The most important management tasks are those aimed at improving discussion and discourse patterns in the classroom. The following points explain several skill and norms which is critical for classroom discussion.

A. Slow The Pace and Broaden Participation

In some cases, we find that less than a half of student in the class become very active participant or we can say that those student dominate the discussion. To broaden participation and get real discussions going requires substantial changes to this limited pattern of discourse. The pace must be slowed down and the norms about questioning and taking turns modified. There are several strategies which usually used by experienced teachers.

1. Think-Pair-Share

Think-Pair-Share is not only used to increase student participation, but also used to slow down the pace of a lesson and extend student thinking.

2. Buzz Groups

When using buzz groups, a teacher asks students to form into groups of three to six to discuss ideas they have about a particular topic or lesson. Each group assigns a member to list all the ideas generated by the group. Then, the teacher asks the recorders to summarize for the whole class the major ideas and opinions expressed in their group. This method can change the dynamics and basic pattern of classroom discourse and are easy for most teachers to use.

3. Beach Ball

The teacher gives the ball to one student to start the discussion with the understanding that only the person with the ball is permitted to talk. Other students raise their hands for the ball when they want a turn. This method is recommended for younger students.

B. Increase Interpersonal Regard and Understanding

An open and honest communication process is perhaps the single most important variable for promoting positive classroom discourse and discussion. Fortunately, teacher’s leadership can be greatly influence the way discourse occurs in classroom.

Since communication is essentially a process of sending and receiving messages effective communication requires the sender of a message to express clearly what he or she intends to communicate and the receiver to interpret that massage accurately. The meaning intended in the sender’s mind may not be accurately expressed in a manner that does not fit the receiver’s prior experiences. This is called communication gap.

Following are four communication skills described by Schmuck and Schmuck. Two of these skills assist the sender, two assist the receiver.

1. Paraphrase

Paraphrase is a skill for checking whether or not you understand the ideas being communicated to you. Any means of revealing your understanding of a message constitute a paraphrase.

2. Describe Behavior

This skill occurs when one person reports specific observable behaviors of another person without evaluating them or making inferences about the other’s motives.

3. Describe Feeling

There are people who rarely describe how they are feeling. It would be better for those people act on their feeling so that the other could draw inference from it.

4. Check Impressions

Checking impressions is a skill that complements describing your own feelings and involves checking your sense of what is going on inside the other person.

C. Use Tools that Highlight Discourse and Thinking Skills

Frank Lyman and James McTighe have written extensively about the use of teaching tools, particularly visual ones, that help teachers and students learn discourse and thinking skills.

1. Visual Cues for Thinking-Pair-Share

Old habits, such as responding to teacher questions before thinking, blurting out answers without waiting, are difficult to change. Lyman and teachers working with him have developed various way of teaching students how to employ think-pair-share, especially how and when to switch from one mode to another.

2. Thinking Matrix

McTighe and Lyman (1988) also studied how to get students and their teachers to ask more questions that promote higher-level thinking and to analyze the nature of responses made to various types of questions. Lyman (1986) recommends that teachers create symbols that illustrate the various thinking process described in Bloom’s Taxonomy.