Inner circle (also known as “Inside-Outside Circle”) is a strategy in which the room is arranged in a circle with two desks set up across from each other. The students on the inside of the circle rotate to the next seat (clockwise or counter-clockwise) at the teacher’s command. Meanwhile, the students on the outside of the circle stay put, so that each student talks to a different student during each rotation. Students may not necessarily have to sit in desks to complete this activity. They can stand up and rotate instead, like in the Teacher Tool Kit video shown below. Typically, this activity is used for topics that require discussion and higher-order thinking.
I think that inner circle is a good teaching strategy because students can get a different perspective from different classmates about a particular topic. For example, if the teacher has students discussing what the most important element of a story is, students can talk to each other about whether it is the characters; setting; plot; or another element of the story. They can share their perspectives on the importance of each part of the story and listen to other students’ perspective on why they think another part of the story may be most important. When students listen to the different perspectives on a particular topic, they may learn something new about the topic or think about it in a way they have never thought about before. This is a strategy I used in my college education courses, and I liked it because I got to learn about what my classmates thought of a particular topic in teaching in ways that I have never thought about before. I would highly recommend this teaching strategy.
In addition to learning new perspectives from classmates, I also like that it runs smoothly. In other words, it is a smooth transition from one seat to the next, and it is not time-consuming for one student to go from one place to another. Of course, it is important to model for students what is expected of them when implementing this strategy into the classroom. The teacher should model what should happen in the discussion and how the transition should be made from one seat to the next. As long as the strategy is properly modeled, students of all ages should be able to participate in this strategy efficiently.
