Josh Deis, Trellis Mentor:

My mentee was able to facilitate productive STEM discourse by using the technical tools that were available to her via Pear Deck and other things in which she had a record of what students were saying, and she could ask students, “Do you agree or disagree with what so-and-so just said?” In that way, once again, this was getting all students’ voices involved, but then she had a record of what students said so that she could say things like, “So-and-so just mentioned this in their last response. Do we agree? Do we disagree?”

Neal Donahoe, Trellis Mentor:

When I saw my mentees facilitate productive STEM discourse, it really looked like giving the students a chance to think on their own, to refine their answers, and to practice answering those questions in small groups or with a partner before having to do it publicly. Allowing all students to engage with the question in their own way instead of the traditional “teacher poses a question, someone puts their hand up, they call on that right away,” which might engage one student. By allowing all students to really take their time to create their answers, to refine their answers, and to only pose questions that are actually meaningful, having questions that we can come back to, that we can refine our answers, and by the end of class, everyone can have a better understanding of how to answer that original question.

Jessica Chan, Trellis Scholar:

An example of how I facilitated productive STEM discourse in my class would be my unit on stem cell research. So they had to do readings, they had to research what stem cell research is, what are the differences between the types of stem cells. And I wanted them to ask questions to actually get information to help them with their Socratic seminar. So, after doing all this research, my students had to basically defend their stance on whether or not stem cell research should continue to be funded or not based on their assigned roles.

Lizzy Dutton, Trellis Scholar:

I would facilitate STEM discourse oftentimes by having students work in groups. And then one student’s job at the group—they would know ahead of time would be to go in front of the class and explain their group’s thinking. And the whole class would have an opportunity to see what every group thought about this open-ended problem.

Precious Listana, Trellis Scholar:

One example that I facilitated productive STEM discourse was when I was teaching Algebra II over Zoom. One of the projects that we had was to create the unit circle using art. Because part of math is, it’s something that you see in your day-to-day lives, so it’s really kind of allowing them to bridge that gap of what’s in their day-to-day existing lives and how that connects to the content that we were learning. I think something that was important for me was kind of allowing them to connect what is existing in their everyday to the content that we were learning and finding projects to kind of connect that together.