Fourth Grade Teachers Help Hutchison Girls Learn the Power of Conversation

Our fourth grade teachers are transforming classroom conversations through structured, student-led R.E.A.L. discussions, where our girls Relate, Excerpt, Ask, and Listen. From learning to ask thoughtful questions to respectfully disagreeing and backing up opinions with evidence, our girls are engaging in deeper, more meaningful dialogue thanks to the guidance of Jessica Wilson, Maggie Haire, and Katherine Hammond ’10.

“Having students tie their response to textual evidence has been so important and instructive,” Haire said. “In civil discourse, we’ve focused on how to agree and disagree, how to base your information in evidence, and how to respectfully ask other students, ‘What is your source?’ ”

The R.E.A.L. technique can be used in both formal discussions and casual conversations and was born out of the need to provide structure to in-person discussions for students who “struggle with expressing themselves, engaging different viewpoints, listening deeply, and reading non-verbal cues,” according to R.E.A.L. Discussion.

“It’s so important to teach our girls how to communicate in a respectful way, and how to disagree with each other,” Wilson said. “Even for hard topics, these girls have done a great job respectfully disagreeing and adding to conversations. They’re really thinking about, ‘What do I want to say? Is it going to be beneficial?’ ”

R.E.A.L. Discussion interviewed our fourth grade teachers about how our girls benefit from these discussion tools. Read about what their students are learning through impactful classroom conversations: https://realdiscussion.org/teacher-feature-jessica-wilson-katherine-hammond-maggie-haire/