3 visual ways to stimulate classroom discussions

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Classroom discussions and debates are great ways to promote an active learning culture in your classroom.

How can you encourage interesting classroom discussions?

Encourage your students to deal with the tension between opposite arguments. This tension is thought to be a stimulator of critical thinking. Students often respond with curiosity to this approach and, over time, report that they more comfortable with arguing opposite sides of an issue. 

Stimulate students to picture both sides of an argument by working with pro and con grids. Students could use them to identify the advantages or disadvantages of an issue. Debating improves students’ ability to search literature, weigh risks and benefits and make evidence-based choices.

Galotti proved that observing the reasoning skills of others promotes critical thinking. As part of her research students were paired and administered 4 reasoning tasks. They were then asked to talk through the reasoning process of their decisions.The observing students were asked to write down key phrases & statements. At the end, the whole class was asked to discuss the outcomes.

News items related to classroom content also allow you to introduce discussions in the classroom. Your students could list and discuss assumptions made by a news article, or plan hypothetical follow-up questions for if you were given the opportunity to interview the people involved. This way of working provides a free environment where students are stimulated to think for themselves, and to notice that their peers might not look at news articles the same way.

Stimulate classroom discussions with amazing interactive visuals

If you decide to stimulate classroom discussions with the help of technology, you could implement the following.

1) The spinner

Spin the spinner to select 2 pairs of students to whom you can administer reasoning tasks as explained above. You could also select passionate supporters of 2 antagonistic arguments, or interviewers for follow-up questions related to a new article. The digital spinner can be used to completely randomise participation. As the spinner decides whose turn it is to speak, there are no arguments about anyone being singled out. It gives all students a fair opportunity to speak out.

2) Interactive videos

Interactive videos are a great way of bringing current news items into the classroom. Once uploaded, you can embed interactive elements into the videos to motivate your students to discuss the assumptions of a news item, ask follow-up questions, or summarise parts of a news item in their own words.

3) Mind maps

Create pro and con grids and get students to fill them (as defined by hotspot components) from the two points of view on each side of a digital slide. These digital pro and con lists are very visual, interactive and engaging. 

The same pro and con grouping could be done by using 2 mind maps, ones with the ‘pros’ at the centre, and another with the ‘cons’. You could team up students in teams (or pairs) to think about pros or cons, and then switch the teams around. 

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