Melissa Anderson

What happens to student engagement when I implement

dialogic practices in the classroom?
Process: I established dialogic practices revolving around student discussion and
interaction within my tenth grade Honors classroom while reading To Kill a
Mockingbird. I chose to do this because I was noticing many disengaged students
during lecture or teacher led discussion, so I wanted to know what would happen
with student engagement if we did more student led activity. I found that it
improved immensely and class discussion became more fun, interesting, and open
as student engagement with the material and with one another improved.

Resources:

What is dialogic teaching? This website defines dialogic teaching and

strategies towards achieving it in your classroom.

o Dialogic Teaching Alexander, Robin. Robin Alexander 2004.

http://www.robinalexander.org.uk/index.php/dialogic-teaching/

Dialogic Teaching Essentials: This article talks about the essential elements
of dialogic discussion. How are students engaging with one another in the
room? What does discussion look like?

o Dialogic Teaching Essentials. Alexander, Robin. National Institute of

Education. University of Cambridge, 2004

Developing engaging discussions in the classroom with student talk is an

important aspect of dialogic discussion. In this article, it discusses the
benefits of developing this discussion in your classroom.

o Developing Discussion. Maloch, Beth and Randy Bomer, Language

Arts, Volume 90 Number 2, November 2012.

This article discusses the benefits of creating open ended, dialogic

discussions in the classroom that will foster student achievement and
understanding of texts and concepts.

o Creating Dialogic Spaces to Support Teachers Discussion Practices:

An Introduction. Anagnostopoulos, Dorothea, Emily Smith, and Martin
Nystrand English Education, V41 N1, October 2008.

Strategies for Success:

Readers theater: Students participated in a dramatic reading of the Tom

Robinson trial in To Kill a Mockingbird where we acted out the trial together in
class. This allowed students to interact with one another and the text in an
in-depth way and paved the way for deeper discussions and questions
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regarding racism and integrity, while allowing visual learners to understand
what takes place in the courtroom.

Four Corner Activity: This activity is a large group discussion regarding the
themes of a text. Students are provided a statement and they have to move
about the room to the corner that corresponds with how they feel (strongly
agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree) about the statement and justify
their decision. They must defend and argue their positions against other
students in the class. Student talk developed between groups without me
needing to guide them through the discussion allowing for students to talk
about a theme before we discuss it in regards to the book. Many students
who dont normally raise their hands really became engaged in the
discussions, which expanded to take two full class periods, and multiple
students asked me if we could do it again later.

Socratic seminar/Circle Discussions: This classroom set up and discussion

style increased student engagement toward discussion. They were more
attentive and active during the discussion because they were forced to look
at one another as the discussion progressed. Many students said that it was
weird to have to actually look at one another when they made a comment
because they never have to in other classroom environments. This
discussion technique improved the quality of discussion and allowed
students to ask more questions and contribute more frequently because they
were actually engaged with the discussion. Students were able to contribute
to one anothers points and conversation flowed freely without me having to
direct traffic.

Student-led group activity: These activities allow students to work closely

with their peers to discuss a text or a theme. I did two major group activities
during this time. One activity was regarding the theme of perspective;
students had to write a daily narrative from another persons perspective.
This got students discussing the problems with stereotyping one another and
how these different students days might differ from their own. They really
responded well to this activity and we had a great discussion about what
judging people without walking in their skin can do. I also did another
discussion where each group was given a passage from the text and they
had to analyze the passage and discuss which theme is present in the
passage and how it is represented within this passage. This discussion
allowed for students to teach the class about the text and the themes
involved rather than me leading a teacher led discussion. Students were
more engaged with the text and made some really insightful comments
about the themes and concepts being discussed.

Reflections: I have observed that dialogic teaching does improve student

engagement when implemented most of the time. Students were more engaged
and interested in our discussions of concepts than the rest of the year. I also
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received a larger variety of participation by students that rarely contribute to
discussion. A factor that contributes to the success of these practices is student
enjoyment of the text. While student engagement has gone up in all my classes
because of these practices, it has not improved as much in my eleventh grade
classes where we are reading Death of a Salesman and the students dont enjoy it
as much as the tenth grade classes are enjoying To Kill a Mockingbird. I will
continue to implement these processes the rest of the year and in my future career
as student enjoyment and engagement improved.

Additional Questions:

Why would student engagement improve in one environment but not in

another?
How do I ensure that students are learning during these practices? How will
they know what is important to know or what might be less important? What
is the right answer or what is the wrong answer?