Monitor Your Discussions

I teach older students. In the future, once they've been accustomed to the new guidelines for discussion in the classroom, I would expect students to come to me in 7th grade with a greater knowledge of how to talk with each other in the classroom, outside the classroom, online, etc. 

The past year has been a big eye opener for me, and for a few students, because there are so many opportunities to communicate. Communication is a blessing but without understanding how our words affect others, words can hurt, break down, or ruin another person's day/week/life. We've watched Cyber Bully (Disney) and we've talked in class about how we convey ourselves in writing (hint: it's ALWAYS out there). So for this anchor chart we talked about how they could rate themselves on a 4,3,2,1 scale on their discussions and writing. 

This hangs in our classroom for English and History but it could totally be used for ALL subjects. Students need to be aware of what they are expected to do, and in history especially students always need reminding in creating full sentence answers with evidence. Evidence, evidence, evidence. Where's the proof?!?! We are consistently talking about that as Common Core Standards focus on showing proof with quotes and textual evidence. How do you keep students on task during discussions? How do they know if they are doing the right things or not?