Blending Tech and Face-to-Face in Small-Group Discussions

My sophomores were prepping this week for a timed writing in which they explored perspectives on the definition of "risk" to start off our Risk Unit. For the writing, they needed to select three different "risk" essays to read as a small group: essays about experiences people had that could be seen as risky in some way. The small groups would discuss their selected essays, leaving each student with ideas to explore further in the timed writing.

Kind of inadvertently, I wove technology throughout this live discussion. To prepare for the discussion, students needed to read their essays and prepare some quick reactions to what they read. They took notes on these ideas in a Google Doc submitted to Classroom:

Students had three "response options" for each essay to prepare for their discussions.

On the day of the discussion, I used Google Slides on the overhead to establish a clear protocol to keep kids on task and purposeful as they talked. Perhaps subconsciously inspired by recent United Airlines events, I analogized the discussion protocol to a flight on an airplane. The first stage of the discussion was our "Taxiing on the Runway":

I like timers in small-group discussions only because I've found that they help students stay on topic SO much more than without that clear boundary of time. With this first stage, most groups said they needed another 1-2 minutes more, which wasn't a problem at all--I appreciated their awareness and communication. 

Then we got into the deep part of the discussion: flying! (Although, we had a short discussion in class about how that's where the analogy really falls apart--if we're flying high in the sky, we're not really "deep" per se, right? Oh, well.) 

Walking around the room, I heard students theorizing, questioning, referring to their prep notes, and offering connections to the text. Hooray for clear focus!

We closed the discussion with, you guessed it, the landing.

I had reviewed the whole protocol with the class beforehand. While the Padlet was originally supposed to be a processing opportunity post-discussion, I found that many students appreciated having the Padlet open during the discussion to jot down notes from what they heard in the discussion and new thinking they had about the essays:

Overall, investing the time beforehand to structure the discussion (but to still allow for flexibility during class) paid off in fruitful student conversations and clear organization for their ideas so they could reference them later. I love when technology and face-to-face time can work hand-in-hand so smoothly!