The Big List of Class Discussion Strategies
The Big List of Class Discussion Strategies When I worked with student teachers on developing effective lesson plans, one thing I always asked them to revise was the phrase “We will discuss.” We will discuss the video. We will discuss the story. We will discuss our results. Every time I saw it in a lesson plan, I would add a note: “What format will you use? What questions will you ask? How will you ensure that all students participate?” I was pretty sure that We will discuss actually meant the teacher would do most of the talking; He would throw out a couple of questions like “So what did you think about the video?” or “What was the theme of the story?” and a few students would respond, resulting in something that looked like a discussion, but was ultimately just a conversation between the teacher and a handful of extroverted students; a classic case of Fisheye Teaching . The problem wasn’t them; in most of the c...