Part of quality speaking instruction — particularly speech delivery instruction — is helping students eliminate their distracting speech behaviors. If you’re familiar with Erik Palmer’s PVLEGS acronym for speech delivery (a must-use, in my opinion), such behaviors are Poise issues. Here are some of the distracting habits my kids bring into their pop-up debates and small group discussions each year: Fillers (“like,” […]
Teaching Speaking
Conversation Challenge: an Efficient, Simple Small-Group Discussion Strategy
When I want every student to speak in a capacity more involved than Think-Pair-Share yet more efficient than pop-up debate, I tend to use something I call Conversation Challenge. Conversation Challenge is simply a way of framing small group discussions. Instead of only saying, “Discuss [insert prompt here] about [insert text here],” I add one additional […]
Keep These Things in Mind When Thinking about Student Discussions
Ashley Pacholewski sent me an email this week. Ashley is a teacher at Brunswick High School in Ohio, and she had a great question: “What discussion strategies do you use at the end of the week when using Kelly Gallagher’s Article of the Week assignment?” Since I was already in “filming lessons mode” for the Teaching with […]
The 300-Word Guide to Pop-Up Debate
Notes from Dave: I treat pop-up debate extensively in Chapter 4 of These 6 Things: How to Focus Your Teaching on What Matters Most. Teachers around the world tell me it’s one of their favorite chapters on argument in any source. Pick up your copy today! Pop-up Debate is a method for managing and facilitating in-class debates; […]
Paraphrase Plus: A Central Move of Engaging Classroom Discussions
This will be a short one — with the first (read: frenzied) week of school just behind me and Crystal off on a girls retreat, it’s Daddy Domination time, and the girls are bound to wake up in moments. Although my school year has only just begun, I know that some of you are using […]
