4 The role of the teacher

Mr Bhana’s role as teacher during the discussion was to manage the introduction to the topic (including presenting any introductory questions), organise and monitor the groups, and summarise the students’ ideas.

While the role of observer can be valuable in giving you insights into your students’ understanding and thought processes, at times it can be helpful to intervene and prompt students. Careful additional questioning can help your students to clarify their ideas, expand their points and explain their reasoning better. The following kinds of prompting questions can help your students to think more widely and deeply about a topic:

  • What do you mean by …?
  • Can you expand on …?
  • Can you explain why you don’t agree with …?

Activity 2: Using groups in discussion

Think about what you want your students to learn more about within the topic of malnutrition. Then formulate a question that they can discuss in small groups.

Next, plan how you will organise the groups. These could be friendship groups or mixed ability groups to encourage a mix of ideas, as this will help students support each other more and develop understanding and sensitivity to different perspectives and abilities.

Do they need any additional information? If so, how will you supply this? How will you support your students during the discussion and afterwards? Now plan your lesson and carry it out with the chosen class.

Pause for thought

  • What did you notice about:
    • student participation?
    • the level and depth of discussion in the groups?
    • your role as supporter?
    • your questioning skills?
    • the groups that found the activity more difficult?
  • What changes would you make next time, across these areas?

Video: Using questioning to promote thinking

Activity 3: Students’ perception of discussions

Either at the end of Activity 2 or at the beginning of the next lesson, spend a few minutes asking your class for their views on the experience of having discussions in their science lessons. Some of your students may not want to speak directly to you, but could talk in groups and then give you written feedback of the groups’ ideas. Devise one or two open questions for them, such as:

  • What do you like about talking about different ideas in science with your peers?
  • What could be done to make them better?
  • Did the discussion help you learn new information? Why is this? Why not?

Give the students time to talk before you ask them to summarise their feedback to you.

Use their feedback alongside your own reflections of Activity 2 to identify the strengths of your discussion lessons and areas that you need to work on to make the discussion more effective. Keep these available so that when you next do a discussion activity, you can remind yourself about your targets for improvement.

3 Developing discussion skills

5 Using different approaches to a discussion