The Power of Small-Group Discussions: Fostering Essential Skills in the Classroom

In today's fast-paced and interconnected world, it is crucial for students to develop a diverse set of skills beyond traditional academic knowledge. The classroom environment presents a unique opportunity for students to hone vital skills such as communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, mindset, and effort. One effective way to cultivate these skills is through small-group discussions.

Communication:

Small-group discussions provide students with a platform to express their thoughts and ideas effectively. By engaging in meaningful conversations with their peers, students learn to articulate their opinions clearly, actively listen to others, and ask thoughtful questions. These communication skills are essential for success in all aspects of life, be it further education, professional careers, or social relationships.

Collaboration:

Working in groups allows students to develop crucial collaboration skills. Through small-group discussions, students learn how to work together towards common goals, share responsibilities, resolve conflicts, and harness the collective intelligence of the group. These skills are particularly valuable in today's team-centric workplaces, where success often hinges on effective collaboration and cooperation.

Creativity:

Small-group discussions provide a fertile ground for creative thinking and problem-solving. Encouraging students to generate unique ideas, think outside the box, and explore alternative perspectives cultivates their creative thinking skills. By bouncing ideas off each other, students also learn to refine and build upon initial ideas, ultimately leading to more innovative and well-rounded solutions.

Critical Thinking:

Small-group discussions help develop students' critical thinking skills by encouraging them to analyze information, evaluate different viewpoints, and form well-reasoned arguments. Engaging in these discussions helps students develop the ability to examine issues from multiple angles, identify biases, and draw logical conclusions. These critical thinking skills are crucial for making informed decisions and engaging with complex issues in the real world.

Mindset:

Small-group discussions create a positive and supportive learning environment that fosters a growth mindset. Through respectful interactions and constructive feedback from peers, students develop resilience, perseverance, and the belief that their abilities can be improved over time. This growth mindset is essential to overcoming challenges, embracing learning opportunities, and achieving personal and academic growth.

Effort:

Small-group discussions require active participation and contribution from each student. By actively engaging in these discussions, students learn the value of effort and the importance of being actively involved in their own learning. The effort put into preparing for and participating in small-group discussions fosters a sense of responsibility and ownership over their education.

In conclusion, small-group discussions in the classroom provide a powerful tool to nurture essential skills such as communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, mindset, and effort. These skills are not only crucial for academic success but also prepare students for the demands of the real world. By incorporating small-group discussions into the classroom, educators can create an environment that fosters holistic development and equips students with the skills necessary to thrive in the 21st century.

Step 3: Acclimation

Getting students used to a new school year is difficult.  Getting them used to discovery-based and discussion-based learning is even more difficult.  So how would things go in the middle of a pandemic, after the kids had been out of the classroom for six month?

Surprisingly well.

I chose to use the opportunity to refocus the class in a way that I believe is better, and have for a long time.  If we're honest about it, the vast majority of the skills learned in high school mathematics are going to be useless to most of the students after they graduate, or at the very least after they take their last math class in college. We claim that the point of math classes is to teach things like critical thinking and problem solving, but then we end up doing all of the critical thinking and problem solving for the kids, asking them to simply repeat the process we show them.  This means that we're the ones doing the actual work, and the kids are just doing what they're told, and the process does not improve the students' ability to think critically or problem solve.

So, the refocus was to emphasize critical thinking, problem solving, perseverance, and other honest-to-goodness life skills, using the math as the means to this end.  Learning the math skills is still there, but the purpose is the process of learning the material rather than on the material itself.

To drive the point home, I chose a "theme of the week" that looks more like life coaching than math class.  Things like "Being Intentional", "Mindset and Skill Set", and "Adjust and Adapt" were emphasized at the beginning of each week, along with having the students set their goals using what I refer to as Setting their G.P.S. :

G = goal; What is your goal for the week?

P = purpose; What is the real purpose of the goal? What is the "why?" sitting underneath it?

S = skill; What skill will you need to have or need to cultivate to accomplish the goal?

All of this set the stage for the kids to do the heavy lifting of learning the material by working through the  slides with support (but very little if any direct instruction) from me.  From the beginning, I pushed the fact that if I showed them what to do and how to solve the exercises, it would interfere with the critical thinking and problem solving that we were actually working on.

And they bought in. Well, most of them.  There are always a few holdouts, until they realize I'm serious about being less helpful when it comes to showing them exactly what to do but being completely helpful when it comes to supporting them and guiding them in their discovery.

Unit 1 was tough, as always.  Unit 2 was relatively smooth.  By unit 3, we were rolling, and it lasted the rest of the year.  And this year has followed suit. Same emphasis, and so far, same results.

Step 2: Materials

Having made the decisions about how the groups would operate, it was time to write the discussion questions.  Much as I really like the discussion questions we have for running the classroom in a more authentic Harkness format, I knew from the previous spring that remote learning wasn't really conducive to it.

So instead, I condensed the questions we had from 48 down to 16 questions per unit, rewrote them as needed make them flow more smoothly, and then broke them up into sets of four so that the "information delivery" portion of the class - which was really more discovery-based - would be completed in four regular-length class days during the first week of each unit.  These sets of questions were then placed on Google Slides, and the students needed to take pictures of their hand-written work, place the work on the corresponding slide, and turn in the slide for feedback.  If we ended up being at school, the slides would be a good way to organize their work.  If we ended up working remotely, the slides would be a convenient way to see how the groups were handling the material.  Win-win.

The second week of each unit was used for two purposes:
(1) Practice the skills covered in the slides. This was done using MyMathLab, a Pearson product we use in our upper-level classes.
(2) Create exercises that demonstrate a solid understanding of the material.  I gave the students some requirements, and their task was to create as few exercises as possible that met them.

The third week of each unit was used to allow each group to provide written solutions to the exercises they created, and then explain their reasoning by making a video for each exercise. 

Notably missing were tests.  Honestly, the exercises they created, answered, and explained were more difficult than anything I would normally put on a test, and I got more information from the written solutions and videos than I would have with a multiple-choice or short-answer test.  Plus, with these "mini projects", there was no make-up test to worry about.

We ended up being in-person for the entire year, but even the kids who were out for a few days due to illness or quarantine found the format easy to work with, and no one fell behind because they had missed school.  In fact, I ended up having a better feel for how well each student was doing day-by-day - so much so, that I'm planning to use the slides again this year, and have already created a set of slides for honors geometry, which as I've mentioned will be a new prep for me.

Next up: Getting the kids acclimated.

Step 1: Groups

 Picking up where I left off at the end of the previous post:

The first thing I needed to do was figure out how we were going to set up the groups for the discussions.  This had to have the flexibility of working for students in class, working for students if we ended up at home working remotely, and working for students who were not at school because they were sick/quarantined.  

So, the decisions that were made:

(1) Groups would change for each unit, and each group would ideally have four students.  This was big enough to have different ideas about how to attack a problem, and small enough to work in a remote setting.  It was also influenced by the fact that there are four main topics in each unit.  More on that in a later post.  

(2) Each group would have their own chat room. We have the GSuite for Education in our district, and Google Chat was perfect for this.  The students could share photos of their work if necessary, and quickly start a Google Meet for just their group without any previous setup needed.  In particular, joining their group on Google Meet worked out really well for the students who were quarantined, and was a good place for the entire group to share information after school and on the weekends. And while we never fully went remote last year, I could see that the chat rooms would have been great in that setting as well.  Also, I was a member of each chat room, and while it did mean my phone was receiving a lot of notifications, it also meant I could more easily keep track of how the groups were doing, how much and how well each member of each group was contributing, and so on.

(3) Each group chose a "table captain".  These were the students to whom the work was actually assigned, and they were responsible for sending the information out to the group and submitting the work done by the group.  This gave the students some leadership opportunities, as well as ownership of the work that was done.  The first unit of the year was a bit rough, but once everyone saw how things worked, it was smooth sailing from there.

With this part prepared, I moved on to creating the platform for working through the discussion exercises.  This will be the subject of the next post.

I Want a Repeat of Last Year

I want a repeat of last year.

No, that's not a typo.

There were so many good things that made the 2020-2021 school year one of the best years of teaching I've ever had, and I want them to happen again.

First, my attitude going into the school year was, "bring it on".  I spent about an hour a day during the summer of 2020 planning more intentionally than I had in a while.  I contacted teachers I know across the country to see how they were planning to work with the circumstances and still run their classrooms through discussions.  Some had great ideas, and I drew on them for inspiration to create the best possible environment in my classroom.  Others had already thrown in the towel in June and had chosen survival mode from the beginning.  I ignored them.  We get one chance, one year, to work with each group of students.  I wasn't willing to throw away the opportunity, covid or no covid.

I then worked to build a system of instruction that was "location independent", meaning that if we ended up being in school five days a week, or four days a week, or ended up working in a hybrid model, or ended up working remotely, the system of instruction would not change.  It had to have student discussions at the heart of it.  We all know that this is how learning happens best, and therefore I simply couldn't let that go.  It had to be as close to gradeless as possible, as I had seen the positive impact of this over the last couple years.  It had to be flexible so that if we changed from one format to another (in school to hybrid, for example), little to nothing would need to be changed in the class.  It had to be able to be used by students who were quarantined, meaning they could still participate in the discussions even though they weren't at school.  This wasn't going to happen by accident.  I needed to be intentional.  I needed to be focused.  And when the year began, I needed to be calm.  The students were already anxious enough.  They needed reassurance, directly and indirectly, that things were going to be ok.

What resulted was so much good stuff that I'm keeping a lot of it.  Most of it, actually.  And this year, I'll be applying the same ideas to teaching honors geometry, which is on my schedule for the first time in over twenty years.

So, over the next few posts, I'll be detailing the system I put in place, along with other things that were absolutely critical to making last year one of the best.  Hopefully, you'll get some ideas you can use.  If nothing else, I'm hoping you'll grab onto the mindset that was required to allow my classes to thrive last year.

You get one chance, one year, to work with each group of students.  Make the most of it.

Never Stop Learning

Last week I presented at and attended the Mathematics Educators Convergence, held at Columbus Academy.  In addition to meeting some great math teachers and hearing presentations from Fawn Nguyen and NCTM president Robert Q. Berry, I left with a lot of great ideas and activities, some of which will take some time and planning to incorporate into my classroom, and some that I will be able to use this year.  It's still fun (and a little annoying) to see an activity that sparks the question, "Where has this been hiding all this time?"

This will be my 30th year of teaching, and I can't imagine not spending at least part of my summer actively trying to get better.  Whether it's reading some research, doing some math, or attending a conference, getting better is part of the job, and I honestly don't understand teachers who have to be forced to do professional development of any kind.  PD that's imposed from the outside can be hit or miss; searching for and participating in relevant PD is on the teacher.  We want the kids to become life-long learners, to have an inner drive that makes them want to improve for the sake of improving.  They won't believe it's important if we just dust off old lesson plans we've used for years, lesson plans that require us to tell the kids to pretend Desmos and the internet don't exist, or lesson plans that include a daily worksheet with word problems that have gasoline selling for 89 cents per gallon.

If I ever honestly believe I have nothing else to learn about teaching, it will be time to retire.  The kids deserve better than that, and I intend to work hard to improve every year.  Even year 30.  God willing, even year 45.

The Point of Assessment

It is rare that I give an in-class quiz or test.  Most of the work I have the kids do is either online, or some sort of a project-like assessment that they can work on at home, and I often require that they have their work peer-edited.  If this sounds more like what students would do when writing as essay in their language arts class, you're right, since that's where I got the initial idea to run assessments this way.

The question that I asked myself that led me to this is: What is the point of assessment? 

Is the point of assessment to determine how well the students understand the material so we (the student and teacher) can make a plan going forward to help the student continue to grow where they're good and make better progress where they're falling short?  Or is it to make that determination under the pressure of demonstrating their abilities in a specified 45 minutes?

I answered in the former.  Even if there is some kind of end-of-course test (from the state department of education or from the College Board or wherever), practicing with the time constraint while alleviating the pressure in a low-stakes or no-stakes situation in the classroom will give you a better read on how the kids are doing. 

Yes, there are situations in life when the pressure of a time constraint is very real and very important.  Assessment in a classroom shouldn't be one of them.  Not if we really want to know how well they understand the material.