A few weeks ago my students completed a Book, Head, Heart set of reflections as a formative assessment and reflection for their day of in-class reading of their choice library books.

I borrowed this strategy from Bob Probst and Kylene Beers; you can read more about BHH in their book Disrupting Thinking.   Once they completed composing these reflections, I wanted my students to have a way to share their responses.  I turned again to the incomparable Sarah Brown Wessling for a conversation strategy, and I decided to go with converSTATIONS for three of my four classes (1st period did an indoor version of the Walk and Talk Partner Talk--see the end of this blog post for more information).  You can learn more about this strategy here at the Teaching Channel and over at Cult of Pedagogy, but I assigned 3-4 people per table and used the following conversation structure to help students talk through their BHH reflections and talk about their books/reading on January 18.

I designated on person as the one who would remain at their table area and 2-3 members who would rotate to the next table group to engage in the next round of conversation.    The result was meaningful discussions with all table members participating, sharing, listening, and learning.

 

 

This seemingly simple strategy is flexible, easy to modify and implement, and results in rich conversations while giving students the opportunity to hear many different voices and ideas.

For my 1st period who did the indoor Walk and Talk Book Chat, we used the BHH reflections as a the basis of the conversation with a partner as well as annotations they had completed as part of the in-class reading.

 

What are your favorite strategies for mixing movement and generating rich student discussions?