WAR

A discussion to me is a conversation where the students respond to a prompt and than the students shape the conversation. I led a discussion the other day in my 4th/5th grade classroom on the topics of; was war the best solution to WWI and WII?

Before I gave the students the prompt I set some of the ground rules that the students must follow in order to be involved in the discussion and to remain in the discussion. I told them that in order to participate in the discussion they had to have completed their homework from the day before (since the prompt came from the homework) and that they must follow the rules that we establish.

I told the students that they must raise their hand if they want to talk and when another student stopped talking I would point at them and they could respond. We have had some issues with students just talking over other students so I figured that would be a solid approach.

I wanted to do this discussion because it seemed that the students really wanted to talk about their different perspectives with the group but the teacher did not really allow them time to do so. McGee states, “In a group, readers share their own understandings and significant insights and must convince others of the value of their insights.” I believe that this type of skill is a necessity for survival and success in this modern day and age. In high school, college, and the job world you will not be judged for the most part about the facts you know but on how you can apply those facts and make the best possible decision.

So we started the discussion and the students talked about how the war was “going to happen” because of the events that took place. Rather than answering the question the students took it to a different level and talked about the type of things that you could go to war for. They came up with “Ideas, if people are hurting other people, and if someone bad was doing something really bad” but what we shouldn’t go to war over was “Land”

They created the discussion all on their own and everyone was really engaged in the discussion.

Before I thought about doing the discussion I had to know several things about the students as learners. I had to know how the students work with other students in a discussion type setting. I also had to know if the students could handle the discussion topic which was about the touchy subject of war.