The video starts after the teacher takes a pause from reading the book Galimoto. She asks students to share what’s happened so far in the story, and uses wait time before calling on the first student, Desi. After Desi responds, the teacher uses a talk move: “Who’d like to add to that?” When teachers use this particular move, a few things can happen. The student who adds can genuinely add on to what the first student said, adding more detail to the response or extending the response in some way. But another thing that could happen with this talk move, is that the student who is called on to add really does not add to what the first person said. They just share their answer to the teacher’s original question. Noah, the student called on to add, really does add to Desi’s response by saying that the wires Desi mentioned are for Kondi’s galimoto. 

The teacher then asks, “What are you wondering in this part of the story?” The teacher calls on three students to share their wondering before going back to read aloud. 

In this segment, the teacher continues to read the story aloud. When she stops, she asks the class to turn to their partner and talk about what has happened in the story. Then, she brings the class together for a share out. 

Other possible questions that could have been posed for this share out include: “What did your partner share that you did not think of when remembering what happened in this part of the story? Or did you disagree about what happened in the story? Explain why you disagreed.” For the first question, students may just be repeating what their partner said, but doing so could make the partner feel affirmed – they had a good idea and their partner liked it enough to share with the whole class. 

In this next segment, the teacher supports student contributions in several ways. First, she gives them some “think time” for the question. During this “think time” the room is silent for about 15 seconds. Second, she asks students to turn to a partner to share – a strategy she used in the previous segment so that every student has the opportunity to share their ideas. Third, she prompts students to use the sentence stem, “I wonder…” in their responses to the question, which helps them focus on the question she asked. Finally, she jots down their answers on the whiteboard, which is affirming and allows them to see the wonderings of others. 

At 9:32, the teacher responds specifically to Jenny’s wondering. Before jotting down Jenny’s wondering, she confirms with Jenny that she was talking about Kondi when Jenny said “he.” This is an important move because teachers too often make assumptions about what students say in their discussion comments. This teacher did not want to assume, so she went back to Jenny to confirm before writing down Jenny’s wondering.

At 10:16, the teacher remembered that earlier in the class, Josh had wondered what a Galimoto is, and she noted that his second wondering is if a Galimoto is a car. She then prompts him to share why he thinks it might be a car and share what made him change his thinking. Thus, she is asking him to go public with his thinking, which is one of the most powerful things about classroom discussion.