Tulsa Race Massacre

As a follow up question, this post makes me wonder what other teachers have done to set up discussion routines in their classroom? Specifically, how do you make sure to have positive difficult discussions? 

Sometimes, all it takes is the right question to spark an engaging discussion. After finishing our recent unit on WWII, I asked my students: Could the U.S. ever be controlled by a dictator? Students had strong feelings, but the discussion was great. It led to a thought-provoking conversation about history, government, and the future. Before I posed the question I did remind students of our guidelines for discussions.

I used to have students debate whether or not we should have used the atomic bomb, that is until I had Japanese students in class and they explained to me why it was insensitive. C-Span has some great resources, but I tweaked the resources when I used them. My students do not stay engaged with the videos. https://www.c-span.org/classroom/document/?10856.  

In addition to posing questions like this, I make it a priority to get students talking in every class. Encouraging consistent participation helps build their confidence and keeps discussions lively. If you’re looking for ways to facilitate meaningful conversations, here are some websites with discussion protocols and activities I’ve used: https://www.projectschoolwellness.com/engaging-discussion-strategies/. Harvard's Project Zero: https://pz.harvard.edu/thinking-routines 

I hope these help!

DIG has a lesson centered around how we should remember the dropping of the atomic bomb that I have found useful - https://inquirygroup.org/history-lessons/atomic-bomb 

DIG has a lesson centered around how we should remember the dropping of the atomic bomb that I have found useful - https://inquirygroup.org/history-lessons/atomic-bomb 

Thank you. I had not used DIG's World History resources.  I do like the framing: How should we remember the dropping of the atomic bomb?