How to Rethink the Objectives of Classroom Discussion

It’s a natural impulse: a sea of raised hands during a classroom discussion must mean students are getting it—they’re engaged with the material and prepared to ask smart questions. 

And yet, some students rarely raise their hand, and others shudder at the thought of sharing their thinking in public, fearful that they’ll sound uninformed or lack the language skills to express themselves clearly. 

When raised hands becomes the objective, says Philadelphia high school English teacher Matthew R. Kay in a recent ASCD article, teachers can inadvertently create “artificial systems” that dock students for not speaking enough—or for speaking too much—and trick themselves into “valuing the quantity of raised hands over the quality of students’ contributions.” 

Expanding what participation looks like, says Kay, so it includes a wider range of activities such as peer discussion and classroom polls and surveys, for example, can help teachers focus less on the extremes in the classroom—“the eager participants at one end and the stone-silent students on the other,” as Kay describes them—and more on ensuring all students reap the benefits of rich classroom discussions. 

Curating from Kay and from our archives, here are concrete ways to recognize—and encourage—this kind of meaningful participation in your classroom. 

Build Good Habits

Class discussion norms can take different forms, but in Elizabeth Footit Simon’s middle school English classroom, students learn to SLANT, an acronym that refers to sitting up, listening, tracking the speaker, and answering and asking questions like “building off of what___said,” and “could you say more about ___.” 

Simon says that prompting her students to slant into a discussion reminds them to be active participants—even if they’re not speaking—while modeling respect for peers and making students “feel comfortable sharing their thoughts.” 

Classroom discussion standards help students learning important skills like speaking and responding to each other—not past each other—author and former educator Doug Lemov told Edutopia in a 2023 interview. “A lot of times what we call discussions in classrooms are not discussions. They're a series of disconnected comments made in sequence.” When students learn good habits of attention, it signals engagement and helps them “connect their ideas to others” and “convey that what their peers are saying is important.”

If the goal is for students to share ideas that matter, “we can’t have them talking to the back of someone’s head, or to someone checking their phone,” Lemov asserts. “That body language says: ‘I don’t give a damn what you’re saying right now.’ And who in their right mind wants to participate in an environment like that?” 

Hand Signals and Nonverbal Participation

Sometimes a simple hand signal or thumbs-up during check-in questions, or to gauge if students agree with a point made by peers, can pull quieter students into a conversation. 

Instead of asking students to help her solve a math problem on the board, middle school math teacher Ann Young has them think about the problem first and raise a thumb once they have “an entry point” or “something to contribute” to the problem. As thumbs go up, she acknowledges each student and waits until the minute is over before calling on a student to help her solve the problem. 

Some students “think faster than others, but that doesn’t mean that the kids that aren’t as fast don’t understand,” Young says. When teachers rely only on raised hands, the kids who get to an answer or comment faster can prevent others from bothering to participate: “The rest of the kids say, ‘That’s great. I don’t need to anymore’,” Young said. Pausing for a moment to allow for brief nonverbal participation gives all students a chance to engage, which she said increases their confidence and attention: “you have them a little bit more than you would otherwise,” Young said.

Talk to a Peer 

A quick turn-and-talk or think-pair-share gives students time to explore a topic or question and come up with insights they can share with a partner or small group, hear the perspectives of peers, and identify gaps in understanding. 

For a variation, try think-pair-draw where two-person teams sketch out ideas on poster paper before presenting to the class, or think-pair-debate, which East Carolina University English education professor Todd Finley says “fosters critical thinking when exploring a two-sided issue.” Assign students a stance on a relevant topic—decide whether or not the actions of a novel’s protagonist are justified, for example—then pair students up to argue and defend their positions. These pairs then join another pair to have a larger debate—complete with opening statements and rebuttals. The exercise stimulates collaboration and involvement for everyone, and helps them refine their understanding of material. 

Process Through Writing 

Sharing thoughts on the fly during classroom discussions can be challenging for some kids; they may need more time to collect and process their thinking before participating with the larger group. Writing can help here, says high school English teacher and former California Teacher of the Year, Rosie Reid, who gives her students a chance to jot down notes or questions that later inform their contributions to discussions. 

Giving students a moment to process their thinking in writing helps “improve both the quality of the conversation,” and increases the number of students who contribute to larger classroom conversations, Reid says. To help build up students’ courage, she walks around the classroom as students write, reading over their shoulders and writing encouraging notes in the margins like: “That’s good. Say that!” which encourages her “quieter or less confident students.” 

Tech Tools to Level the Playing Field

Tools like Google Docs or surveys allow students to review discussion questions and respond in advance of classroom or group discussion, says Katy Farber, a former classroom teacher and professor of education at Saint Michael’s College. “This is a low-risk way for introverted students to participate and feel important and valued in a discussion,” Farber writes, adding that student responses can also serve as quick formative assessments.

Apps like Nearpod allow students to respond to a wide variety of questions by writing responses, submitting drawings, or engaging with their peers’ responses in a shared digital discussion space, writes Stephanie Toro, an education professor at the Universidad de los Andes. Nearpod also allows teachers to share single, anonymous responses to discuss with the whole class, which helps more kids feel like they're contributing to the conversation—and increases the likelihood that they'll contribute in the future. “They will feel their ideas represented without any anxiety of being recognized,” Toro writes. “They personally will know that they were heard and contributed to the collective learning experience.”