5 Tips To Encourage Healthy Classroom Discussions
Engaging in complex discussions that value and respect diverse perspectives is vital for effective communication, understanding, and compassion when interacting with others. But, it can be challenging to teach students how to do this effectively when they’re still building their social and interpersonal skills.
We’re sharing five tips to help you hold healthy and engaging classroom discussions that get your students thinking critically and building the conversational and interpersonal skills they need to approach a discussion on any topic confidently and respectfully.
1. Establish classroom norms
Establishing norms before your first classroom discussion creates a welcoming and safe environment for exploring complex topics. Norms aren’t the same as rules, and they don’t have to be teacher-mandated. Students can help set boundaries and guide rails that help them feel most comfortable discussing hard or emotional topics in the classroom. Some norms you may set include:
Assuming others have good intentions when speaking up in a discussion.
Challenging ideas rather than people.
Evaluating knowledge sources to bring new information to conversations.
Using community circles can also help establish norms for talking, tolerance, and empathy—all beneficial to social and emotional learning. When you prioritize empathy and respect in the classroom, students are better prepared to have civil discussions—and stay true to their boundaries and norms—in conversations outside of school.
2. Promote empathy and respect
It’s challenging to lead classroom discussions on topics that elicit personal and emotional responses, like politics, religion, or other beliefs. When you promote empathy and respect as two guiding pillars of every classroom discussion, it creates a safer, more supportive, and responsive learning environment.
A common strategy for navigating complex topics in classroom discussions is to have students name their feelings before and after participating in a difficult conversation. Students can use resources like an emotion word bank or emotion tracker to do this.
An emotion identification exercise helps you anticipate and acknowledge potentially uncomfortable feelings so you’re better prepared for any issues that may arise during the discussion.
3. Prepare for uncomfortable questions
Fostering student curiosity and connection is part of the joy of teaching. But that curiosity can also lead to questions that are tricky to navigate in the classroom. What happens when a student brings up a sensitive topic like a controversial policy issue in social studies class?
Thinking ahead about how to respond to personal questions from students is an essential step in establishing an inclusive and respectful environment where they feel free to explore the topics. You can encourage curiosity by posing questions back to students and asking them to consider how they would come to a conclusion if they were posed their own questions.
For example, a student asks you where you stand on a particular policy issue. If you’re prepared for this situation in advance, you may respond by saying something like:
“That’s a great question to ask and explore. Let’s look at both sides of the issue and work together to uncover and understand all perspectives on it.”
It’s also helpful for you as a teacher to set your boundaries with students. Remind them of the goal of classroom discussions: Exploring and learning about complex topics and understanding the facts and context around them.
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4. Model active listening
We often use the term “active listening” to describe a structured way to show genuine interest, give undivided attention, withhold judgment, and be mindful of non-verbal communication during a lecture, speech, or discussion.
By modeling healthy discussion practices, you can teach students to be active listeners in the classroom. During modeling, you can reword student questions for clarity, correct misinformation, and reference relevant materials students can use to stay engaged.
When having even deeper discussions, you can moderate the conversation to invite quieter students to participate and temper more talkative students to keep them from dominating. Modeling healthy discussions also allows you to elevate and explore uncommon or unique opinions on complex topics so everyone’s voice is heard.
5. Provide opportunities for self-reflection
Classroom discussions rarely stay in the classroom. Students may think about them long after the class ends and even continue discussing the topics with peers at lunch or with family at home. You can encourage students to evaluate their own progress at the end of a discussion to ensure any subsequent conversations they have on the topics stay rooted in the norms you set at the beginning.
Asking students to share peer reflections not only strengthens classroom relationships and provides insights into their lives but also allows students to evaluate what went well during their discussions and what they would like to improve the next time they talk about a complex topic.
As a teacher, you can do the same exercise to determine how you want to handle future complex discussions in your classroom. Make notes of what went well and where you could adjust your discussion norms to include all students’ voices better and stick to the main topics.
Make your discussions respectful and relevant
Social studies topics are often complex topics. Politics, policy, and social justice themes increasingly emerge in conversations at the dinner table, on the bus, and on social media. From its prevalence in everyday conversations alone, we know social studies is foundational to the skills students need for college, career, and civic life. But how do we make sure students have the background knowledge and skills necessary to be successful in these areas beyond the classroom?
We can start by stressing how relevant social studies topics and skills are to students’ daily lives. You can learn about four key ways to make your social studies minutes relevant and serve the strategies you have in place to drive cross-curricular student outcomes with our guide, “From History to Headlines: 4 Ways To Make Social Studies Relevant.”