Inside/Outside Circles - The Teacher Toolkit
Inside/Outside Circles - The Teacher Toolkit is a circle dialogue exercise for reflection and learning: it helps participants reflect on experience and turn observations into learning.
How to run it
- Decide which half of the students will form the inside circle and which half will form the outside circle.
- Put a question or statement on the board. Give students at least ten seconds to think of an answer on their own.
- Ask students in the inside circle to share their response with the classmate facing them in the outside circle. When they have done this, ask them to say "pass,” at which point their partners in the outside circle will share their responses.
- On your signal, have the outside circle move one step to the left or right and discuss the same question with the new partner. Option: post a new question or give the new partners a different discussion point.
Run this exercise live
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What participants need now
Materials:
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Prompts to use +
Decide which half of the students will form the inside circle and which half will form the outside circle.
Put a question or statement on the board. Give students at least ten seconds to think of an answer on their own.
Ask students in the inside circle to share their response with the classmate facing them in the outside circle. When they have done this, ask them to say "pass,” at which point their partners in the outside circle will share their responses.
On your signal, have the outside circle move one step to the left or right and discuss the same question with the new partner. Option: post a new question or give the new partners a different discussion point.
Run this with your AI assistant +
Works with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or your own local model: paste this prompt and your AI will co-facilitate this exercise with you.
Adapt this exercise for my exact room. Exercise: Inside/Outside Circles - The Teacher Toolkit. Readiness: Publishable Draft. Core moves: Decide which half of the students will form the inside circle and which half will form the outside circle.; Put a question or statement on the board. Give students at least ten seconds to think of an answer on their own.; Ask students in the inside circle to share their response with the classmate facing them in the outside circle. When they have done this, ask them to say "pass,” at which point their partners in the outside circle will share their responses.; On your signal, have the outside circle move one step to the left or right and discuss the same question with the new partner. Option: post a new question or give the new partners a different discussion point.. Return a concise facilitator script with timing, wording, safety notes, and remote/in-person adjustments.
Origin unverified
- Where we observed it: The current corpus has one observed source organization: The Teacher Toolkit. (1 source observed, including The Teacher Toolkit.)
- What that means: we track where an exercise has been observed in public sources. We do not claim to know who created it, or how popular it is.
- No efficacy claims: appearing in this library is not a claim that the exercise is proven effective. Facilitator judgment and context decide whether it works for a given room.
- Corrections: if you have evidence of an earlier or more accurate source, read our methodology and trust boundary and tell us.