Questioning and Thinking skills Activity 4 - How can I encourage learners to ask questions?

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Activity 4: How can I promote discussion in class?

reading: 30 minutes
reflection on discussion: 30 minutes
listing topics :10 minutes
class activity: 60 minutes
e-mail group discussion: 45 minutes

2 hrs 55 mins

The purpose of this activity is to help you to understand how discussions amongst learners help them to learn, and to provide you with techniques to organise meaningful discussions amongst your learners.

Do you ever talk to yourself?

Some people say it is a sign of madness to talk to yourself, but actually it is a very intelligent thing to do. When you have a problem, one of the best ways of dealing with it is to put your thoughts into words. Talking to yourself about it (you do not have to talk out loud of course) helps your mind to sort out what the problem is and how to deal with it. Talking to other people about a problem will also help you to sort it out in your own mind, and the people you talk to will give you new ideas about what to do.

Something that helps you to think will surely help your learners as well. As a teacher, you need to be able to set up and manage discussions amongst your learners.

Activity

Use your e-diary to record your thoughts about class discussion.

In order to answer the questions below, we recommend that you read:

Think about the three questions posed here:

a) How can discussion help thinking and learning?

b) What makes a learning discussion different from an ordinary conversation?

c) What can a teacher do to manage a discussion amongst learners?

Write your own short notes on these three questions.

Using the syllabus content which you are teaching, make a list of questions that provide opportunities for using discussion to help learners to think, understand better, and learn.
Choose one or more suitable questions, and do any one of the three activities that follow:

3A. With your learners, do a Think-Ink-Pair-Share activity. This is an activity to get learners to think about an issue and discuss it.

OR

3B. With your learners, do the Agree/Disagree process activity.

OR

3C. With your learners, hold a class discussion in which you participate. You can find guidance in the information on discussion that you have read previously in this activity.

After doing one of these activities, write e-mail to your group. Comment on each of the following questions. Write an introduction explaining which activity you did and in what context (grade subject).

a) Did the learners participate meaningfully in the activity? Give one or two examples of meaningful participation, as well as examples of non-participation if this was a problem.

b) Did you find that the learners benefited from the activity, and if so in what way? Did they understand the issues better or learn something worthwhile?
Use you e-diary to record your thoughts about your experiences with the discussion activities.

We recommend that you do Activity 5 - How can I encourage learners to ask questions.

Questioning and Thinking Skills

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