Today we implemented the "3-D Persuasion" task from Academic Conversations. Since fourth graders have been working on persuasive writing and using text evidence, my teammate and I thought this activity would fit in perfectly with our writing activity and provide another opportunity for students to practice having good conversations about their opinions.
The prompt students are working on this week is "Should Kids have Limits on Screen Time?". To preface this activity, we had students research both sides of the issue and find quotes supporting each point of view from articles on Newsela. This insured that all students had background knowledge on the subject (in addition to the LOADS of background knowledge they all have about screen time already :) - this is definitely a topic they were passionate about). Students had two days to research, and today they worked together in pairs on the seesaw activity with the goal of having a good conversation about screen time. We still talked about having good conversations and body language and I reminded students to use the sentence frames that we practiced with last week to help support their conversations, then use the seesaw as a supplement to help organize their thoughts. Students loved the seesaw itself, and I do think the visual of having the question (Should kids have screen time limits) in the see saw and then having the reasons on each side to weigh it to either side really helped some of my more visual learners. Students also really enjoyed having a hands-on "building" activity to support their writing, which I think was surprising and unexpected so it definitely grabbed their attention. As I observed my students' discussions, however, I found that most of them were very focused on filling out all of the spaces on the seesaw instead of just having a good conversation or using sentence frames. Last week, when we focused solely on how to talk to each other and that was their one goal, I think that students had much more fruitful discussions and connected more with one another. Today, I had a few groups who resorted to the typical "You take those reason squares and fill them out, I'll do these" method of working together. While this is great organization, it wasn't the outcome I was hoping for, especially after I was so pleased with the progress they made with their discussions last week. When I asked students to reflect on this activity, I took a poll of my class of whether they believed they had better conversations last week without the seesaw, or this week with it. Almost my entire class agreed that their conversations were more productive last week, citing things like peers being distracted or being too focused on just "finishing" the seesaw project to really think about how they were talking and responding to one another. They did enjoy getting to build something as part of the activity and seeing how the reasons weighed down the sides of the issue. If I did this activity again, I think that I would spend more time practicing JUST having a good conversation before introducing any supplementary materials that may take away from that experience. Another option would be to just use this as a pre-writing activity and have students complete it first, then have a discussion separately from this activity. As a visual, it was great, and I think that I will spend time next year training my class to have good conversations from the start of the school year. For this current class, however, I am eager to give them more time to solely practice conversing productively in the classroom.
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AuthorCourtney Hayes is currently a teacher at Lone Tree Elementary Magnet School in Colorado. She has teaching experience in both primary and intermediate grades, and is passionate about personalizing her instruction to meet the needs of all students. Archives
April 2021
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