The role of productive group work in enhancing student learning is widely acknowledged in research (Johnson & Johnson, 2002; Gillies, 2016). Interacting with others may encourage students to restructure their own understanding and thinking. When ideas are shared and negotiated within a student group, students may generate new ideas. One challenging task of responsive teachers is to work with the diverse ideas generated during small group discussion and to make use of the ideas as a resource to move students’ learning of content forward in the whole-class discussion.

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Generally speaking, using student discussion to teach comprises three stages: (1) whole-class warm up, (2) small group work and (3) whole-class share out. In Stage 1, the teacher launches the group work task. In Stage 2, the teacher interacts with students in small discussion groups. In Stage 3, the teacher orchestrates whole class discussion that help students collectively build knowledge in relation to specific instructional goals.