Spiderweb discussion

Synergetic – it’s team-oriented, balanced, and group graded (the whole class gets a single grade for each discussion).
Practiced – it’s ongoing, practiced and debriefed. It’s not a one-time activity but a process, much like writing.
Independent – the teacher “interferes” as little as possible; students run the discussion and self-assess.

Developed – the discussion gets deep, builds on itself, goes “somewhere.”

Exploration – this is the main goal; more than discussion, it is a discussion-based exploration (of a text, Essential Question, or topic).
Rubric – this is the cornerstone to the whole process: to have a clear, concise rubric against which students can easily self-assess (you can make the rubric based on what you want to accomplish, but you are welcome to use/adapt some sample ones here on my wiki).

The “Web” part of the name comes from the web-like graph that one of the students or I graph to map the discussion while it’s happening and then use to debrief later.

Untitled Slide

• 1. Everyone has participated in a meaningful and substantive way and, more or less, equally. 2. Meaningful and substantive participation implies the construction of complete sentences to get a message across or to form questions. 3. The pace allows for clarity and thoughtfulness – but not boredom. 4. There is a sense of balance and order; focus is on one speaker at a time and one idea at a time. The discussion is lively without being “hyper” or superficial. 5. The discussion builds. There is an attempt to resolve questions and issues before moving on to new ones. 6. Comments are not lost, the loud or verbose do not dominate, the shy or quiet are encouraged.