Fishbowl Discussions to develop oracy.

The Opportunity.

A rewrite of last years plans has presented and opportunity to develop this essential part of literacy ( and here too) I initially thought the content to be taught would prove to be a good for a "presentation" using the criteria, we had used in Year 7. Although, it was tempting to build upon this the idea  it was dismissed in preference for a more dialogic approach that leads to learning.  I have been interested in developing this with my students ever since the sage advice from Geoff Barton (particularly on slide 51) during a fortunate visit for some INSET. This HTH unboxed has also been at the back of my mind for sometime and has been useful in pondering how to plan this for my students.

Not this time fella me lad...

I was fortunate that I only had to rewrite most of one lesson for this to tackle this inadequacy, when I stumbled upon this fine teaching video from the Teaching Channel. all became clear. This post is a chance to share the methodology I am planning to use, to help make speaking and listen a key part of how we will learn Science.

The Plan.

The "Fishbowl"  will be set up as following.

 

The  students will be split into three groups. Each group will have a go at each role. The roles can be summarised as:

 

Role 1- Speaker- They will be in the middle discussing the questions and dilemmas.

Role 2- Coach- They will listen out for how well a particular panellist is communicating, use of key language and connectives. They will debrief them at “half time”.

Role 3 – Observer- They will be summarising the debate so far, listening out for coverage of the different energy resources, evidence used, the questions asked and answered. They should produce a set out notes and will be asked to feedback to the class the important/useful/interesting comments made at half time and at the end of the discussion.

Each Fishbowl will run for 10 minutes, split into two halves with a 5 minute coaching halftime.

 

The “Speakers” will discuss their response to the following big question which has been the focus of study in the preceding lessons.

" Do we still need fossil fuels?"
 

 The following sub questions will help the students discuss the evidence.

Why are we considering not using fossil fuels?

If we don’t use fossil fuels what should be used to meet the electricity demand?

If we do use fossil fuels how do we ensure that the pollution is not a big problem?

Are the alternative fuels up to the job of meeting our energy needs?

What should be the energy production strategies for the UK to ensure 24hr year round electricity production that meets demand?

How could this be different for different parts of the world?

Following the Fukishima nuclear disaster – what would you recommend for Japan?

The Structures.

To set this up, with each class I intend to describe the roles and issue the observation sheets and success criteria.

Coaches will have a sheet like this, which they will use to observe and feedback to one other student.

While the observers will have a checklist of what content should come up in the whole conversation.

 

 

The big question is then to be shared, making it clear that the conversation is to answer this, while the sub questions are there to keep the conversation moving and help breakdown potential solutions to the problem posed.

It will also stressed to the students that their notes and their experiences are important here, this will be a useful revision of the learning of the previous lessons.

I will only now place the students in threes, to manage distractions, and then ask them to number themselves. Once done, I will assign a role to each number and establish an order for the conversations.

It will wise here to pause and grant the students around 10 minutes to prepare potential responses and familairise themselves with the success criteria and feedback sheets. I am hoping they will use these resources to pick up ideas of how to phase, at least their opening gambits during the conversation.

 
The Feedback.

The first discussion will now take place, split into two halves of five minutes. This time is arbitrary and largely determined by their age and the amount of content expected in the conversation. At half time the observers will be asked to summarise the key points made so far,suggesting what might be missing? What content or evidence could the speakers be using?

 

I will also  tally chart the contributors collated, which is a powerful way to provide non-judgemental feedback upon speaking, those that have avoided or minimised their interactions will be challenged by cold hard facts.

 

The coaches will then be given opportunity to  quickly feedback what connectives have been used well so far to the whole group.

The groups of three students will then briefly meet to receive specific feedback, using Kind, Specific and Helpful protocol.

 

Kind – I like how you….etc

Specific- You need to use more connectives….You haven’t mentioned….etc

Helpful- Try using ……Remember that oil releases carbon dioxide when burned.. etc

 

I think the retrospective starfish, will help students frame this in a positive constructive way, coupled with a selection of connectives will help focus students on how they communicate detailed scientific ideas. I expect this halftime  feedback to have a noticeable impact on the second half performance.

 

To conclude this session the observers will be asked summarise the conversation, again highlighting key concepts raised in the conversation. The coaches  will then be asked to identify what the speakers did better in the second half. It will be important to catch the students doing better here. A  similar lesson structure using SOLO taxonomy and connectives had a positive impact upon student conversations.

The students then rotate roles.
 

The reflection.

A debrief will be held as a quiet written session to aid reflection on personal learning, with the students responding to the following questions.

How well did you speak during the debate? What did you do well? What would you try to do better next time?

What connectives did you use? How did they help you communicate?

Why is it important that we develop our speaking skills?

The next steps...


This is the planning I will endeavour to record the conversations and half time feedback on Soundcloud and post them in a linked post.

By Josie and Emily.

I asked two students if they coudl summarise what they thought of Critiquing. Here are their thoughts undiluted and without alteration. 

The Importance of critiquing-

We think critiquing is good and important because it helps to...

Complete all of the criteria and check the other person has too. This is important as to achieve the full potential of a write up,drawing,etc. You need to ensure that all of the points or features are focused on, in detail. For example,check if people include both sides of an argument? Or in a drawing scenario, have the minor details still been focused in on?

Reading other people's work and using it as inspiration for your own. Not necessarily copying,but enhancing your own work. For example,if the other person has included a particularly effective phrase,or point about the argument,include it in yours to improve it! This helps you to share thoughts about what should be included, and generally improve your work!

Information around you,you can collect more information through other people's work,e.g the community scroll of information as a reliable source that you can trust. A source of information like the scroll is really useful. For example, if you don't have time to research but want to quickly find out about,say,solar energy, look at the community scroll (class display) for a variety of important diagrams,facts and figures. This helps to condense information,and use the big facts, to save time and share facts.

Talk and discussing ideas,rather than sitting alone writing an essay,makes learning more enjoyable,therefore putting in a motive to get the piece of work complete. It makes it good to compare different opinions and thoughts. For example, if you do task A and write an essay about it,and your partner does task B and writes an essay about it,while critiquing their work,you can learn about the actual task B and they learn about task A,taking in twice as much information.

Improve your work in general. If you critique a few times,and compare the first and second,there is a drastic difference. It's almost like putting your work through a focus group test,seeing if one person understands and learns from it,before publishing it for the teacher to read/mark. This makes you achieve your best ability,as although your partner points out improvements,you still do the work and make it make sense.

Question your work and improve it,through another's eyes. In a real life example,Josie thought her write up about fossil fuels was the best to her ability, however,when Emily pointed out improvements from a first-eye source,it made Josie realise how much more she could've done in the first place. Therefore,if we get used to critiquing others work,when we are older and in a job,we can almost critique our own work,independently.

Understand the importance of teamwork,and collaboration, community thinking and sharing ideas. This helps build teamwork,valuing critiquing people's work as important as completing your own.

Ideas shared to get a balanced view,rather than simply one opinion,to come to a more balanced conclusion. For example, if you already,before beginning to learn about a topic, have strong views on it,it may be hard to write a evenly balanced and unbiased essay,however if you read somebody else's essay it may open your eyes to a new arguement.

Not just a teacher's opinion,more varied opinions to improve your work for all audiences. The teacher is working off a grid from the curriculum,the peer is working from their own sense and probably no knowledge on the subject,therefore making a good audience.

Guide you to get a peer's opinion on your work. There are always improvements to be found,in learning and life, nothing is perfect,so there are always ways you can critique work KIND (critique the WORK,not the people, don't use "you" or "shouldn't,couldn't,wouldn't, say what they CAN do instead of what they CAN'T), SPECIFIC(say exactly where,highlighting or colour coding makes it easier to point out places) and HELPFUL(make them easy to improve,for example,don't say "your spelling was bad" or even "the spelling in this piece of work could be improved". It is more helpful to say "There could be improvements in spelling these words; atmosphere, solar and fossil")

Overall,we believe,as students,critiquing is an important lesson in learning,and in general life. It is a useful skill to incorporate in lessons, in order to prepare future "self critiquing" as well

Students talking about the benefits of Critiques and Drafting

As part of creating a learning an agenda in my classroom  I like to keep the pedagogical purposes of the strategies used clear and open. So it is easy to imagine how pleased I was when a student turned up today with two drafts of their work! These year 7 students are redrafting a Scientific write up. They have experienced one full critique before this one. It's nice to see how accepting of challenge and hard work they are. The quality of their work matters to them and they feel as though they are learning by doing this.

The most interesting thing for me in this how they see the benefit of the Feedback Norms as lead to to something helpful, and not just being told to do it again. Again this is indicative of the need for a classroom culture that allows and nutures high quality student work. Another small step towards this I think......