I love having discussion in my classroom but I always struggle with forced and ingenuine classroom discussion. You know what I’m taking about if you have taught secondary school. Either students don’t want to talk or partake in anyway or they know they are being graded so they put on a show and are very unnatural. I find this happens a lot when I try to have a Spider Web discussion. If you don’t know what a Spider Web discussion is, it’s a type of Socratic seminar that removes the teacher from the discussion and allows students to be the main actors. It’s a great assessment tool as it allows for authentic assessment in my opinion. The teacher watches, marks the flow of discussion in a way that looks like a spider web, hence the name, and uses a rubric that incorporates a group and individual grade.
At my school, we were encouraged to use it in our classes but to not assign any group grade. All grades should be 100% individual. I understand the thought process behind the policy and I tend to agree. I added to my rubric a section on being inclusive and constructive to encourage students to include the quieter students and to avoid any presentations by one student. With enough practice, Spider Webs in my class were useful tools and great practice in discussion for my students.
Still, there was an air of importance that I felt around them and a tension leading up to a class with a Spider Web grade. If it was on a topic that they have already learned about, they would come prepared as if giving a presentation. If it was meant to be a discussion to explore new ideas, they froze. It was too much pressure in front of so many people. Spider Webs were most successful if they had warning, could come with some notes, and felt like experts on the topic. For that reason, Spider Webs are great assessments of knowledge.
Another issue was that while I had one discussion going, the students not involved had to sit quietly and take notes. The outside circle would be fidgety or bored even when I had them taking notes on the inside circle. Whoever was in the second circle would struggle because their ideas were “stolen” from the first circle and they would have to repeat what they heard and feel silly. But if I’m going to get the best discussion out of them, I couldn’t have too many students in the inside circle discussion so what do you do with the students not currently in the discussion if not have them sit quietly and watch…
I love Spider Webs but here are the issues I kept running into:
- Students were nervous about grades so they performed
- There was a tension leading up to the discussion and it felt like a “big thing” and the students need to be “experts” It worked better as a summative assessment instead of a formative assessment
- Keeping the groups small meant an inner circle/ outer circle and students who were prepared complained that their ideas were stolen in the first group
My Solution: Everything All at Once!
After a lesson about British Imperialism in India, I wanted students to revisit the details and discuss historical bias. A Spider Web discussion in all it’s pressure would have not worked- plus, we only had 20 minutes left. I’m sure some teachers could orchestrate it but I could feel that my students were weary of all the eyes and ears on them in a real Spider Web and this wasn’t the lesson for it.
Instead, I had them get into groups of 4-6, the table they were already at, and have a small Spider Web at their table. They had to pick one student who would mark the discussion flow and I would walk around the room and grade as I go along. I gave them two objectives:
- Make sure everyone in the group understands the content from the lesson I just taught. Use your notes to clear up any confusion.
- Discuss how a historian from England and a historian from India might write about this time in history differently.
I was ready for it to be awkward and loud and off topic like group discussions have been in the past but to my surprise- it worked! Students stayed on topic for 10+ minutes and many told me after that they had a better understanding of the lesson than before the discussion. So I started using simultaneous Spider Webs more and here are my tried and true tactics:
Simultaneous Spider Webs
First Component: Student Scribes
One student in each group will be the scribe. They are given a handout with a circle on it. They need to write everyone’s name around the edges, trace the conversation with lines, and sometimes write notes about what was said. They still need to be part of the discussion! I have found that my students are capable of this because the group is happy to slow down and make sure the notes are correct and that the scribe is able to partake in the discussion. The first time doing this might seem a bit awkward but the more we did this in class, the better my scribes would get. Sometimes students even fought over who would get to be the scribe. Depending on my objective with the discussion, I would sometimes not have the scribe write notes but having them write notes encouraged all of the students to stay on topic.
Can students make this part up when I’m not looking? Sure, but I have found that if I’m nearby and checking in often, students are more likely to stay on topic if they are tracing the discussion than not. The scribe was also instructed to keep the paper flat for all the group to see. If a scribe was being dishonest, the other students could get the teachers attention for help. Because I warned against this and was constantly monitoring the room, I never had issues with scribes going power hungry and altering the discussion lines.
Second Component: Questions and Objectives
The students always did better if I gave them more than an open ended topic to discuss. Providing questions a head of time gave them a place to start and they would sometimes even add more questions of their own once they got started. Here are a few approaches that worked for me.
- I printed up 5+ questions that led the discussion. These questions clarified past lessons, reviewed content, pulled in the most important themes of the unit. Students could jump around but needed to discuss all questions
- I posted a debate up on the board and asked students to argue or at least explore the different perspectives
- I gave students a picture/political cartoon that they have never seen before and asked them to connect it to the lesson
- I give students a problem to solve: Agree on a statement, answer the most missed questions from last test, decide on your groups next steps.
Third Component: Grading
I tried a number of approaches and switching it up actually helped keep these small discussions feeling fresh and different each time. I just made sure that the grading approach was communicated before hand for students to understand. Because this was a formative assessment, grading was kept low key enough that the stakes weren’t great. Usually grades were only impacted by participation but to not have any grade would completely alter this assignment.
- If they had 5+ questions to discuss I would pick one question from the list that they would have to write a detailed answer out to turn in. This answer could be individual or the scribe would write an answer that all students would help agree on. I liked this approach because they made sure to talk about each question in detail so they could be prepared at the end to turn in a good response. It was good for checking understanding.
- I as the teacher would join their group for a portion and give them a “hidden question” that isn’t on the list. Not all students would get a chance to talk but it would give me a feel for their understanding as well as seeing their thought process when given a new question. I liked this approach when I wanted them thinking and exploring. I would have to rely on the scribe more when I did this because I would be caught in one group while they were discussing and couldn’t be monitoring other groups.
- I would walk around with a clip board and make notes on student involvement. When I used this approach, I had to be very careful to be fair if I wanted my small windows into their discussions to affect their grades. I would tell them ahead of time that part of the grade came from my observations and that if a student didn’t get a chance to be a part of the discussion while I was visiting their group, they could supplement with a written response later. Usually, I could see through the scribes notes which students were involved and who wasn’t. If I felt like a student didn’t participate enough, I would ask for a written response to a portion of the discussion.
On the ground, how did the students react
I found that my students became very comfortable with this approach and appreciated the relaxed nature of these discussions.
For understanding difficult concepts: In my AP class, I had a student that really struggled with knowing how to be a part of discussions if she didn’t understand the material. She was scared to talk because other students seemed to get it when she did not. I reminded her that she could start off with “I didn’t understand the document we read, can someone explain?” and that other students in her group will be happy she gave them an opportunity to answer her easier question than the potentially harder question I gave them. Plus, one of the best ways to understand something is to explain it to someone else.
For group work or brainstorming: In the past, if I wanted students to brainstorm before a project, there was not accountability that they delegated work wisely and included everyone fairly. If I required a scribe to record the brainstorming session and to take notes on the outcome, students were more likely to stay on topic and hear from everyone.
Bad scribes: I was prepared for this to be the sticking point for the success of this approach but it really only happened once. I had a scribe that wanted to draw a star with his spider web chart. He was often the class clown at this point in the year and he had basically taken his group hostage and forced them to talk when he pointed at the them. When I found them all cowering under his thumb (joking! It wasn’t this serious) I took his power away from him and gave the job of scribe to a different student and kept my eye on their group.
Ultimately, Simultaneous Spider Webs became a staple in my classroom for formative assessment and my students appreciated them overall. They helped me achieve my goal in a way that full class Spider Web discussion never have: relaxed and natural discussions- or at least something closer to it!