The Skillful Teacher

Conversational Moves
An alternative to assigning conversational roles is to use the con-
versational moves exercise. Here the teacher pastes a number of
conversational moves (speaking directions) on 3 x 5 cards and then
randomly distributes these among participants at the beginning of
a discussion session. These moves should roughly parallel the crite-
ria for good discussion participation published in the course syllabus.
Students privately read the move on their card and are asked to
practice their move at some point during the discussion that fol-
lows. When the discussion is over the entire list of moves is dis-
tributed so people can see the wide variety of ways that discussion