Extended Discussion - Senior Syndicate Meeting

As a syndicate we had a meeting dedicated to extended discussion. This is due to being the focus for our Teacher Inquiry. Here are the slides from this meeting. Robyn ran this discussion and gave us an example and background information about extended discussion.

When it comes to extended discussion there is a foundation for these discussions. This includes whanaungatanga, discussion scaffolds, thought provoking questions/statements, timetable and learner reflection.

Whanaungatanga includes creating a set of rules and boundaries for these discussions. This will allow learners to feel comfortable when sharing their opinion and encourage positive interactions even with disagreements. 

Using thought provoking questions encourages each learner to think and use their own prior knowledge to answer the question. These can be opinion based and will allow for appropriate disagreements to take place.

Putting this into practice allowed us to understand how it can work in a group. We started off with reading a passage (Humpty Dumpty). After this we were prompted with a question using one of the following to start us off: who, what, when, where, why and how.

This question was then answered by someone and passed onto the next person using "what do you think ..." This included everyone in the conversation and allowed everyone to voice their opinion. The leader then asked another question and the discussion continued. The aim of this was to continue the conversation and not use close ended question (yes or no answers only).

Seeing this in action helped me understand how to implement this into my reading groups and the tools needed to do this.