BONUS: Silent Discussions—How to Get Every Student Thinking (Without Anyone Saying a Word)

In this bonus episode, we’re joined by our very own EB Membership Manager, Genevieve, to talk about one of the most powerful (and underrated) strategies in the classroom—silent discussions.

If you’ve ever struggled to get every student engaged or wished for deeper thinking without the pressure of speaking out loud, this episode is for you. Genevieve shares how silent discussions can transform participation, boost student confidence, and get every learner involved—no talking required.

Transcript

Welcome And EB Academics Mission

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hi there, ELA teachers. Caitlin here, CEO and co-founder of EB Academics. I'm so excited you're choosing to tune into the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast. Our mission here is simple: to help middle school ELA teachers take back their time outside of the classroom by providing them with engaging lessons, planning frameworks, and genuine support so that they can become the best version of themselves, both inside and outside of the classroom. And we do this every single day inside the EB Teachers ELA portal. This is a special place we've developed uniquely for ELA teachers to access every single piece of our engaging, fun, and rigorous curriculum so that they have everything they need to batch plan their lessons using our EB Teacher digital planner that's built right into the app. Over the years, we've watched as thousands of teachers from around the world have found success in and out of the classroom after using EB Academics programs. And we're determined to help thousands more. If you're interested in learning more, simply click the link in the podcast description. And in the meantime, we look forward to serving you right here on the podcast every single week. Hello, teachers, and welcome back to the podcast. Today I am joined again by our membership manager, Genevieve. Welcome, Genevieve.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Hello, hello, everyone. Have you been on the podcast three times this year? I think so. Yeah. I think I've done a bonus episode every month.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

I love it. Well, thank you so much for joining me. It's so fun to have just someone else here and like the back and forth and different ideas and perspectives. So I know I really appreciate it, and I'm sure our listeners do too. So thank you for being here. Um, today we are talking about a discussion strategy that everyone in our EB Teacher community inside of our membership has really been raving about recently. We've talked about it before on the podcast, and you know, it's been brought up quite a few times, but I don't think we've ever really done an episode specifically about how to structure it in the way that we're gonna talk about today. So that is silent discussions. And it's been so popular, especially lately, that we wanted to dedicate a whole episode right now to walking you through exactly how to implement a silent discussion in your classroom. And this is gonna be helpful, obviously, whether you're a member of our EB teacher membership or not, um, so that you can use this really powerful discussion strategy. So, Genevieve, I know you're really excited for this one.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

Yeah, this is one of my favorites. Um, and I so I did silent discussions for the first time before I joined EB way back when. Um, but we have this embedded into so many of our resources. Um, so you know, if you're a member, it's done for you. But you can do this with just some butcher paper, chart paper, and markers, and you're good to go. It's one of my favorite go-to strategies. Yeah.

What A Silent Discussion Is

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Totally. Especially sometimes, I don't know about you. I mean, most of the time I was planned, but there were some days where I was not planned. I was like, we're just gonna do a silent discussion because I've got everything I need and it's just the easiest thing to implement, and it's so, so helpful. So I want to start first with well, what is a silent discussion? Let's start very basic back at the beginning, maybe for teachers who have never heard this terminology before. What exactly is it?

SPEAKER_00 3:23

A silent discussion is exactly what it sounds like. Students can have a full academic discussion without speaking. So instead of talking, they're responding in writing to questions that are posted around the room. And they also read and respond to each other's thinking, which is really nice. So it becomes this written conversation that just builds over time over your class period. What I love is that unlike a verbal discussion, every student participates. There's no hiding, there's no one student dominating, and kids who normally don't raise their hands suddenly have a voice. And it's really engaging at this time of year when you know everyone's energy is low, but expect expectations are still high. So yeah, that's what a silent discussion is.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

Great. And I love that too. And I think that's really important. That last part that you said is that with a silent discussion, every single student gets to participate, right? So often, even when we do Socratic seminars or a variety of other types of discussions, they're inevitably are students who take over the conversation. I unfortunately or fortunately was that student. And then we have students who just don't participate, but like participate kind of just enough to get the point. Whereas this is like, no, they actually get to really engage in a rich conversation about whatever text it is that you are teaching. So I think that that's just one of like the main bonuses of this strategy in your classroom. So I want to talk about why this works so well right now, right? This episode is airing in March. March is the month from hell. It is hard. It is just, it's long. It is sometimes doesn't have a spring break, you know, it's like brutal. And it's also coming upon testing season. So why is this an activity that you would suggest teachers do this time of year?

SPEAKER_00 5:17

Yeah, it is especially hard in March. Testing is coming up, and we're all just tired from January and February. So I love a silent discussion because it hits so many things at once. It builds student stamina, writing and thinking. It reinforces using text evidence, which is what we always want, you know, when we're writing. It shows um, it slows, sorry, it slows students down in a good way and it lowers anxiety because no one has to perform out loud. Like, you know, going back to those, those quieter students, they get to shine. Um, and then this is like really big. It feels different from normal class. That novelty will re-engage students. They're moving around the room, they're quiet, they're reflective. When I did this the first time, I was really nervous and I thought, this is just gonna flop, like no one's gonna write anything. And the novelty alone, kids were so serious and so into it that they just outshone all of my expectations. Um, so that was really nice. And so, like instead of worksheets and practice passages and even silent or sorry, Socratic seminars, silent discussions are just are just great. They're active, they're meaningful.

Step By Step Setup And Rotation

SPEAKER_01 6:32

And I think too, there's something about two things. One, being able to write your thoughts down as opposed to trying to like process them, verbalize them, get them out in an articulate way. A lot of times it's easier to write something like, I don't know about you, um, although it didn't help me because I'm divorced now, but when we were working on our marriage, um, you know, instead of like trying to have a conversation about it, because sometimes you don't get heard or you can't get your point across in the way that you're trying to or how you're feeling, to write it down can make such a difference. And then for the other person to read it too. And so I think that like that little piece that our students don't get to do that often when we have these types of discussions is incredibly valuable. And the other thing with that too is there's an element of peer pressure because their peers are going to be reading their responses like live, like in real time. It's not like an essay or that you're the only um reader, right? Like your classmates are reading what you're writing. So I think that's really important too. Um, so since this has been such a hot topic in our community lately, um I we want to make it super practical, right? I did a survey of the podcast from all of the people on our newsletter and all of our EB teachers. And like the one thing they said is they wanted an activity, like they want podcast episodes of activities that they can use tomorrow in the classroom, which one I love, but two, I'm also gonna say we should be planning a little bit more in advance than just tomorrow, but I say that with love. Um, but that is the goal of today's podcast episode is you could listen to it and you could try this tomorrow if you wanted to. So, Genevieve, can you walk us through exactly how to set up a silent discussion?

SPEAKER_00 8:18

Absolutely. All of the materials, like Caitlin said, you could grab these today and have it ready for tomorrow. Um, so the first thing you're going to need are some higher level discussion questions that relate to the text that your students are currently reading. And that can be, you know, you can come up with those on your own. You can use AI to help you generate those. You can ask your students to help you generate those, however, you want to do that. Just grab some higher level discussion questions that are not those yes or no questions. They have to really dig into those questions.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

Right. We're looking for like depth of knowledge level two, level three type questions. And if you don't know what depth of knowledge is that I'm talking about, we have a great podcast or I'm sorry, YouTube video all about that that I will link for you guys in the show notes that you can go watch. But sorry, if Jennifer, I disrupted you.

Debrief Reflection And Assessment

SPEAKER_00 9:04

No, that was perfect. I'm so glad you brought that up because that's exactly, exactly what kind of questions you want. Um, and then you need paper, large paper. You can use butcher paper, you can use that flip chart paper. I've even done this on whiteboard space. I've used like the big construction paper, um, post-its. I've done this digitally. Like you can really just any surface that you can write on, use that. Markers, pens, you know, whatever um writing utensil you hit you have, and then just space around your room. And if you do this digitally, you can do it on a shared slide deck. But I'll talk about the uh more about that later. Um, but really that's it. Paper, markers, and space. Um and so what you're gonna do is before class, you're going to post each question on its own large sheet of paper and hang them around your room. And you want enough space for about three students per poster at a time. So really use your whole room. And then you explain expectations. This is a silent discussion. And that was the part that I was the most nervous about. But my students really rose to that challenge. Um, you're gonna tell students all communication happens through writing. It can be that simple, like you can just tell students those instructions, um, you know, and I have my doubts, but the novelty really, really helped that them, you know, listen to those instructions or follow those. Um, and so students are gonna rotate from poster to poster and you can set a certain amount of time if you want. You can gauge, you know, how your students are doing. Are they like really writing a lot at each at each uh station or at each poster? And so at each one, they're going to answer the question directly on the paper. And so that's really important because when you rotate, the students rotate, they're gonna see those answers to the questions. They can use evidence from the text whenever possible. They, you know, you tell them you want analysis, you want everything that you would hear in a verbal discussion, they're just gonna write it down. You can even tell them, you know, everything that you would write in an essay, you write it on the paper. And then I have my students initial after their response, or they can sign their name, like write their name, just so that you can kind of have that accountability. Um, and then after their first poster, it shifts. So you'll call time, you'll say, okay, it's time to rotate, tell them how to rotate. And then when they get to the next poster, they're reading the question, but they're not just answering the question, although they can do that, but they're also reading the classmates' responses from the previous group and building on those. And so, you know, the first time you do this, you can just kind of see how it goes. When I did this in my classroom for the first time, I noticed that some of my students were not building, we're not responding. And so we talked about that after our first silent discussion. And they got better, they got better at it over time, just like a Socratic seminar, right? Um, they can agree with each other, they can disagree, they can add more evidence, they can ask follow-up questions, like really anything goes. And I tell my students that their goals are to respond to at least five different questions and respond to or expand on at least five classmates' comments. And so you can, if you're timing this, then you know, you just say you're gonna respond to each question and then respond to one comment on each poster. But if you you don't have to time it, you can say once you're done at one poster, go to the next whenever you're ready. And my students worked up to that and and then I give them a goal like that. Um and then if they are disagreeing or agreeing with other students, they have to say why this is super important. We've talked a lot about this because it's that justification piece, right? Um, they they just can't say agree, they have to give those specific examples. So it just becomes a chain of thinking across the room. And then I and then I just teach like explicitly um, you know, what is respectful written discourse, you know, give them sentence starters if if they need them. I agree with your evidence and what to add. I respectfully just disagree because. And so I just encourage students to write clearly and thoughtfully. Um, so that's really kind of the basic. And then I can I can add some more. Um yeah, give us some more. Yeah, let's more. So a twist that I add is um what I did the first time, and I didn't even realize I was doing it because I was reading some of my students' writing, and I wanted to comment. So I jumped in and I wrote with them for a few minutes, and they all kind of were like, Oh, okay. And they liked reading my responses, and they were even able to respond to what I was saying. Um, and so it's twofold, right? It gets them thinking a little more. Those questions that you would ask in a verbal discussion, maybe to guide them a little bit, you could write those. And it also models what strong thinking looks like and you know, like how they're doing the activity. So that's the little twist that I put in. That's fine. I love that. Yeah. So after they've rotated through their posters, um, you know, you can stop the time or, you know, if if most of them are done with most of the posters. Then I tell them, I'm gonna give you time now to go back and reread any earlier conversations that you have participated in just to kind of see how the thinking evolved. Now you can go back and read those responses that people wrote to your comments. And you can add even more to a conversation that you started if you want to. Um, you can, you know, respond to something that you maybe, you know, you feel strongly about. They really like that part because they can, you know, see what other people said about what they commented on. And they, you know, they're they're my they're middle schoolers, they like always want to know what other people are thinking. And then we come back together as a class and debrief and we talk about which responses surprised them, which ideas they agreed with the most and why, and what they learned from reading other pe other students' thinking. And then the last thing I do is um have students complete a short reflection and I assess participation using a rubric. The rubric can assess participation comprehension, the use of textual evidence, textual analysis, like how well they responded, not just did they agree or disagree, right? We talk a lot about that in my class and that justification piece again. Um, and I like the short reflection because it helps them to reflect on like the whole process and how you know we can get better as not better, but how we can improve the process as a class for next time. And then honestly, that full process from setup to reflection, that's what makes a strategy powerful because they're like thinking about the whole, the whole process. They're thinking through every part of it. So it's just, it's a really great strategy.

What Students Do Better After

SPEAKER_01 16:13

I love it. And it's not just, you know, writing and responding once and then moving on. The other thing that I did with this with my students is I told them like one of these questions might be a short response on your test, or it might be the actual response to literature question that I give you for your final essay for this particular, you know, unit that we're studying. And, you know, I did that a little bit differently in my class. I know a lot of teachers can't do this, but I always did a 60-minute timed essay for our end-of-unit essay. It was always in class. You only had 60 minutes, you could not take it home. It wasn't typed, it was handwritten, you didn't know what the question was going to be. Kind of like how an AP class runs, to be honest with you, in high school. And that might be my high school teacher coming into the middle school classroom. Um, and but they could totally do it. And so what was great is they really wanted to gather like as much data or information from their classmates as possible. And one of the things that you can add to this too is I gave my students a piece of paper or like a handout that had the questions on it that were up around the classroom. So as they were answering up around the classroom and then going back through and seeing other people's, you know, expansion on their ideas or other people's disagreement with their ideas, that they could jot down notes for themselves so that they had kind of like a study guide, if you will, for the upcoming test and unit tests and things like that. Um, so I think there's all kinds of ways to like add little enhancements here or there to a silent discussion. It really is not like here's a question, write your answer on a post-it and move on. Like it's so much more in-depth and involved than that. Um, but we just have to set those structures in place, thanks to Genevieve, what you just shared. We know exactly what we need to do. So thank you for that. Um, another question with this is what do you notice from your students after using this particular type of discussion in your classroom?

SPEAKER_00 18:08

Yeah, um, I notice a few things consistently. So, kind of going back to those students who are a little quieter during verbal discussions, they tend to feel more successful. I do a lot of surveys in my class, not a lot, but I will survey them at the end of the quarter or semester, you know, and I'll ask them questions. And this is one of the things that I asked them. Like, how did you like the silent discussions and why? And this is one of the things that they said. I felt like I could speak up a little more because it was through writing. Um, our stronger writers can naturally mentor others through their responses. Kids slow down and actually read what their classmates think. And because everything is visible, accountability goes way up. There's no like, I didn't participate, I don't want to participate. There's kind of that positive peer pressure, right? Like everyone in the class is doing it. Um, and students are like letting me know that they did participate. They are, they want to point out this is what I said, you know, like this is what I wanted to share. Um, so it's really fun to hear, you know, that so-and-so wrote a lot, even though they don't usually in their essay, maybe, right? So it also strengthens reading comprehension, written argument, use of evidence, and academic language, all the things that we write in essays, all the things that we do in test prep without it feeling like an essay or just another test prep activity.

Final Tips And How To Share

SPEAKER_01 19:31

Yeah. So that's exactly right. I love that. And there was one other thing that I wanted to say about this at the very end. I lost it. The thought is gone. That's okay. It'll come back to me as I'm falling asleep at nine o'clock tonight. Yes. Um, we do have a resource, right? If you are an EB teacher and you're a part of our membership that fits right into this. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 19:54

Yes, we have a few resources that um incorporate the silent discussion in either the through or the beyond lessons. I can't think of them off the top of my head, but I'm looking now.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

Okay. And we can drop it into the community if you're an EB teacher. Um, but those include like the rubric, the reflection thing that you're talking about. So if you are an EB teacher, you don't have to create that yourself. Um, but the whole point of sharing this with you guys is even if you are not one of our EB teachers, and even if you're not a part of our membership, you don't have to have our resource in order to implement this at all. You can 100% still do it just based on what we shared with you. Really, what it is is you need strong questions from whatever text you're reading. Like the quality of your life is determined by the quality of the questions that you ask. So just like with Chat GBT or any AI, the outputs that we're gonna receive are based on the inputs that we put into it. And if we want a better output from our students, we need to create strong questions. So that's why we really want to use that depth of knowledge wheel, level two and level three types of questions. Definitely go check out that YouTube video if you haven't watched it, I'll include it in the show notes for you guys. Um, but that's really it. Strong questions, high expectations of your students, follow the structure that Genevieve just walked you through. And you might find that you want to add like a little, I don't know if I'm gonna say this properly, Genevieve, but like je ne sais quoi of your own. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Like your own unique twist. That's exactly it. To how you do silent discussions in your classroom. Um, do you have any last advice for teachers who are feeling just overwhelmed right now in March as they're listening to this episode?

SPEAKER_00 21:38

I would say it's gonna be okay. We're gonna get through it and try one. Try one silent discussion. Um, it's great for flexing students' critical thinking skills, and it's honestly a nice break for you. I will say sometimes I, you know, sometimes I needed that tomorrow lesson, even though I was ready. I was not. Mentally ready or emotionally ready for like a full day of teaching. And I thought I'm just gonna do a silent discussion. And that's what makes this so great. You can grab the markers, you can grab the large chart paper and like think of some questions and be done with it. You're still engaged, of course, and your class is really engaged, but class that day is just a little bit quieter. And sometimes we need one of those days, right? You don't need to overhaul everything. You can use the text that you're teaching. It's just a small routine that creates really big engagement, gives students ownership of their thinking, and gives you a break from talking for however long your class period is. So and that's that's the kind of magic we need to march.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

Totally. I know. My brain, like, I need silence quite often because it's just too much for my brain to process. And I just remember this being like, okay, we're gonna have a nice, easy day today. And my students are still gonna be highly engaged and it's gonna be incredibly effective, even for the students, especially for the students who don't normally participate. So, like we talked about on our Monday mindset episode at the beginning of this month, like, March is not for reinventing anything, it is for doing more of what works, and this is what works. Do a silent discussion. You can do it every week, every other week, and your students will be thrilled, and so will your brain. Okay, thank you guys for being here. Genevieve, thank you so much for walking us through this and sharing how it works in your classroom and your ideas. So thank you for being here. We appreciate you. Thank you. I'm always happy to be here. And to everyone listening, if you do try a silent discussion, you're an E B teacher, post in the E B teacher community, let us know how it goes. And if you are not a part of our membership, you can let me know over on Instagram at EB Academics, and I would love to hear from you. And we are opening the membership this summer. So if you're like, oh, I want to be a part of the club, I want to be a part of the insider situation happening, um, be on the lookout in your emails from us for more information about how you can join and become an EB teacher and a part of our amazing community. All right, you guys, thank you so much for joining us, and we will see you in the next episode. Bye, everyone. Bye.