This idea will help children focus on the type of discussion they have had. It will give them a physical way of seeing the quality of their discussion.
What do you do?
Each group will have a set of Lego bricks to represent each child’s contribution to the discussion. When a child has spoken they will add a brick to the group’s tower. Each child will add a brick to the tower after they have spoken provided the contribution built on what was said previously. If the contribution did not build on what was previously said then a new tower is started.
This is quite a powerful exercise as it will demonstrate how successful a group has been and the quality of the discussion. If you have a number of very small towers then you will clearly see that the group were not particularly good at building on others’ ideas. They would then perhaps need to focus on what others’ have said in order to develop one line of inquiry rather than too many.
