The eternal struggle! Great scientific approach to this Megan! Thank you! Lots of things I'll steal! Only thing I'd add is to give kids Socratic prompts and sentence starters as well as Blooms Verbs and to publically illustrate the awesomeness of the brave souls who ask good Qs (#BlessedAreTheAskers).

Take that, Doug Lemov!  (See his Cold Call strategy) In general, I've had the most luck with small group discussions, either pairs or quads, and really clear instructions on what to do. Matthew Kay's book "Not Light, But Fire" also has good thoughts on discussion strategies. Processing time is also important. I was once in a Today's Meet-type room, and found the speed of responses difficult to follow; I would see something I wanted to respond to, and while crafting a response, 8 more posts appeared. 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts Megan and more importantly your strategies for improving student engagement. I have had some success with Think, Pair, Share and have found using games often brings students out of their shells but I will definitely be using some of the other strategies suggested in the future. 

Thank you Megan! I loved your ideas. I plan to use the tools!

This is my never ending struggle to have students share out in middle school. There are always five kids who want to do all the sharing and the rest who avoid all eye contact in hopes that I don't look at them. While virtual I found using a pear deck with google slides was really helpful. I can ask questions and they can answer anonymously (well I can see who wrote it later but I don't let them know that), and they have been so much better at sharing authentic feelings and ideas. I am wondering if that will be something that I can bring back to in person learning this year and if it will work as well. 

Same here.  I really like the dashboard feature so i could see who wrote what and block the crazy but it really tied me to my desk.  

My students love when they can be anonymous.  I have used Parlay (the site I referenced in the talk) for discussion that was not held during class, but done on their own time.  The students can respond anonymously and they are much more thoughtful and less hesitant to interact with each other.  I have to admit, I have only used Pear Deck a handful of times - I am wondering if I should invest more time into getting more familiar with it. What are your thoughts?

Think, Pair, Share is such a simple strategy and I didn't think I would see such good results with it when I was focused on getting students to comfortably participate in discussions.  Once I saw results, I began to incorporate it more often.  At the end of the day, I think it comes down to getting students comfortable taking risks and sharing what they think. 

I really like these sentence starters.  I am going to share them with my students this year and hope it will help them take the leap into joining discussions!

I have never used Parley so I want to attempt that.  I think Pear Deck has lots of possibilities for formatives.  Opening the dash board on a separate device really puts you in the diver seat but it took me a long time to figure that out.  If you decide to use it consider me a resource to help you troubleshoot.  A limit is students being able to put images into it but I was told "they" are working on that.