Discussion

An exchange of ideas, with active learning and participation by all students. They must talk, listen and respond to one another; they must be collectively putting forward more than one point of view, and they must have the intention of developing their knowledge, understanding or judgment of the issue under discussion.

The purpose of discussion is to solve a problem or answer a question, but at the same time enhancing the students’ knowledge and understanding of the issue at hand.

• Develops students’ communication skills such as listening, stating (or articulating?) their ideas clearly, respecting the views of others and responding appropriately to others.
• Allows students to work together, share their ideas and reach group consensus on issues.

It Promotes learning by helping students to explore a diversity of perspectives and see that there are many different ways to interpret the same, apparently objective, facts.

1. Teacher presents the purpose topic and objectives of discussion
   • Develop a clear focus question - preferably one to which a number of acceptable, but markedly divergent responses are possible.
2. Provide students with preparatory reading materials and a set of guiding questions to help them think about the topic and make notes.
3. Prepare the discussion plan outlining the following:
   • Clear learning outcomes
   • Outline (or brief or summary?) of the subject and reason for discussing it
   • A clear question to focus the discussion
   • A list of supplementary questions to guide the discussion
4. Students to form groups (teacher-selected or student selected).
   • Ideal group size is from six to eights four to five students.
5. Prepare the discussion environment.
   • Introduces simple ground rules for engagement.
   • Refocus the discussion if it goes off-tangent by providing guiding questions or prompts.
   • Teacher may ask students to reflect, summarise and evaluate points of the discussions. The teacher may choose to use technology for this purpose.
   • Teacher invites each group to present their discussion points to the whole class.
   • Teacher summarises and evaluates students’ discussions. They may be assessed in terms of their quality of ideas, level of engagement and relevancy of questions.

• Collaborative Brainstorming | Padlet, Lino
• Collaborative Mind Mapping | Mind42, Bubbl.us, Popplet