Resources for Educators

Teaching Tip

From the Teacher’s Aide Newsletter

2013 June

Dynamic Discussions

Discussions can be an effective tool to build rapport among students, inspire the class to learn more about a topic, encourage critical thinking skills, and gauge what students know. They incur little or no cost and are easy to organize. Discussions range in scope from simply posing a question to facilitating structured exploration. They may be done in small groups or with the whole class. The most productive classroom discussions are those in which students talk to each other and not just a series of exchanges between the teacher and students.