Discussion as a Way of Teaching

I have always been a big fan of using discussions in my classroom.  I feel that it is a wonderful way for students to interact with one another by sharing their opinions and feeling, while learning at the same time.  No two people think alike and what a wonderful notion that is!  In my experience students don’t always realize that they are learning because they are having too much fun communicating with their peers to realize that they are actually engaging in higher level thinking.  Reading this article helped to relive the benefits of how important and good discussion may be when conducted appropriately.

I love how the author started off with remembering a discussion that they once had the opportunity to lead.  How true was his comment that, “By now I was starting to realize that things are not nearly as simple as I’d imagined.”  Anyone who has ever spent time in a classroom as a teacher can relate to this feeling; I know that I sure have.  Whenever we as teachers decide to use discussion based teaching we are taking a risk that things might not turn out the way we expected them to turn out, whether good or bad.  However, I’m a thrill seeking teacher and love how the unpredictable can lead into the best lessons.

For someone who is new to using discussions in their classroom, I found these chapters to be highly engaging and informative.  The author does an amazing job at spelling out the ground rules for how to lead a proper and effective discussion to really get the most out of your students.  I think it is a valuable piece of research that could be used as part of a TPA Lesson Rational explanation as to why we use discussion in our lessons.  It can also be tied to the importance of student voice that is needed within our TPA’s because it is the new favorite way of identifying student learning.