Encouraging the 'Talanoa': Using Cue Cards for reflections

My level 3 Sos kids have just completed their externals and to get my level 3 students back on track and completing reflections on their Social Actions, I wanted to use a different method to get them to remember what did they and how they did it.  Usually, I would expect students to reflect individually but in the past, students get bored and loss motivation.  Because I know the year 13's like to talk I got them into their groups, shared with them the lesson plan and gave them reflection cue cards to help them discuss their actions.  The main rule I gave was that everyone had to have a question and that every member had to respond with an answer (one at a time of course)

There were 4 groups in total and it was interesting to see how each group responded.  The boys in the front of the class found using them good to hear from the quieter less overt members of the group.  A small group of 3 used them to ensure that they could write in more detail because they were lacking this in their written reflections.  The biggest group of girls who had issues with their suppers (ie they ran out of food) were able to talk in honesty about how they felt when this happened.  The last group, who were my most able students, didn't find them as useful as I'd hoped, instead choosing to rush through the questions, so they could get to their writing.

The supper group discuss their social action.

A smaller group 'talanoa' about their action.

On reflection, a thing I would change next time is to ensure that these discussions are done with the groups separated in a different space/room because it was a bit noisy in the one classroom where some really good discussions were going on.  I also think that I would have students voice record their conversations and create a transcript that they could use in their assessment.  From this, I hope to look at more focus group types of discussion, where I could model to them how to 'link' their answers to each other and learn how to respond to each other.  Overall, I think the lesson went well and I hope to develop this strategy better.