In a silent conversation, the process takes place without spoken words. This is ideal for heterogeneous classrooms where students might feel anxious about participating in a discussion. It should also give everyone an equal voice and honor students who need a little bit more processing time. 

1. Put students in small groups 

2. Give each group a piece of text to read, an image to examine, or a clip to watch 

3. Give each group a piece of chart paper and give each individual a marker 

4. Prompt students to comment on what they have read, seen, or watched by writing questions and comments on the chart paper. (You might need to provide some sentence starters for this) 

5. Remind students that as they complete this task: they can all write at the same time, they can use both words and images, they can connect associated words/phrases with lines, circles,e and other markings. 

6. The written conversation must be directly connected to the text, image, or clip, but can move in whatever direction the students take it. If one person writes a question about a related topic, another student can answer it. 

Silent conversations can be conducted in a digital environment as well, using tools such as: 

• https://www.figma.com/ 

• www.mentimeter.com