Daniel O’Connell

LLED 4462

Dr. Kajder

2/22/20

Pre HLP Reflection

As of late, I have wanted my students to focus on engaging in whole-class discussions.

The biggest problem I have been running into is getting the ball rolling to where students are

more so discussing the work with one another than with me. I understand that my students are

used to the middle school model of discussion (I.e. they talk to me as I answer and ask

questions). This makes it hard for my students to actually listen to one another’s answers

regarding the text they have been reading. The big breakthrough we had lately was in our

Socratic Seminar on Miriam, a short story by Truman Capote. Students were put in a queue

based on raised hands and then elaborated on the prompt put on the front of the board. The big

problem I ran into was students answering the prompt on their own, but failing to respond to

other points their peers made. I stepped in at some points to remind them that this works like a

regular discussion, where everyone builds off of ideas put on the floor. For future assignments,

and for our work on a Robert Frost poem on Wednesday “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy

Evening”, I want to have students build off of the ideas put forth by their classmates to come to a

group conclusion over meaning present in the poem. I have read the texts sent out to the rest of

the people who wrote down facilitating group discussion, and I see that I need a greater focus on

scaffolding what classroom discussion should look like. Students should be given specific roles
in the beginning, and as our time with discussion unfolds, I will allow more loose instructions to

allow more student leadership in discussion.