Sal Cusmano

Leading Group Discussion Growth

Claim
I believe that I have shown growth over my placement in my attempts to conduct the Leading
Group Discussion (LGD) teaching practice. I believe this because I was able to tie my second
discussion content to multiple standards as compared to only one standard in my first topic, my
second discussion’s launching topic got many more students on board with the discussion as
compared to my first discussion topic, I encouraged more student interaction and participation
in my second attempt at leading group discussion as compared to my first attempt, and my
transitions between questions were better in my second attempt at leading group discussion as
compared to my first attempt.

Evidence and Reasoning

Use of Standards
The first way I showed growth in my efforts to enact LGD would be in how I tied my second LGD
discussion to two standards as opposed to only one standard for my first attempt. For my first
attempt at LGD I had the students discuss if the United States made the correct choice in
dropping both nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki or if they felt the US made the wrong
choice. I then used the following objective and standard for the discussion:

A. Argue if the United States chose the correct course of action in dropping the atomic
bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
(Michigan K-12 Social Studies Standards High School US History 7.2.2 United States and the
Course of World War II – evaluate the role of the United States in fighting the war militarily,
diplomatically, and technologically across the world. Examples may include but are not
limited to Germany-First strategy, the Big Three Alliance, and the development of atomic
weapons.)
While the standard and objective are clearly written and tied into my discussion, I only had the
one standard and objective and it was only a content based standard and no skills components.
While it did work, I could have done more with it.
Compared to that, my second attempt which looked at the internment of Japanese American
citizens in the aftermath of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, was done much better. In this attempt
I had two standards and objectives tied to my discussion. The two standards were:
Argue how the United States justified the internment of their own citizens of Japanese
descent. (Michigan K-12 High School US History Standard 7.2.3Impact of World War II on
American Life – analyze the changes in American life brought about by U.S. participation in
World War II, including: the conflict and consequences around the internment of Japanese
Americans.)
Explain the differences in portrayal of the Internment camps between the 1943 US
Government newsreel and the 2019 Ted-Ed video. (C3 History 13.6-813.6-8. Evaluate the
relevancy and utility of a historical source based on information such as maker, date, place of
origin, intended audience, and purpose.)
In addition to having a second standard to tie my discussion to, I also had both a skill based, and
content based standard that my discussion was built on. It was content based in looking at how
the United States attempted to justify the internment of Japanese Americans and it was skill
based by having the students look at and examine texts and to see how they differed in their
portrayal of the internment of Japanese Americans. This was a far better attempt at LGD
because it gave my students more knowledge than the first attempt. Although my first attempt
was not bad, the lack of skill-based standards left it feeling lesser than my second attempt
which had a lot more depth and oomph to it because I had the students engage in the complete
spectrum of historical knowledge and skillset.
Launching Question
The second way I showed growth between my two attempts at leading group discussion was in
my launching questions between the two attempts. In my first attempt at LGD I launched with
the following question “Who here believes that the United States was right to drop both bombs
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?”. After asking that leading question I had 30 seconds of dead air
before I called on a student to share her thoughts regardless on if she felt the US made the
correct choice to drop the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Initial LGD 1:05-1:35)
The complete lack of initial engagement with my launching question in this attempt at LGD
showed me that I had a lot of work to do to improve as the question was too off putting or
distanced from most of my students and their understanding of the material.
In comparison to this my launching question for my lesson on the internment of Japanese
Americans went much better. My launching question for that discussion was “According to the
newsreel how did the US government justify the internment of Japanese-Americans?”. This
question got a far quicker and more enthusiastic response as I got multiple students who raised
their hands to answer after only 10 seconds of asking the question. (Growth LGD 0:25-0:50) This
shows how I improved in my attempts to conduct leading group discussion as my question was
far more engaging and my students were more receptive to it and I did not need to cold call
anyone to get the discussion started.
Students Engage Each Other’s Thinking
The third way I showed growth from my first attempt to my second attempt at conducting LGD
would be in how I got students to bounce ideas and thinking off each other. While I did do this a
little bit in my initial attempt, I only really did it once when I had someone respond to a student
who said she thought the US made the wrong choice in dropping the nuclear bombs on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So, I had another student tell me what she felt the US could have done
instead of dropping the bombs. (Initial LGD 1:35-3:31) While I think this was a good effort at
trying to get students to bounce ideas off of each other as I got one student to take another
student’s thinking and their own on top of it, it was the only time I did so in the entire
discussion and because of that I lost a lot of opportunities for students to engage with each
other.
In comparison, when I conducted my second group discussion regarding the internment of
Japanese Americans, I made multiple efforts to have students bounce ideas off each other. An
example of this be I have my students discuss how the internment camps were portrayed by
the US. (Growth LGD 0:50-3:00). This attempt went far better because not only did I have my
students interact with each other’s thinking on multiple occasions, I also had more students join
in on the conversation. In comparison to my first attempt, I only had one person comment on
another student’s thinking before moving onto the next question, but in this clip, I had 4-5
students bounce ideas off each other in their discussions.
Structure of Discussion
The final way I showed growth in my efforts to conduct LGD would be in how I structured the
discussion. In my first attempt, after I had such a rough opening to the discussion I sort of
scrapped my initial plan for conducting the discussion because I realized if I had kept it as it was
I would not get very many responses. And while I believe that I managed to salvage something
out of it by getting the responses seen here (Initial LGD 1:35-3:31) , I feel like if I had been
better at designing and structuring the discussion from the beginning I would not have needed
to call an audible and I would have been in a better position.
In comparison, my second attempt at structuring the discussion went much better and followed
my planned questions and sequence far better as seen in both the Growth LGD 0:50-3:00 clip
and the Growth LGD Video as a whole. I was able to effectively talk about all the questions I had
planned, I engaged multiple students and their thinking, and I got students to bounce their
ideas off each other. Overall, it just felt more structured and flowed far easier and I got a lot of
great student responses.

Conclusion
In conclusion, I believe that I showed growth in the practice of LGD because I improved my use
of standards and objectives for my discussion, I improved my launching question, I improved at
getting my students to interact with each other’s thinking, and I improved the structure of the
discussion.