Classroom Discussion: Strategies for Engaging All Students, Building Higher-Level Thinking Skills, and Strengthening Reading and Writing Across the Curriculum

by Dixie Lee Spiegel

When reading and writing become a regular part of a student's day, learning grows. But when discussion is added to the mix, it blooms. In this book, Dixie Lee Spiegel presents discussion as a tool that leads to engagement, reflection, and deeper learning in language arts and the content areas. She provides dependable, effective strategies for preparing students for whole-class and small-group discussion, guiding them as they discuss, and giving them follow-up activities that extend learning. For use with Grades 4-8.

Genres: Education, Professional Development

160 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2005

Reviews

[Elie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book suffers from being repetitive and vague. There are some (a few) concrete lessons, suggestions, and worksheets, but this book is largely lacking in usable material. Many of the advice and worksheets are geared towards elementary school where the teacher can easily have a file on each student and assess each in-depth. Sorry, I have over 100 students at any given time. Not gonna happen.

As a teacher using AVID strategies, which has a focus on inquiry, discussion, and reflection, I didn't find much help in this book. I sticky-noted about 4 pages of worksheets that I would use in conjunction with AVID curriculum while doing discussion activities such as Philosophical Chairs or Socratic Seminar. So it wasn't totally useless.

In brief, grab some AVID curriculum if you have access to it. Otherwise, google the two strategies listed above. I would recommend this book to teachers who never let their students discuss anything ever and have never thought about the benefits of discussion.

[Wsclai · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book discusses the benefits of having classroom discussions in different subjects and provides some concrete examples of how the strategies can be implemented. As a teacher, we may already know quite a lot about how to conduct discussions in class but I still find some insights from the book and there are printable worksheets in the appendix for our use as well. I particularly like the section on how to turn the book into a series of professional development workshops.