Current and Societal Issue Discussion Toolkit

Resources for Grounding Current and Societal Discussions in Disciplinary Content and High-Quality Texts

Teachers play an important role in facilitating knowledge grounding for discussion. Attributes of knowledge grounding include engaging students to:

• Analyze a variety of credible texts in order to synthesize information for discussion, taking note of any bias and the author’s purpose.
• Identify multiple perspectives related to current and societal issues.
• Synthesize information to address essential and supporting questions related to the discussion.

Resources

• Student Government Affairs Program Newsletter provides a monthly newsletter and archive looking at current and societal issues with ideas for informed action.
• All Sides provides news stories on issues from publications representing the viewpoint of the left, right, and center of the political spectrum.
• The Choices Program empowers students to understand the relationship between history and current issues while developing the analytical skills to become thoughtful global citizens.
• Illinois Civics provides lesson plans focused on current and societal issues aligned with the Illinois Social Science standards and civic course requirements.
• KQED – Above the Noise is a YouTube series for teens, cuts through the hype and dives deep into the research behind the issues affecting their daily lives. Every other Wednesday, the series investigates controversial subject matter to help young viewers draw informed conclusions, while inspiring media literacy and civic engagement.
• National Issues Forum provides issue guides to promote deep inquiry on essential questions facing our communities.
• ProCon.org has over 90 debate topics complete with pro and con arguments featuring quotes and statistics from experts, historical information, and other pertinent research.
• The Pulitzer Center – Issues Project provides deep reporting on a single issue.
• Street Law – Deliberations is a robust library of resources including materials for several topics, social-emotional learning resources to support students as they participate in deliberations, and an instructional video and handouts to help teachers and students understand the deliberation process.

High-quality current and societal issue discussions rarely “happen.” Much like a good lesson plan, planning and intention are needed to facilitate student-to-student dialogue. Attributes of successful teacher facilitation allow students to:

• Employ a variety of rhetorical tools (logos, ethos, pathos) in an effort to inform and understand others.
• Actively listen and respond appropriately to their peers to corroborate, clarify, question or provide an alternative perspective using appropriate transitions, acknowledging the thoughts of others and inviting others into the conversation to encourage the sharing of multiple viewpoints.
• Utilize a discussion strategy that is appropriate for the content and focus of the conversation.

Engaging Student Voice and Lived Experiences to Generate Questions for Current and Controversial Issue Discussions

The K-12 Illinois Social Science standards honor student voice as an important inquiry tool for generating both essential and supporting questions for classroom use. Here are tools teachers can use to engage students in using their lived experiences and curiosity in forming questions for deliberation and discussion.

• Question Formulation Technique provides a simple protocol to have students develop, revise, and use questions in civic inquiry.
• The Q Matrix provides question starters at various Depths of Knowledge.
• Visible Thinking strategies from Project Zero provides question strategies including See-Think-Wonder and Think-Puzzle-Explore.
• The 5 Whys Technique has students create a series of questions to probe deeply into the root causes of current and societal issues.
• Is Your Classroom Academically Safe?  from Cult of Pedagogy provides powerful ways you can make your classroom a place where students feel free to ask questions and take academic risks.

Rhetorical Tools

• The Constitutional Rights Foundation Civic Action Project provides an overview of rhetorical tools with The Basics of Persuasion.
• Four-Step Refutation Strategies from the Department of Communication, University of Pittsburgh emphasizes the 4 “S’s” of signposting, stating, supporting, and summarizing.

Active Listening

• Facing History and Ourselves: Learn to Listen, Listening to Learn is a lesson designed to help strengthen students’ listening skills.
• Greater Good Science Center – UC Berkeley How to Listen with Compassion sets out a pathway for belonging and understanding.
• Discussion Transition Statements from Civics Instructional Coach Candace Fikis provides sentence starters for corroboration, clarification, questioning, counterpoints, and inviting others in.

Discussion Strategies

• The Big List of Discussion Strategies from Cult of Pedagogy provides a plethora of ideas to engage students’ voices.
• Dialogue vs. Debate from the United States Institute of Peace explains the difference between dialogue and debate.
• Education Strategies for Structured Discussion – Northwest Association for Biomedical Research provides a variety of tools to allow for respectful discourse about potentially contentious issues, promote speaking skills and active listening skills, and provide ways for both talkative and quiet students to have their ideas recognized in a productive way.
• Generation Global connects 6-12th grade students from across the world in dialogue through facilitated videoconferences and team blogging. Conversations are supported with an engaging curriculum anchored in essential questions.
• Ground Rules for Philosophical Chairs is a video that provides an overview of a strategy used to help students practice persuasion skills and flexibility and responsiveness to the ideas of others.
• The Habits of Mind: “A framework for thinking” that aims to make us–as individuals and communities– more thoughtful, responsive, and innovative. The website includes PDFs that offer strategies for teachers, leaders, students, and parents. Especially relevant to discussion skills are  “Thinking about Your Thinking,” “Listening and Understanding with Empathy,” and “Questioning and Posing Problems.”
• iCivics has created a Roadmap for Teaching Current and Controversial Issues with five Teacher Guides and a series of brief informational videos (3-4 minutes) to help you prepare for teaching controversial issues in your classroom.
• Mismatch powered by AllSides connects students across the country in live video conversations to promote understanding across differences.
• Move Over Debate, It’s Time to Deliberate from the Civic Education Research Group demonstrates the Structured Academic Controversy (SAC). The SAC is used to expose students to multiple perspectives on an issue before engaging in a discussion to reach a consensus.
• The National Museum of African American History and Culture has developed excellent resources on how to discuss race with all ages.
• Socratic Seminars in Science from the US National Library of Medicine provide materials and a framework for discussion of open issues to promote understanding of complex topics.
• Stefanie Wager, the Iowa Social Studies Consultant, has put together 75 Tools to Improve Student Learning which includes an overview of discussion strategies like hexagonal thinking, Think-Pair-Share and Concentric Circles.
• Let’s Talk from Learning for Justice offers classroom-ready strategies you can use to plan discussions and facilitate conversations with your students.

• • Rewordify.com. to simplify text language
  • Text to Speech Reader.– free Google extension
  • Talk Points. is a free tool to communicate with families in their home language.
  • Read Aloud. is a text-to-speech voice reader.
  • Announcify is a Chrome extension that lets students listen to articles on the web.
  • Voice In Voice Typing. allows students to voice in their keyboarding on any website.
  • Dyslexia Friendly. increases the readability of websites by changing to easier-to-read fonts and adding visual enhancements.

The Illinois Civics blog post “Making the Most of Discussion Boards” shares tips and tools to leverage online dialogue.

The Illinois Civics blog post “Resources to Respond to Tragedy and Violence” provides guidance on how to listen, be present, and support students when bad things happen.