Navigating Fishbowl Discussions

To be completely candid, I suffer from a common teacher malady: I am a control freak. In my perfect mental image of a classroom, students sit quietly, in perfect rows, while I impart wisdom to them. In my first few years of teaching, any attempt to give control to a horde of high school-aged children was enough to cause heart palpitations and rapid breathing.

While this is understandable, it’s not healthy. Learners benefit from being active, not passive. I was hurting my classes by expecting them to absorb knowledge rather than pursue it.

Then I began fishbowl discussions—all the benefits of student-driven learning within an organized structure. Simply put, fishbowl discussions are a small group of learners who have a conversation in the center of the room, while the rest of the class observes from a larger circle around the group.

This format allows discussion in a small group, where individuals are more likely to speak up, but it also eliminates the noise level of having the entire class split into multiple small groups. This format has been a game-changer in my classroom, and has allowed all demographics of my classroom to speak. Shy kids who would never talk in a whole group setting are much more willing to voice their opinions when there is a system in place. Here are three tips for structuring a fishbowl discussion so that your class will have a positive learning experience:

1. Prepare for the Conversation

• When all the group members are prepared for the discussion, this puts everyone on an even playing field. The difficulty with spontaneous conversation is that many people need time to process their thoughts. Have your class prepare notecards for the discussion, and let them reference them during the conversation.

• Your most talkative class members probably need more structure to their thoughts, and your quieter learners most likely need the confidence from pre-writing their answers. Either way, preparation helps everyone.

• Preparation also allows for a higher quality of discussion. Students can write down textual evidence to use during the conversation, which turns the conversation from merely sharing opinions to providing well-backed statements.

2. Establish the Norms

• This will differ depending on your focus. For instance, you might want to establish norms about responding to others in a Socratic Seminar style. This helps build on previous conversation, rather than being a series of isolated comments. If you have multiple questions, or you want to rotate through the group, put a schedule on a table in the middle of the group so they can reference it.

• For your first few discussions, have more of a structure—you can rotate in a circle, have pre-prepared answers, and use less confrontational prompts. As your class becomes more comfortable with the discussion format, you can open it up, or discuss subjects that invite more debate. The temptation is to jump straight in the conversational deep-end, but resist that temptation. Practice basic conversational skills like looking at the speaker, politely voicing agreement or disagreement, and asking questions of other members.

• Practice and model each of these systems before allowing the group to work independently. I often sit in on the first conversation in order to model what you should do, and then stand off to the side for the rest of the conversations. There are infinite variations on the fishbowl—you can rotate members out one at a time, you can pair people in the outside circle with someone in the inner circle, and many more. Start simple and you can always add more. 

3. Involve the Audience

You must have the rest of the class be active listeners, or you have wasted a large chunk of instructional time. This could be as simple as taking notes, but what I’ve found most helpful is to give the outside circle a speaking and listening rubric and have them grade the group discussion. This can be tailored to Common Core standards, or can be as simple as a checklist of things like eye contact, posture, not interrupting, and responding to what another group member said.

This isn’t busy work—it’s improving future discussions. It’s easy to notice when someone else is slouching, using vocal fillers, or is unprepared, but we often miss it in ourselves. By becoming the grader, the observers start absorbing appropriate group behavior and hopefully, will start imitating it.

Lesson Planet Resources:

Sample Fishbowl Discussion, Socratic Seminar Questions