Class discussion is cornerstone of so many lessons and subjects. We want to engage students in airing and sharing ideas, listening to each other as we explore an area of the curriculum together or reflect on a common experience of some kind.
Done well, class discussion allows students to formulate and express ideas – helping them to develop and deepen their understanding, linking ideas together and gaining confidence with the use of the language needed to communicate them. It also allows the teacher to hear what students think, thereby learning more about them and what they know – it’s a form of formative check for understanding.
However, without appropriate attention to structures and routines, quite often class discussion can be one of those activities that creates a surface illusion of learning, with all the energy and buzz of student talk and teacher-student interaction, whilst, actually, only directly benefitting a handful of students.
The rest are observers rather than participants. The teacher might feel that they had a great class discussion because of the quality of contributions they sampled, but the view from the back suggests that too many students weren’t involved, couldn’t follow, didn’t get to share their ideas and didn’t get any practice or the chance to consolidate the ideas exchanged by the others.
