Discussion and educational talks in my classroom seem to be the middle of the road. After read out loud's in class Mrs.R talks briefly with the students. The discussion is normally all carried out by Mrs.R. The student's rarely interact with each other during discussion. I pretty much expect this however because the students are in 3rd grade and I think a discussion run by students that young wouldn't get very far without "scaffolding". After reading the article I believe my students engage more in a recitation.

The students who don't respond are numerous. I suspect it's because they either don't have confidence in their answer or they don't think that it is worthwhile too share. These types of students need a ton of encouragement when sharing their ideas and opinions. I think this isn't just a discussion scaffolding issue it is an entire school day issue. Students need to know that their opinions/ideas/conclusions are valued and that they benefit the class when they share. From the reading a lot of students responded when asked about why they need discussion "so the teacher can tell if we were paying attention" or them being able to answer the right question. This mentality needs to be reversed, students shouldn't want to have a discussion based off of the fact that their is right or wrong. They need to explore ideas with each other even if they are off-based or unlikely. That's the power of discussion, seeing all ideas and coming up with conclusions and even more ideas based off of what was previously said.

A simple resource to use to enhance discussion would be the students writing journals. During reading students should write down 3-5 things that they thought were interesting, had meaning or anything that they found to be thought provoking. I think this would help so students know some of their ideas going into this discussion and when they hear other student's ideas it might change their own and make them eager to share.