Big circle slow read
We already read and discussed the introduction to our textbook (Bank Muñoz, Lewis, and Molina 2022). This class was about trying a different method of class discussion.
The room was big enough to make a big circle for all of us. We sat down opened to the first page of the introduction and had discussion about each paragraph, one at a time.
Discussion goals were to extract and talk about:
- What was the paragraph about
- What kind of work is this paragraph doing in the overall narrative of the introduction
- What themes or issues did this bring up that you want to discuss?
- How is the paragraph setting up future content in the introduction, or resonating with prior content
- How are claims in these paragraphs being supported?
And so on.
We only got through the first 4-5 pages, but there wasn’t a posted speed limit, so our pace was totally fine for emphasizing depth over breadth.
Moderating equal time
The class organically did a good job of sharing the floor in terms of who was generating discussion about each paragraph. I came prepared to moderate this if necessary. I printed out a spreadsheet with everyone’s name and started to check off boxes whenever anyone spoke. My plan was to make sure everyone was contributing as much as possible. I found it difficult to listen and search for boxes to check at the same time, so I stopped tracking this.
I remember seeing a discussion tracking activity somewhere that could be an alternative. It looked something like this:
Each person gets a sheet of paper, and as the group has a discussion the members trace lines show who spoke. The paper keeps a record of turn taking. We might try this at some point to see how it lands.