RPI: Ground Rules for Talk

During this session, I wanted to be sure that all my students understood the "Ground Rules for Talk" So, I launched this as a whole class interactive mat session beginning with an overview of the learning intentions and success criteria. First, I introduced to my class the concept of a "learning discussion." We had a chat about when we would have a learning discussion. Then, I went over each ground rule with adding an action for the students to do when saying it back to me. We had a lot of fun and I was really impressed to see how well the students remembered each ground rule when prompted with the action. I intend to make a video of my students reviewing the actions one day next week to share on my blog. 

Once we went over the ground rules, I met with my focus reading group and my RPI mentor came in to observe our time together. I really thought for our first go, the students did very well. I did find it challenging not to jump in and reiterate or ask questions, especially when there was an exceptionally long pause, but I know this is something that I am still working on. When we had a lull in our discussion, I encourage one of the students to ask a question and it was noted by my mentor that while students were answering the questions, they weren't sharing evidence/examples from the text. This is a great reminder for me to jump in a prompt for evidence and examples. 

At the end of our discussion, we filled out the group reflection table, which I almost completely forgot about as I was actively watching the time knowing that my class had sport very soon.  So, we filled it out rather quickly and I hope in the future that I can make this more of a time for students to hold the discussion and fill it out without me being part of the conversation.