Teachers Helping Teachers - Mary Grace Mangano, ACE 22

ACE 22 graduate Mary Grace Mangano currently teaches English at Cristo Rey New York High School. In this fourth installment of Teachers Helping Teachers, Mary Grace highlights a technique she uses to keep all students engaged in classroom dialogue: “rotating discussions”.

Teachers can use rotating discussions to generate conversation in pairs while also integrating reading, listening, and writing skills. Students are given three minutes to partner up and engage in a dialogue around one of the teacher-provided questions before rotating and repeating the process for the next question with a new partner.

Download the Rotating Discussion Template

Throughout the video clip, Mary Grace explains why this is an effective technique to encourage speaking on the part of all students, immerse students in the literary content they are covering, and incorporate movement into one’s lessons.