This article reports and discusses the findings of an initial inquiry into secondary school students' comprehension strategy use during small-group, peer-led discussions of literary text. One classroom of ninth-grade English students in the midwestern United States participated in the inquiry. Data consisted of the verbatim transcripts of four…

Reflection is a powerful means to involve readers actively in gaining new insights about texts and themselves as readers. This article relates the story of three fifth-grade girls engaged in metacognitive inquiry within a classroom book club group. The use of exploratory talk and reflection illustrate how the girls constructed meaning and deepened…

Group discussion allows students to learn how to "talk to someone." Through group discussion, students can acquire or refine a broad range of attributes, from basic oratory skills to a more sophisticated development of communicative competence to embracing and valuing dialogic interchange and reflexivity. In this article, the author explains how…

Objective: To gain practice with public speaking. Type of speech: Impromptu. Point value: 5% of course grade. Requirements: (a) References: 0; (b) Length: 1-2 minutes; (c) Visual aid: No; (d) Outline: No; (e) Prerequisite reading: None; (f) Additional requirements: None. This assignment offers students an opportunity to speak on a familiar (and…

Many middle school students claim that their voices are ignored in the classroom, where the attitude is too often that the teacher holds the one right answer. Instead of this approach, teachers may wish to use the Socratic Seminar, which prompts students to examine issues and ideas through dialogue and actively involves and motivates them, giving…

This study explored how asynchronous discussion supported by a Web-based learning system facilitated collaborative learning. The participants in this study consisted of the instructor, facilitators, and the students in a master's level course at a university in the south. Different sources of evidence were used in the study (individual/group…

Discussion boards have the unique capacity to support higher-order constructivist learning and the development of a learning community, This chapter provides ten conditions that support the effective use of an online discussion.

The benefits of active learning are well documented; nonetheless, the implementation of active learning strategies can be challenging in large lecture environments. The project will examine the research supporting active learning, present the implementation of simple active learning techniques in large lecture classes, and provide evidence to test…

This study investigated the effect of well- vs. ill-structured problem types on: (a) group interactional activity, (b) evolution of group participation inequities, (c) group discussion quality, and (d) group performance in a synchronous, computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environment. Participants were 60 11th-grade science students…

This book provides a sequence of 10 skill-building games and follow-up activities (beginning with "Getting Acquainted" and ending with "Arriving at a Consensus") designed to give students necessary practice in proper discussion techniques. Fifteen remedial exercises to treat such weaknesses as extreme aggressiveness or a habit of straying from the…

Results of a survey indicate that about 74 percent of those teaching introductory college speech courses use group discussion techniques as part of their class activities. The most prominent group assignments are panel discussions and symposiums. Other popular activities include discussions on determining class procedures, on social issues, and on…

It was hypothesized that increases in the amount and specificity of information furnished to a discussion group would facilitate group decision making and improve other aspects of group and individual performance. Procedures in testing these assumptions included varying the amounts of statistics, examples, testimony, and augmented information…

Describes the procedures, organizational pattern and design of basic soils course used by teaching assistants. Cites studies which support small-group discussion for promoting higher levels of intellectual functioning. Presents tables showing survey evaluation results of this method. (RT)

In a guided book review, small groups of teachers read a book pertaining to their professional area, think about what they read, and meet to discuss their reactions. The article explains the essential steps of the review process and discusses governance, recruitment, scheduling, and the merits of the process. (SM)

The purpose of this paper is to explore face-to-face discussions and electronic threaded discussions. Forty high school students engaged in both face-to-face and threaded discussions during a world history course. Their comments and interactions were analyzed, and they revealed that both types of discussion hold promise for helping students…