classroom talk

In my placement I am seeing a great deal of the communication being teacher led. The children do sit at tables of four but they are encouraged to work independently. I have never seen the teacher facilitate a class discussion. She mainly asks questions and calls on someone to answer the question. We do have ESL students but they rarely get a chance to practice their verbal communication skills. I realize the importance of group work and group learning but in my experience there has always had the person who sits back and lets the rest of the team carry them. I found the suggestions from the Gibbons reading for overcoming this helpful. Having students work together in groups in a productive way is not just something that happens the moment you divide up the class. students must be trained in this just like every other thing. I is important to give each student a position and role within the group. The class is a class of kindergartners who have difficult staying focused for 5 mins. straight. I want to have time that the students can work in small groups but even centers time is so unstructured that not much is accomplished. I feel like I am not in the classroom enough to even prepare students to productively work in groups.