Authentic Lessons for 21st Century Learning

Discourse in Social Studies

Sarah Brewer, Shayna Pond, Chelsee Wilson | Published: August 20th, 2021 by K20 Center

Summary

While it is important for students to engage in classroom discourse in their social studies classes in order to develop understanding, purposeful and effective opportunities for students to share their thinking and reasoning do not happen on their own. They require deliberate planning and facilitation from teachers. During this interactive session, participants will define discourse, discuss its importance in the classroom, and explore a variety of instructional strategies and technology resources that foster discourse in the social studies classroom.

Essential Questions

  • Why is discourse important to social studies instruction?

  • How do we foster discourse in the social studies classroom?

Learning Goals

  • Participants will explore instructional strategies and resources that promote discourse in the social studies classroom.

  • Participants will analyze how these instructional strategies and resources encourage discourse in the social studies classroom.

Materials List

  • Devices to access the Internet

  • Honeycomb Harvest Cards (attached; 1 per participant or small group)

  • Laws and Practices Shaping the Lives of Women in 1848 handout (attached; one per participant)

  • Note Catcher (attached; one per participant)

  • Pens/pencils

  • Presentation Slides (attached)

  • Sticky Notes

  • Say Something handout (attached; 1 per participant)

Snapshot

Engage

Participants offer descriptive words for what discourse looks like and participate in a poll about the benefits of discourse.

Explore

Participants explore three strategies that support discourse in the classroom by role playing as students.

Explain/Extend

Participants discuss the benefits of each of the three strategies for incorporating discourse in their classroom.

Extend/Evaluate

In small groups, participants discuss which strategies they could use in their classroom and consider how they would modify them to best serve their students. Participants also reflect and discuss in small groups how these strategies can be effective at promoting discourse.

Engage: What is Discourse?

Display slide 3. Quickly review the essential questions:

  • Why is discourse important to social studies instruction?

  • How do we foster meaningful discourse in the social studies classroom?

Display slide 4. Identify the learning goals of the lesson:

  • Participants will explore instructional strategies and resources that promote discourse in the social studies classroom.

  • Participants will analyze how these instructional strategies and resources encourage discourse in the social studies classroom.

Display slide 5. Divide participants into small groups. Ask the groups to explore the definition of discourse in a classroom setting by considering the following question: What words or phrases best describe discourse as it relates to the social studies classroom?

Ask participants to use their phones or their devices to go to menti.com and use the custom Mentimeter code to connect them with the presentation. As participants enter their responses, use presentation mode on Mentimeter to display the Word Cloud on the board as it is being created. Once all responses have been submitted, call on participants to share their observations about the ideas that were contributed to the Word Cloud.

Display slide 6. As a concluding activity, invite the groups to discuss the notion that classroom discourse encompasses a variety of written and spoken forms of communication, including students’ engaging in expressing their ideas, discussing their reasoning, and representing their thinking. Discourse can be talking, listening, writing, reflecting, or representing.

The Value of Discourse

Show slide 7: Review the list of items illustrating the importance of classroom discourse.

Direct participants to the Menti site. Ask them to read through the items on the poll screen. Have participants choose the statement they feel best captures why it is important to promote discourse in the classroom.

Before displaying the results of the poll, ask participants to discuss with their small groups which item they believe most important. Ask each person to share what they chose and explain their rationale.

After groups have had a chance to share with each other, display the results of the poll and ask for volunteers to share their thoughts.

Return to slide 7 and conclude the discussion by noting that each of these items is equally important.

Exploring Discourse Strategies

Participants first explore the strategy by role-playing students using a social studies content example. After an introduction to the strategy, they explain in their own words how using this strategy can integrate and sustain discourse in the classroom. After they have explored all of these strategies, they Extend their thinking by considering how to use these strategies in their own classrooms.

Discourse Strategy 1: Analyzing texts with Surprising, Interesting, Troubling

Explore

Show slide 8.

Give each participant a copy of the Laws and Practices Shaping the Lives of Women in 1848. Advise the participants they will role-play students using the S-I-T strategy. Identify the document as one they might use if teaching a U.S. history course. The document is a list of laws and social practices that shaped the lives of women in 1848, the year of the Seneca Falls Convention, which was the first public meeting devoted to women’s rights.

Show slide 9. Have participants read the document closely. Ask them to note an idea or fact that surprises them, an idea or fact that interests them, and an idea or fact that troubles them.

Once participants have had a chance to read the document individually, ask them to discuss their responses with their small groups. Give each three sticky notes and ask that each group work together to write a response for S-I-T, one response on each sticky.

Inform the participants that this activity is used in The Seneca Falls Convention and the Declaration of Sentiments lesson on K20’s LEARN website.

Explain/Extend

Show slide 9. Pass out the Discourse in Social Studies Note Catcher handout (see Attachments). Tell participants that based on their experience with the S-I-T strategy, consider the following question: How can the S-I-T strategy foster discourse in your classroom?

Ask participants to discuss this in their small groups. Request that they fill out the S-I-T Strategy section on the Note Catcher handout.

When groups are finished discussing the strategy, reassemble as a whole group. Have groups to share their thoughts with the whole group.

Summarize the discussion, highlighting that S-I-T can promote discourse because it provides students with a structure for content-centered discussions in which students share their thinking with their peers. They must make a claim and then support that claim with evidence and reasoning. This could be done both verbally and in writing.

Discourse Strategy 2: Making Connections with Honeycomb Harvest

Explore

Show slide 10. Identify the next strategy, Honeycomb Harvest.

Show slide 11. Explain to participants that the terms for this activity are related to American government.

Provide sets of the Honeycomb Harvest cards to each participant or small group of participants. Give participants about 5-10 minutes to arrange the honeycombs to best represent their understanding of the relationship among these government concepts.

Consider giving an example to help participants get started. For example, you could say that the "separation of powers" and "checks and balances" honeycombs could touch because they both involve the three branches of government.

When the participants have completed the task, have each individual share their reasoning with their small group. If small groups complete their harvests together, ask that they rotate to another group to see another arrangements to compare and contrast.

Bring the group back together and discuss the variety in the arrangements. Emphasize that it is likely that students will also produce a variety of arrangements. As long as students can explain their reasoning, their arrangement should be considered correct.

Explain/Extend

Show slide 11. Based on their experience with the Honeycomb Harvest, have participants consider the following question: How can the Honeycomb Harvest strategy foster discourse in your classroom?

Have participants discuss this with their small groups. Have them fill out the Honeycomb Harvest strategy section on their Note Catcher handout.

After the groups have discussed their perceptions, bring the whole group back together and ask them to share their thoughts with the whole group.

Summarize the discussion highlighting that the Honeycomb Harvest enables students to explain their reasoning and negotiate their thinking with their peers to represent their understanding of the content.

Discourse Strategy 3: Academic Conversations with Say Something

Explore

Show slide 12.

Introduce the final strategy called Say Something. Give each participant a copy of the Say Something handout and explain that this handout can be given to students any time there is going to be small group or whole group discussion.

Show slides 13 and 14. Consider how participants can use this strategy to examine historical documents. Have participants read the Langston Hughes poem called I, Too, am an American, a poem that might be read as part of a high school US history lesson or unit about the Harlem Renaissance. This poem is included on the Say Something handout and on slide 14.

Ask participants to read the poem and look over the Say Something handout. Give them five minutes with their small groups to practice using the Say Something sentence starters to engage in an academic conversation about the poem and its historical significance.

Explain/Extend

Show slide 15. Ask participants to consider, based on their experience with the Say Something strategy, the following question: How can the Say Something strategy help foster discourse in your classroom? Have participants discuss this with their small groups. As they discuss, they can also fill out the Say Something strategy section of their Note Catcher handout.

When groups are finished discussing this strategy, bring the whole group back together and ask for groups to share their thoughts with the whole group.

Summarize the discussion, noting the connections participants made between Say Something and promoting discourse in the classroom. Highlight that Say Something can support discourse because it helps students develop the skills necessary to participate in academic conversation where they must express and share their ideas as well as consider and listen to the ideas and opinions of others.

Extend/Evaluate: Reflecting on Discourse

Conclude the discussion by reviewing slide 15. Ask participants to consider their students and reflect on how these strategies would look in their classroom. Discuss the following questions in their small groups:

  • Which of today’s strategies do you plan to implement in your classroom? Why?

  • Are these strategies likely to be effective in promoting discourse? Explain.

  • How might you modify these strategies to work with your students? Explain.

Encourage participants to record their responses on the back of the Note Catcher handout, if they wish.

After groups have had a chance to discuss, ask participants to record their answers on their Note Catchers and have volunteers share responses to the whole group.

Research Rationale

Authentic learning—exploring meaningful concepts, their relationships, and real-world context—is inherent in disciplined inquiry and complex understanding. Rule (2006) noted that rich problems adhere to principles such as "personal meaningfulness to students; construction, refinement, or extension of a model; self-evaluation; documentation of mathematical thinking; useful prototype for other structurally similar problems; and generalization to a broader range of situations."

Not surprisingly, these traits are similar to the traits of good essential questions. There are a number of academic benefits for students and teachers that can be accomplished by giving time and space in the classroom for students to have conversations. When student conversation is an integrated part of the learning, students get practice working with one another; they get practice being accountable to others, listening, sharing their ideas in ways that others can understand, and working together to make decisions (Gillies, 2016; Resnick, Michaels, & Connor, 2010; Gibbs, 2006).

The learning that results from student conversations increases student motivation, self-esteem, and problem-solving outcomes. For teachers, giving students a space to speak provides insight into how students organize their thoughts and can serve as formative assessments of what students are learning over the course of a lesson.

Resources