What Happens When I Try Different Ways to Debrief a Lesson? Sara Anderson C&I Capstone Project Spring 2008 1
As the last student walked out my classroom door at 3:10 and I looked back into my room full of paper, straws, little balls of clay and water stains on the carpet, and I couldn t help but feel relieved the day was over. My classroom was full of engaged students that day, filling straws with different amounts of clay and cutting the pieces to make their model look just right. Ilse wanted to use extra pink-colored clay and Robert was worried about where he should dump the extra water he wasn t using for the scientific models we were making. It was a day of controlled chaos. The noise level was high, but the kids were excited and they were all involved in the lesson. The next day in class I started my lesson by referring to the blood vessel models we had made in class the day before. As I started to talk about the effects of cholesterol and blood flow through veins and arteries, I started to get some blank stares from my students. I went on to explain that the models they had made yesterday showed the effects of cholesterol building up in blood vessels even more blank stares. At this point, I stopped my instruction and waited a moment. Then I asked my students, What did you do in class yesterday? A few students responded with, We played with clay! and We made scientific models. At this point I realized my students missed the main idea of the entire lesson. My students were so excited about using clay and straws and other materials that they didn t actually learn the content that I had intended for the lesson. I reflected on what parts of this lesson could improve so my students would take away a clear understanding of the learning target. The students knew what the goal of the lesson was at the beginning. They all were involved in practicing and creating the models and I even heard 2
some of them discussing blood vessels. At the end of the lesson we cleaned up the supplies and they went home. Upon my reflection, I realized the missing piece of the lesson was the debrief. We didn t spend any time at the end of class sharing out what the models represented or meant. No students were held accountable for their thinking behind the models and I didn t review with how this clay-sculpting activity would help them learn the daily learning target. As I thought more and more about my teaching I realized I often forget this key step. Our school uses a common practice around the workshop model. We plan our lessons using a hook, mini-lesson, practice/application, and debrief. During professional development we spend time brainstorming with each other how to improve our own lessons using the workshop model. It became very clear to me that I needed improvement with the debrief aspect of a lesson. I feel like I spend so much time planning the details and logistics of my lesson that I forget to check in and see where my students are at. Are they confused? Did they learn anything? Did they have time to process what the lesson was about or did they get so caught up in all of the structures, directions, equipment and group dynamics that they didn t learn any content that I had intended them to learn? I know that students need time to process and I also know that I am guilty of not providing this sacred time to my students. Therefore, my research question centers on debriefing the lesson. A debrief is a time usually at the end of a lesson where students get a chance to reflect, review and assess themselves on how well they understand the learning objective. I want to try various ways to debrief with my students and see which structures are the most engaging for students, which structures spawn the most curiosity or desire to keep studying the subject matter, and which structures access whether students really understand the goal of the lesson. Science class often involves a lot of lab activities and equipment usage and I feel the synthesis of the material often 3
gets lost in all of the hands-on excitement. I want to spend time finding ways for students to really process what we do in class and research the methods and outcomes of implementing those practices in my classroom. I feel that studying the debrief aspect of a lesson and making purposeful plans and observations about this process will help me in my instruction and also help the students make better sense of what we are learning. Review of Related Research The workshop model has become a valuable tool used by many teachers to engage students in learning. The idea of a workshop model stemmed from working laboratories where students practice the art of gaining knowledge through choice, authentic products and a common instructional practice used by the teacher (Daniels & Bizar, 2004). There are basically four parts to the workshop model: hook, mini-lesson, practice and application, and debrief. First, a hook is used to engage students in the topic and start promoting their thinking. Next, the teacher spends approximately ten to fifteen minutes doing a mini-lesson. This could be modeling or demonstrating the kind of work the students will be participating in. Following the mini-lesson, the students start the practice/application portion of the workshop. Students work according to a plan either they have created or the teacher has helped set up. This could be a variety of tasks such as researching, reading and text-coding, experimenting, or discussing with other peers. During this time the teacher conferences with individuals or groups of students and gives feedback, adjusts instruction, or and acts as a facilitator. Generally, the practice/application portion of the workshop model takes thirty minutes, but this could be longer given the type of activity. The final piece of the workshop model is the debrief. This is a time where students 4
reflect on and share the work they have completed and this usually lasts about ten to fifteen minutes (Daniels & Bizar, 2004). The focus of my research centers around the debrief. This is important because in order for the workshop to function effectively, students need time for synthesis after they have had time to work (Bennett, 2007). During the debrief students may be ask to share their work, identify patterns from the practice/application portion, reflect on their own learning, make connections to the bigger picture, summarize what they learned, or ask more questions (Bennett, 2007). The role of the teacher is to guide students through a reflective process so students can discover their own learning (Gass & Priest, 1997). One approach to debriefing a lesson is the funneling approach. During this process the facilitator works towards getting the students to reach a higher level of thinking in Bloom s Taxonomy. The facilitator reviews what happened during the workshop and then asks students how they felt and how others might be affected by what was learned in the workshop. Then the teacher asks the students to sum up what they have learned. Following this question, the teacher asks how this new learning can be applied to your life or a larger context. The final step is asking the students about their commitment to this new understanding. Through this funneling process students should see a change in their learning (Priest & Naismith, 1993). One goal of my research was to track student engagement during the debrief. Studies in the 1990 s showed a large number of students disengaged from classroom activities. This lack of engagement was particularly high in adolescents and minorities attending schools in metropolitan areas (Meece & McColskey, 1997). Since my school is located in an urban environment and we have a high population of minorities who attend our school, I found this research to be relevant to my research. The research also states that students are more likely to be 5
engaged when they have some choice over their learning (Yair, 2000). I studied this aspect of student engagement when I tried different types of debriefing and gave students some choice in how they represented their thinking during a debrief. Another best-practice that I used during my debriefs was using questioning and cues (Marzano, 2001). This strategy is used to elicit higher level thinking in students and guide them to a deeper understanding. Some of the strategies Marzano (2001) mentions are: asking questions that focus on what is most important, rather than what is unusual; asking higher level questions with prompting words such as analyze, compare, explain how etc. instead of knowledge-based questions; and increasing wait time before calling on a student. Using these strategies along with an organizational system or graphic organizer will help students engage in higher level thinking. I used the strategies mentioned above during my debriefs and recorded data on how well the strategies worked in my classroom. Methods Research Context Our school is located in a medium-sized urban fringe area in Colorado and draws students from the northern metro-denver area. Our students are very diverse and approximately 60% of our students are Hispanic, 70% are on free and reduced lunch and 40% are Englishlanguage learners. Our school is a small public school that was recently developed into an Expeditionary Learning School after test scores in our district were not meeting expectations. Our school started three years ago and we currently serve students in 7 th 12 th grades; this year will be the first graduating class. Expeditionary Learning Schools (ELS) are progressive schools that focus on theme-based expeditions that include service projects, cross-curricular instruction, fieldwork, expert speakers and compelling, in-depth case studies. Our district has contracted 6
with this national organization to help us create a school under this model. Currently there are 150 EL schools in the nation and new schools continue to open in all areas of the United States. Teachers create their own curriculum based off state standards and we use a unique grading system that assesses students on academic learning targets as well as character learning targets. The work we have been doing has drawn a lot of attention from various places, including Business Weekly magazine, National Public Radio, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As a 7 th grade science teacher, my research focused on all 96 students in the 7 th grade. However, part of my research was done during intensives where 16 students participate in an in-depth unit on veterinary science for the entire school day for 7 straight days. Some of the students in my intensive did not pass the previous trimester of science and will be working towards mastering learning targets they did not pass during the regular trimester. Some of the students chose to be in my intensive because they are interested in the subject matter. There were 2 special education students in my intensive and 5 English-language learners, including one student who arrived from Mexico 3 weeks prior to the start of intensives, and there were 9 boys and 7 girls in my intensive. Procedures For approximately one month, I tried various ways of debriefing lessons in my regular science classes. I did this to help the students get used to debriefing after lessons and to start to develop some routines around this in my classroom. Some of the practices I tried were: Students tossed the koosh ball around and shared something they learned, Students shared with a partner something they learned, 7
Students made a graphic organizer finishing the following statements: I was most surprised by Something that challenged me was I felt inspired by An assignment that helped me the most was, Students drew a pictures of their understanding, Students showed me a fist of five to show how well they understood a daily learning target. Students reflected on various questions in a journal. One debrief strategy I tried was much more involved than the others. Students spent the class period learning about the final project and understanding the requirements on a rubric. For the debrief I had short phrases that were either required for the final project or not required cut out into pieces on an overhead transparency. One at a time students came to the overhead and had to place the phrase into the correct section on a T-chart to show their understanding of the requirements. However, before they placed the phrase they had to consult the rest of the class. The class chose to either stand up (to show a requirement) or sit down (to show a phrase was not required). After one month of practicing different ways to debrief with all of my classes, I decided to focus on 2 different types of instructional strategies: questioning in class discussions and reflective journals. I chose these strategies because of our staff discussions around them during our professional development. There were other teachers in the building practicing these strategies who could be great resources for my research project. So, during intensives I decided to prepare one focused debrief using the questioning strategy and one debrief using reflective journals. For each debrief I had an outside observer in my class taking notes and looking for 8
specific things. I also had the same group of students for each debrief, but different lessons were taught. Data Collected During my first month of trying out different debrief strategies, I collected data in a variety of ways: an observational and reflective journal, observational notes taken by others during my lessons, and student work. I reflected on the lesson in a journal immediately following the debrief. I recorded my sense of student engagement, student understanding, and enjoyment of the debrief. I also reflected in my journal after both of my focus debrief lessons. The kinds of information and reflections I included were Justin and Jose chose not to do the reflective journal debrief. I asked them at least 3 times and even started the sentence for one of them but they did not complete it. Rachel asked for more time in completing her journal. On a different day I wrote, Corey reminded me to use the debrief die! Students seemed eager to answer the questions from the debrief die, but once it was their turn, they did not spend a lot of time thinking about their response. They seemed more excited to throw the die to the next person. In addition, my instructional guide at school came to observe me and took notes. Their notes tended to focus on level of student engagement, direct observations and quotes of what I said and what the students said. I also collected some of the work students did during the debrief. For instance, I kept copies of all of the students reflective journal entries and analyzed them for evidence of higher-level thinking. After reviewing my students work, my notes and notes from my instructional guide, I decided I needed another piece of data to really analyze my students thoughts and processing around the debrief. So, at the end of my intensive I gave my students a 9
survey about debriefs and their learning. This helped to solidify some of my ideas I was starting to generate from my other data sources. Methods of Analysis During the first month of practicing different ways of debriefing with my students, I wrote a lot in my own journal about how each lesson was going. I used trends that I saw from my personal journal and notes from my instructional guide to develop debrief lessons for my focus group during intensives. I also used information that I was learning in our professional development to help shape the instructional strategies I would focus on for my debriefs during the intensive course. After developing and teaching my two focus lessons during intensives, I gathered all the data I collected and started to organize how I was going to analyze it. First, I reviewed the notes that were taken from my instructional guide and compared them to my personal notes that I took following each lesson. I summarized the major findings of both data sources and wrote them in a T-chart so I could see the data all on one page and make comparisons more easily. I checked for similarities, differences, and any other common trends between both data sources. I highlighted similarities in our observations in pink and differences in yellow. Since both of our observation notes focused on student engagement, it was easy to find notes from myself and my instructional guide that were about the same incident in class. Next, I went back and read through each of the student s journal responses to my debrief questions. As I will discuss in more detail in the findings section, there were five journal questions total and they varied in type and response. I wanted to see what level of thinking my students were using during this type of debrief (Appendix B). I decided to sort the journal responses into three different categories: one) quick, fact-based responses with no explanation, 10
two) fact-based responses with an explanation, and three) responses that moved beyond factual information and showed evidence of higher-level thinking, for instance through text-to-world or text-to-self connections, or applications or synthesis of learning that related to the larger theme or themes of the lesson and intensive unit. I highlighted copies of the students journals using a color-coding system so I could see how many students were answering the questions on a surface level, and how many students were showing evidence of higher-level thinking. This helped me gather percentages of how many students were thinking at a deeper level during this type of debrief (Appendix C). Lastly, I read through the surveys about debriefs that I gave my intensive class at the end of the course (Appendix A). I used a blank survey to tally all of the responses and calculated the percentage of students who responded a particular way to each question. Since all but one of the questions on my survey included a scale, it was easy to calculate the percentages for each response. Finally, I looked at any trends from my instructional guide s notes, my own notes, the student surveys and student journal work samples to make final conclusions about my research and organized them into a data matrix (Appendix D). Findings Debriefing helps students understand the lesson better. One finding from this study was that debriefing helps students understand the lesson better. When asked on a survey if reflecting in a journal after a lesson helped them understand the learning target better, 14 out of 16 students said that the journal helped them in some aspect of their learning. Ten out of sixteen students said that using the debrief die (a 6-sided die with different types of debrief questions on it such as, what was the most important thing you learned 11
today and why? ) also helped them understand the lesson better and the remaining six students were neutral. The student journals that I collected also showed evidence of the students understanding the lesson. After a lesson on the requirements for different careers in veterinary science, the students were asked what interested them the most. One student wrote in his journal, Being a veterinarian interested me the most because when Dr. McGee came and told us about his experiences, it influenced me to become one. The part that influenced me the most was that it s going to be challenging. A different student wrote, I think being a vet tech sounds cool. They get to do more hands-on things. These students specifically mentioned aspects and requirements of the veterinary science careers we were studying. Students also showed evidence of understanding through their text-to-self connections in their journal responses. A different student wrote I want to become a vet tech because they get to work more with the animals, and I am good at working with animals. Another student wrote, I want to train animals because I train my dog at home. He listens to me. Students showed understanding of our lesson because they were able to relate things they learned during the lesson to relevant personal connections. Upon looking through my observation notes and notes made by my instructional guide in my classroom, both suggest that students showed a better understanding of the lesson when time was taken to debrief the lesson. I noticed that following a debrief, students were able to answer warm-up questions more completely the following day compared to days when I did not debrief the lesson. Also, students remembered what we did the previous day and could talk about the lesson more freely than on days when we did not debrief. My instructional guide noticed comments the students were saying during the debrief that showed they understood the learning target for that day. For example, when discussing our dissection of the rat, one student said, so 12
really we could ve dissected a huge blue whale! That s a mammal too, right? During this same debrief, some students were able to explicitly verbalize what they learned that day. One student said, I know the difference between the trachea and the esophagus now. Another student said, I can show the difference between caudal and cranial areas on a rat. These kinds of responses and observations give me reason to believe the students understood the learning target for the lesson. Given various types of prompts, students do not consistently use higher-level thinking when debriefing. When I looked at the students reflective journals, I found that only 2 out of 16 students showed evidence of higher level thinking in their responses. Many students responded to the prompts with simple, knowledge-based answers such as the most interesting thing I learned today was veterinarians don t make a lot of money. Some students explained why they responded the way they did, but they did not elaborate or make connections to larger themes we were learning about. Given the prompt, At this point in our intensive, what are you most passionate about? most students responded quickly without giving any detail. For example, one student wrote, I am most passionate about the Dumb Friends League. However, one student said, I am very passionate about people and animals below the poverty line getting fair treatment. I am concerned about vets charging the appropriate amounts for medication because I was in a similar situation. This was the type of response that I would have liked to see more students write since it showed higher level thinking. I also noticed that many students were eager to respond to questions such as What did you learn today? My instructional guide observed 10 out of 16 students raising their hand for this question and he noticed many different types of students raising their hand. Every student 13
was at least able to respond with something even if I just called on them without the student volunteering. However, when I asked more in-depth questions that required a higher level of thinking many students chose not to raise their hands. For instance, one higher-level question I posed was, How does the work done at the Dumb Friends League support animal rights? My instructional guide noticed only 3 out of 16 students raising their hand during higher-level questions. He took data on who answered the higher level questions and upon further analysis, all of the students answering the higher level questions were students who were already earning an A or B in the class. He and I both noticed that struggling students chose not to raise their hand and respond to the more difficult questions. When they were called upon, most of the struggling students responded with, I don t know. Student engagement increases when students are discussing the lesson through various techniques rather than independently journaling. When asked in a survey whether students preferred independent journaling or discussing the ideas as a class during the debrief, 12 out of 16 students preferred discussing. This finding was consistent with the student work samples I collected. Two students did not even attempt the journal (after much coaxing from the teacher) and one student only copied down the questions. These students lack of engagement was reflective of an overall sense that students were not using journals to delve deeply into ideas. The students were asked five different questions varying in level of difficulty and none of the questions were framed in ways that encouraged students to respond with fact-based answers, however, many students responded with quick, surface-level answers that did not show a lot of thought. (Appendix B). We had just finished learning about different veterinary careers and doing some service work for the Dumb Friends League, an organization that helps stray animals. One of the debrief questions asked students to 14
write about whether or not they thought students should be required to do service work. The responses given by the students varied in length and thought. A few students simply wrote, No. Another student wrote, No, because it wouldn t be right to make people do voluntary work. A different student wrote, I think students should be, according to their circumstance, expected to do a certain amount of service work because service work helps open young minds to the world beyond money. Most of the students who responded in their journals did not put a lot of effort into their responses; they completed the assignment, but did so quickly and without much thought. This was strikingly different from the discussions we had as a class. The students were much more engaged when they were able to respond directly to each other s comments, instead of just writing down their own opinion and not hearing the opinions of others. My observational notes about student engagement during different types of debriefs confirmed that students were more engaged during discussions rather than journaling. One example of the students engagement in discussion involved our routine around using the debrief die to start our discussions. One student would toss the die to another student who had to answer the question that came up when they caught it. After a few lessons of using the debrief die students started to remind me to leave time at the end of class so we could use the debrief die. My instructional guide noticed similar levels of engagement during class discussions. He actually observed more students on task than I did. During a pair share debrief, he saw evidence of all student groups on task, while I noticed one group that was easily swayed from the topic. The students were asked to discuss the question, How does dissecting a rat help us understand more about mammal body systems? One group started immediately discussing how rats and other mammals have similar body parts. A girl commented, Don t you remember when we dissected the pig heart? I noticed a different group not even attempting to discuss the question. 15
They were more interested in the gas light in my lab that was blinking on and off when I walked by and took observational notes. However, my instructional guide noticed all groups on task, but he did not record any direct quotes from students. I m assuming the off-task group started discussing the question when my instructional guide was observing. Despite the one group, the overall tone of the class was that of engagement and students were eager to share their ideas with their classmates during these debrief discussions. Conclusions and Implications Given my findings, I can say that consistently debriefing the lesson with my students has had a positive effect on student learning. It seems as though the more I used debriefing strategies with my students, the more they responded to it and were able to better synthesize the lesson. My findings also suggest that students actually started to enjoy debriefing the lessons. I knew this was the case the day students started to ask about using the debrief die at the end of the lesson. One thing I would like to improve upon is helping my students start to think at a higher level. My students became great at telling me what they learned during the day, but the more I listened to them the more I realized that their knowledge was at a surface level. Few students were able to truly synthesize and take their understanding to a deeper level. If I were to continue this research project, I would like to start using specific questioning prompts and observe what kind of responses I would get from the students. I naturally started to do this the more I debriefed with my students, but I would like to actually collect some data around this. Maybe it was my questions that prompted students to respond with only knowledge-based responses instead of higher-level thinking responses? I also think it would be helpful if I started to scaffold some higher level thinking with my struggling students. Helping them think through a higher level question in steps rather than 16
being overwhelmed with the complexity of the question or response. I also think that once I get better at asking those higher level questions and students start to respond to them appropriately, my students will start to see the kind of response I m looking for. I could also show the students examples of student work that already show evidence of higher-level thinking in their responses. If I do this, students will have a better understanding of the degree of thought that I am expecting. It came as no surprise to me that leaving time at the end of a lesson to debrief was helpful for the students. This was something I knew was lacking in my teaching and that I knew I needed to work on. Our school leaves time during professional development to reflect on how well we are using the workshop model in our classrooms. My idea for this research project came from those reflections and realizing the need to have time to synthesize in my class. Having this research project helped me stay focused and helped me manage my time better throughout the lesson. I admit it was difficult at first when I finished a lesson with 15 minutes remaining. But now I know that is a good thing! My schedule affords me plenty of time within a class period to leave that time at the end to help the student synthesize what we were doing and why. Now that I have trained myself to be better about leaving time at the end of class and I have trained my students to expect time at the end of class to discuss their learning for the day, I expect their learning to continue to grow. Science is a great subject to teach because of all the activities and hands-on labs we can do. However, I have realized that even more important than the activity itself, is providing the time necessary for students to process and actually learn something from that activity. Many of my students say that science is their favorite subject because of all the activities we do. I want 17
students to say science is their favorite subject because they learn through all the activities we do. After reading research around debriefing, I have realized how much time it takes to really do this well. I used to think debriefing could be as simple as asking What did you learn today? but after reading about and trying different ways to debrief I realized how many more ways there are to access students thinking and help them truly understand a learning target. It takes a skillful facilitator to help a group of students move through their own thinking and understanding around a concept and the facilitator s role is more difficult than I expected. There is not a perfect script to follow, and you must really listen to what your students are saying to help them synthesize. Asking the right questions is a key part of this and I found that aspect of the process to be challenging. I also know that I have grown in my role as the facilitator and with more practice I will continue to improve the ways in which I debrief a lesson with my students. I want students to leave my class excited about the lab or activity we did, and also aware of the learning that took place. So, now when my students arrive in the classroom and I ask them what we did in class on the previous day I hope they will respond with a more meaningful answer than, We played with clay! 18
References Daniels H. & Bizar M. (2004). Teaching the Best Practice Way. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers. Gass, M., & Priest, S. (1997). Effective Leadership in Adventure Programming. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Marzano, R., Pickering, D., & Pollock, J. (2001) Classroom Instruction that works: Researchbased Strategies for increasing student achievement. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Pearson, M., & Smith, D. (1986). Debriefing in Experience-Based Learning. Simulation/Games for Learning. 16(4), 155-72. Priest, S., & Naismith, M. (1993). A Model for Debriefing Experiences. Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Leadership. 10(2), 16-18. Bennett, S. (2007). That Workshop Book: New Systems and Structures for the Classroom That Read, Write and Think. Portsmich, NH: Heinemann. Meece, J. & McColskey, W. (1997) Improving Student Motivation. A Guide for Teachers and School Improvement Teams. Tallahassee, FL: SERVE Publications Department. 19
Dear, APPENDIX A: Debrief Survey Questions Thank you so much for all the hard work you did during intensives! I am currently working on a research project for my graduate class at the University of Colorado and I would really appreciate it if you could take a few moments to fill out this survey. This does not affect your grade and your honest feedback will help me the most! Thanks you for your time. 1. Look at a copy of your reflection journal from the day after we visited the Dumb Friend s League. Do you think reflecting in a journal helped you understand the learning target? Yes Definitely Yes, a little Neutral No, not really, Not at all 2. Do you like writing in a reflective journal at the end of class? Yes Definitely Yes, a little Neutral No, not really, Not at all 3. Do you like using the debrief die? Yes Definitely Yes, a little Neutral No, not really, Not at all 4. Do you think using the debrief die helped you understand the lesson better? Yes Definitely Yes, a little Neutral No, not really, Not at all 5. What do you like better, independent journaling or discussing the lesson as a class? Yes Definitely Yes, a little Neutral No, not really, Not at all 6. What do you think it means to debrief? 20
APPENDIX B: Journal Reflection Questions 1. At this point in the intensive, what career in veterinary science interests you the most and why? 2. What is the most interesting thing you learned today and why? 3. Do you think students should be required to do service work? Why or why not? 4. How do you feel about doing service work? 5. At this point in the intensive, what are you most passionate about? 21
APPENDIX C: Students Journal Reflection Responses 22
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APPENDIX D: Data Matrix Debriefing helps students understand the lesson better Themes Given various types of prompts, students do not consistently use higher-level thinking when debriefing Student engagement increases when students are discussing the lesson through various techniques rather than independently journaling. Student Survey Student work 14/16 students said that reflecting in a journal after a lesson helped them understand the learning target better. 10/16 students said using the debrief die helped them understand the learning target better. The remaining 6 students were neutral 16/16 students were able to accurately define what it means to debrief 14/16 students showed some level of understanding of the learning target in their reflective journal responses Given various types of questions to respond to in a reflective journal, only 2 out of 16 students showed evidence of higher level thinking 16/16 students enjoyed using the debrief die 12/16 students preferred discussing the lesson as a class compared to independent journaling 2 students did not attempt the reflective journal and one student only copied down one question Instructional Guide Notes My personal notes The warm-up was generally more successful following a lesson that I had debriefed with the students Some students started to remind the teacher to leave time for the debrief Student responses to debrief questions showed some level of understanding of the learning target. Many students eagerly respond to knowledgebased questions or questions that require little synthesis of the lesson such as, What was the most interesting thing you learned today? Students were not as likely to respond to higher level thinking questions such as How does this lesson help us understand our unit question? All students could respond to the question, What did you learn today? However, only a few student responses showed evidence of higher level thinking Student conversations during a pair share were very knowledge-based and most students did not ask each other follow-up questions. Every time the debrief die was used, the students were eager to toss the die to each other and respond to the questions. Students started to ask the teacher to use the debrief die after the lesson was complete During a pair share debrief, all but one group of students stayed on topic 100% of the students were engaged during the debrief using the debrief die During a pair share debrief, all but one group of students stayed on topic 24