Inside Circle, Outside Circle: Meaningful Discussions that Force All Kids to Participate (and involve movement)

I love listening to my kids have discussions in class and this method of inside circle, outside circle is really incredible for upping the engagement in your classroom.
The first step in this process is giving students a question to answer on their own, at their desk without talking. I have students write their answers on an index card or blank paper. Then, after every has had enough quiet time to talk, I go around to the 8 tables in my room and choose 1 kid from each table to form the center circle.
Next, we form an outside circle and an inside circle. The 8 kids I chose go on the inside and the others are on the outside. Everyone has their paper where they wrote the answers and a pencil. We all face the inside and there are 2 circles: an onside one and an outside one.
The people on the inside begin sharing their answers to whatever the question was. They have them written down, so they have had time to think about their responses and that makes them more comfortable sharing.
While they are sharing, the people on the outside are taking notes about what is being said. I give them a focus of what to be looking for.
The first time we did this activity, I gave them a prompt to explain why learning to read and write is beneficial to them now or in the future. So, the outside circle focused on finding someone from the inside that they agreed with and someone they disagreed with. They also had to explain why and provide examples. This reminds me of an online discussion board. I really liked it.
Once all 8 of the inside people told their thoughts, the outside people began sharing their notes about who they agreed with and who they disagreed with. I did this with my 8th grade and I did not call on them to go. They shared without interrupting each other and the did a great job. I had a chart with each kids name on it and, as they shared, I marked them off for participation. They knew I was doing this and that was how they received a grade for this discussion.
Instead of agreeing and disagreeing with each other, they could also reply in other ways. What I love about this activity is that students are forced to listen to each other because they have to use what the other students say in their own response.
Something I am trying this week is to have students answer a question about the reading for the first part. Then, in the inside circle, outside circle discussion, they will choose a student's point and reply by adding more evidence to support the point.
Another way I plan to use this discussion method is to choose 6 students, one for each vocabulary word, and have them, create a sentence with that word. These 6 students will be in the center and share their sentences. Then, the other students will choose a word and explain if they think the student with that word used it correctly. Then, they will use the same sentence as the person on the inside, but they will alter the sentence and use a synonym (or another variation) where the sentence means the same as the vocabulary word. Then, a different person from the outside will do this again and again to show the different ways the vocabulary word can be phrased. This also helps with associating the vocabulary word with other words, which helps students make connections and allows for more meaningful learning.