WEBVTT

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My name is P. David Pearson,
Graduate School of Education,

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University of California
at Berkeley.

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I do research on policy
and practice related

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to reading assessment
and instruction.

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There's really two reasons
for engaging in discussion

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with kids around a text.

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The first is so they understand
the text right in front

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of them better than
they would otherwise.

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Discussions about text
are really an invitation

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for students to sort of
revise the models of meaning

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that they may have built when
they read the text on their own.

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So when you come
to a discussion,

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you can actually think about
what other people thought

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about the text, and that
might cause you to say, "Hey,

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I never thought of
it that way before."

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So you gain new meaning
from the text.

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The second reason for engaging
kids in discussion is not

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so much to help them understand
the text at hand better,

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but actually to help them,
over time, develop a set

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of strategies that they can use
on their own, to understand text

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when there's no one around
to guide them in their sort

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of interrogation of the text.

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A lot of people, when I
show videos of classrooms

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in which you are seeing this
kind of discussion, they say,

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"Well, that's all well and good,
but my kids can never do this.

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They don't have the
background knowledge.

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They don't have the
experience," and the like.

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And that's probably true,
and you have to remember

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that Rome wasn't built in a day.

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What you do is you start
out, you work on one thing.

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Maybe you work on how
to agree or disagree

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with what someone
else just said,

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and that's all you
work on for a few days.

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You get that under your
belt, and then maybe you go

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on to how do you learn
how to build on to a point

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that someone else has
made, and how do you add

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to the ongoing conversation.

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And you just build
it a step at a time.

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And you also make sure that, all
the time, that kids are focusing

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on what's really
important about those texts;

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that's the central focus
of any good discussion:

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Why would you bother to talk

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about this thing
in the first place?

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So what makes for a good
discussion in a classroom?

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What should teachers be trying
to do if they want students

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to be really engaged in their
conversations around the text?

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Well, first is to select
text worth discussing.

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You know, not all texts
are created equal.

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Some of them lend
themselves to much richer

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and deeper discussions
than others.

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So make sure there's something
in the text worth discussing.

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The second is to plan
your discussion well.

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It's always good to have a
set of questions in hand.

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These questions represent
the big ideas in the text

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that you want to see uncovered,

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that you want students
to grapple with.

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Now, your plans may go awry,
but it's always good to have

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that set of questions or
that set of tasks in mind

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as you go into the discussion.

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And the third thing, vis-à-vis
discussions, is that lots

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of time when you ask a really
tough question, one that gets

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to deeper thinking-or
higher-order thinking,

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sometimes we call it-sometimes
kids don't get it right away.

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But that's okay, you can ask
the higher-order question,

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and then if you don't get much
of response, you can back up

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and then scaffold the
kids into that question

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by asking smaller questions.

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So for example, if you ask, "So
what's the theme of the story?"

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and you don't get anything out
of it, you could maybe turn it

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into a multiple-choice question:
"Well, is this story more

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about friendship, or is it more
about problems we have dealing

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with the environment?"

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And make it a forced-choice
question.

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Then when you get
a response to that,

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then you can get the
kids back on track

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to the higher-order question.

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And the final thing is,
shoot for getting the kids

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to a greater stage
of independence.

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The ideal is really if
you have a classroom

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where you can take your class
of 25 kids and break them off

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into five groups of five,
or something like that,

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and then have each of those
groups discussing the story,

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you'll get a lot more action,
a lot more time on task

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with kids grappling with
the ideas and the story

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that you want them to deal with,

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because they have more
opportunity to speak

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when they are one in five
rather than one in 25.

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One of the things that a lot

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of teachers do is they actually
have this technique called

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fishbowl, where they'll take one
group that's gotten pretty good

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at discussion, they'll
put them in the middle,

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and everybody else sits on an
outer circle and watches them

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and critiques their discussion.

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And through that process,
kids develop, if you will,

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kind of an explicit knowledge

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about what makes
for good discussion.

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And I have seen that done with
fifth graders; I've seen it done

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with third graders; I've seen
it done with first graders.

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And it really does pay
enormous benefits over time.

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The best source of research
evidence for the impact

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of a discussion is a
meta-analysis, published in 2009

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by Karen Murphy and her
colleagues in The Journal

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of Educational Psychology,

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and it really suggests
three big findings.

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Number one is that when
you have discussions,

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the effects are much stronger

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for changing participation
rates, getting kids to say more,

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than they are for their
impact on comprehension;

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not so good on that score.

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The second big finding
is that you sort

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of get what you pay for.

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If you focus on text-based
information,

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kids will get better at that.

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If you focus on critique and
evaluate, they'll get better

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at that, but maybe not so much
on the text-based kind of thing.

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And the third and maybe
the most important finding

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from that meta-analysis, is that
the effects are much stronger

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for low achievers than they are
for average or high achievers,

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suggesting that as a profession,
we need to spend much more time

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with the students who struggle
most to understand text.

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