discussion.
Select Participation Structures - develop a prompt, select a structure such as working in pairs, groups or working on some online platform.
Consider Organizational Issues - consider the size of the class and the classroom layout.

2. Opening - this is your kickoff, or your chance to make sure the players understand the rules of the game, or the norms and guidelines for interacting with each other.

Review norms and guidelines
Focus on targeted skills and dispositions
Present the question - present it, do not ask it. This shows the students that you really are interested in their response.

3. Sustaining - help everyone maintain focus on the question at hand.

Listen to understand - use good wait times to think, ask questions to better understand the speaker’s point of view, wait until others are done speaking before you speak, accurately paraphrase what other students have said, look at the students who are speaking and give nonverbal cues that you are paying attention.
Scaffold with questions statements or other appropriate moves - this includes extending individual student thinking and speaking, guiding students to self-assess and self-correct, encourage students to build on one another’s thinking, keep students on topic, jump start a stalled discussion (when necessary), nurture student curiosity and excitement, monitor to ensure equitable participation, and track patterns of participation.

4. Closing - Most academic discussions are intended to provide students with opportunities to deepen or extend their understanding or perspective.

Be sure to assist students in consolidating their thinking
Help the students identify emerging or unanswered questions.

5. Reflecting - this can happen in the classroom in collaboration with other students or outside the classroom, reflecting alone and perhaps with colleagues.

Facilitate individual student reflection and self-assessment.
Lead the group in assessing collaborative processes.
Reflect on the quality of the focus question and the dynamics of the discussion. How did it work for the class? Did it generate the type of thinking you had anticipated? Were there any surprises, how effectively did the opening of the discussion prepare students to participate,, and consider how well you did with each of the previous steps of the process.