Class discussions

I have had a lovely couple of days working in Huntly with the Year 1 to 4 children which are always a lot of fun to work with. Teachers had planned out a lesson and I was meant to be co-teaching alongside them... although I always feel a better descriptor would be interferer or interrupter!
As a part of the lessons, there were opportunities for class discussions and watching these in action really got me thinking about the whole idea of 'on the mat' time (or 'sitting at desks' if they're seniors!).
It's not something I have spent time musing, it really is a 'right now' type of thing but I think it's a valid topic for schools and syndicates to be discussing further. I'd like to ask the question of 'why are you using a class discussion right now?' along with 'how will you know that you have achieved the objective?'. For example, if you are have decided to see whether children understand what you did yesterday with them, how will you know that they all understand? 
The class discussions that I was a part of sometimes had the same children answering, small groups disengaged -who would be brought back in to the discussion "And what do you think Paul?" followed by a "Please listen carefully so you do have a view"! My time in front of the classrooms I'm certain were no different. There were certain children I'd ask because I thought they would know the right answers for everyone to listen to so they knew as well, certain children I didn't ask because I didn't want a 7 1/2 minute response or a gripping account of how their cat went missing the other night (and I know you all have those kids too!). But if the point is knowing what the children understand, and the medium is "class discussion", was this best?
Sometimes class discussions can be a bit of 'teacher tennis' with the teacher firing the ball out, children answering back and then the teacher firing out to a different child. What if the discussion could carry on without the teacher so other children instead responded? Often students aren't really listening to the person before them -they're desperate to have their view even if it's already been shared three times! 
This isn't a topic that I'm an expert in but I wanted to share my thoughts and observations, not as criticisms but more of 'so how can we improve these?'. And I'm thinking of me visiting classrooms too! One teacher shared how she almost forced the discussion by asking a question and then simply stopping... those seconds of waiting for a response would have been very long! Slowly children did get the idea that this was their discussion not hers!
The science talk moves (on the TERC website) are brilliant to support this kind of thinking with well thought out prompts to promote conversation. 
If it's always the same group of children playing the class discussion game, how could you better involve them? If you want them all listening carefully, how do we do this? As I said, I'm no expert but this week's discussions came up with some ideas...

• changing the culture of what class discussions are
• lots more work in pairs or threes or even groups rather than 'teacher tennis'; children 
• children recording ideas shared in a discussion -the teacher might prompt this or scaffold it... Ooooh, that's really interesting... make a note of what Paora has just said about a ski car working best on the sand. We might investigate that tomorrow. 
• wrapping up the discussion by getting children to write down what they learnt from the discussion or an interesting point or a question that they've had resulting from the conversations
• using the talk moves... or even better, the children using the talk moves! 

I guess that you would need to model and scaffold the children through at first but I'm imagining better discussions! A question that popped into my head as I was writing these ideas: how are children accountable to listen during the discussions? Is being silent enough to 'appear' to be engaged?

I think this would be a great topic for staff meetings -what do teachers think? And how can we improve the point of them?

Anyway that's all! I'd love to hear your ideas about how to enrich class discussions. Why not stick some of these questions in your planner to think about your next discussion (or one you've just had). You could even video one! I get a lot of teachers doing this with my modelled lessons. Now I want to go back to see how the discussions were for all the children! 

thanks for reading

Paul