Field Experience Blog

                                  Discussions and Questioning in the Classroom Reflecting back on my observation experiences, I have witnessed both optimal and less-than-optimal class discussion situations. In one not-so-optimal class discussion scenario, the teacher was asking the students to verbally recap events that took place in the novel that they were reading — Mudbound by Hillary Jordan. The teacher went about this very methodically, and was prompting the students to essentially list the events in sequential order instead of asking the students to dig deeper and analyze the significance of these events. The students seemed largely uninterested in this discussion, and the teacher had a hard time coaxing students to volunteer to participate in the verbal recapping. In this situation, the discussion strictly fit a Teacher/Question-Student/Answer dynamic, and the students were not encouraged to further drive the discussion with their own innovative thoughts and ideas becaus