Discussion as a Way of Teaching

I really was able to connect to this article because I think discussion within the classroom between students, with students, with parents, and with faculty is important. When we engage in discussion, we can better shape our thoughts and opinions with the influence of other people’s ideas. I want to show my students that it’s important to keep an open mind, and respect the thoughts and opinions of others, even if it’s not identical to their own. This article has provided a plethora of techniques and strategies I can use to get my students to engage in a successful discussion.

 The part I found most important in this article was the different reasons why discussions fail, and the reasons that stood out to me the most were students not being prepared, and students not having an example of how discussions work. Each example that was provided in this article avoids the problem or students being unprepared by allowing students a few minutes solidarity to gather their ideas and thoughts. Also, to avoid students being unprepared, I think it’s important, as a teacher, to begin the discussion with students. This way they have an example of how their own discussions should look like.

The strategy that I found most interesting was the critical debate example. I really enjoy the concept of debates because each side of the debate must gather factual arguments, while being mindful of their opponents’ arguments as well. Debates are a great tool to help students learn to think with an open mind and take in consideration of the arguments of other’s in order to make your own argument stronger. This exercise also includes a reflection at the end as well, which helps students review how successful/unsuccessful were their strategies, what new learnings did they achieve, and did their thoughts or opinions change and why.