Classroom Discussions
This week I found the focus on classroom discussions particularly interesting. Most teachers take advantage of the educational benefits of student discussions, though the way teachers go about facilitating these discussions can be very different. I have been in many classes where teachers would initiate a class discussion with a few questions and wait until someone responds, with little or no prompts; often in these scenarios the class is silent except for the one or two students that would maintain the discussion.
On the other side of the spectrum, I have had a class where the teacher insisted that all students must speak and at the beginning of each seminar we would go around and respond individually to the readings, the teacher often supplying additional questions related to each student’s response. There was virtually no group interaction save the conversation the teacher was having with the student while the rest of the class watched.
Clearly neither is ideal: a more balanced approach would be much more effective in encouraging the collaborative development of ideas. In our education classes we would often use the think-pair-share approach where students can gather their thoughts and discuss with a small number of people before sharing with the class. This method is highly applicable to the high school classroom in that it allows students the opportunity to prepare and organize their thoughts before sharing; in addition, it gives shyer and/or ELL students a chance to share their thoughts in a lower-risk setting, allowing these students to feel that they have contributed to the discussion even if they do not choose to share in front of the class later. Oftentimes unwillingness to share in class does not necessarily indicate that students have nothing to say, but rather they do not feel comfortable enough to share. Therefore, it is the teacher’s/facilitator’s responsibility to ensure a safe environment where students do not feel the pressure to give the “right” responses.