Taking Everyone's Ideas Seriously is A Key Ingredient in Teaching

Learning, that liberates students' mind, highly upholds the values of contribution of ideas. It urges all teachers to give as wide space as possible for students to speak their minds in any discussions. Therefore, each student has equal opportunities to state their opinions, ideas, comments etc. This is what makes a class discussion alive. 

A lively discussion is believed to be meaningful to shape students' critical thinking, depending how the teacher leads it. It is the teacher who drives where the discussion goes, how it is supposed to be carried out, what points to discuss, and what conclusions to be made. Taking this into consideration, it is an urgency that teachers develop class discussions that not only the opinionated students would speak up, but also those who need more encouragement to do it. 

It is actually pretty normal in a classroom situation where there are students who are able to speak up actively in any discussions and those who seem to be reluctant to do it. The 'smart' ones tend to be more confident to state ideas or opinions than the 'low-ability' ones. That could be so because they feel like knowing a lot of things to share with, or questions to ask from. Meanwhile, on the contrary, the 'low' students feel like knowing nothing so that they think it's safe just to stay silent. In other words, they play it safely.

To create a lively class discussion, there are some ways that teachers can do:

1. use provoking or interesting opening by e.g. questioning an issue about the topic or telling a story about that

2. use words that are appropriate with the age of our students

3. involve their real life experience

4. start with asking the passive students, then followed by the active ones

5. encourage students to be more actively engaged in any discussions

6. allocate more time to discuss an issue or topic

7. focus more on students' participation instead of having them answer correctly/appropriately