Improving Classroom Participation

Techniques to Ensure Active Listening and Productive Participation
When assigning students to participate in cooperative learning projects or discussions, teachers should consider their cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and social developmental levels. If a teacher assigns a topic for age levels younger than the class, students will be bored and unengaged. If the topic assigned is for older age levels, they will be confused, overwhelmed, or lost. Before initiating class or group discussions, teachers should model and explain appropriate behaviors for discussions—particularly for students unfamiliar or inexperienced with group discussions. For example, teachers can demonstrate active listening, including eye contact, affirming or confirming the speaker's message, and restating the speaker's message for confirmation or correction. Teachers should establish clear ground rules, such as not interrupting others when they are speaking, not monopolizing the conversation, not engaging in cross-talk, not insulting classmates verbally, and taking turns and waiting for the appropriate time to make a comment. For young children and students with behavioral issues, this would also include refraining from physical contact like hitting, kicking, and biting.

Active Student Listening
Active listening has multiple dimensions. It involves constructing meaning out of what is heard, being reflective and creative in considering and manipulating information, and making competent decisions rich in ideas. The natural properties of speech and thought enable active listening: the typical speed of speaking is roughly 125 words per minute, whereas the estimated speed of thinking is roughly 500 words per minute. Therefore, students have around 375 words per minute of spare time to think about the speech they hear. Students' minds can wander during this extra time, so teachers should instruct them to use the time instead to summarize lecture information mentally—a form of active listening. Listening and learning are both social and reciprocal. They also both allow and require students to process and consider what they hear and stimulate their curiosity about subsequent information.

Incorporating Active Student Listening into Lessons

At the beginning of each day (or class), teachers should clarify the 'big picture' and identify the learning objectives incorporated into the day's activities. They should also give students a single word or phrase to summarize the prior day's subject and a single word or phrase to preview the current day's subject. Teachers should not only establish this recall, retrieval, prediction, and planning process as a daily habit, but should also encourage students to develop the same daily habit in their note-taking. Teachers should review main concepts or have students summarize the last lecture's main ideas to make connections with preceding lessons. By encouraging and guiding student listening, teachers supply spoken transitions analogously to those in written research. By cueing students to take notes with questions or summaries at the ends of sections, teachers also help students demonstrate their comprehension.

Using Media to Review
Teachers can allow students to take photos, videos, and audio recordings of lessons to review as needed. To encourage students to reword and recall instructional input, teachers can let students download class outlines from Google Docs. These outlines may include hard-to-spell terminology or vocabulary words, jargon of specific disciplines, and links reminding students to follow up by accessing resources and readings to inform the notes they take. Teachers should give outlines a two-column format: on the right, a wider column with teacher notes, to which students can add, and on the left, a narrower column for students to record notes and questions about previous lectures and reading. Teachers should advise students to take their own notes in similar formats. Students and teachers alike can learn through speaking, writing, listening, and reading when they contribute narratives to supplement visual graphics (photos, concept maps, charts, advance organizers, illustrations, diagrams, etc.) that support the concepts they analyze and explain.

Whole-Class Learning Circles
Forming whole classes into learning circles requires students to apply their skills for listening to lectures, synthesizing information, and summarizing the information. Teachers can prepare students by articulating central discussion points; identifying next steps in thought, question forming, analysis, and action; guiding student analysis and construction of meaning from what they have read, observed, and experienced; and asking students questions beginning with 'What?' 'Why?' and 'Now what?'
Basic ground rules for learning circles include:
1.  No student interrupts another.
2. Students may skip a turn until others have taken turns, but no student speaks out of turn.
3. Each student has a certain length of time for speaking.
4.  Each student starts by restating what was said previously (e.g., summarizing shared points, differing points, missed points, or points not discussed fully).
5.  After every student has had one turn, general discussion is open, possibly guided by teacher-provided questions.

Procedures and Ground Rules for Smaller Groups
Teachers can develop student discussion skills integrating listening, reading, and speaking skills by assigning small discussion groups to tackle assigned problems. Teachers may use established groups, assign new groups, or allow students to form groups of 4-5 students. Teachers can read a text passage, describe a scenario, or pose a question for discussion. They can then give students several minutes to review homework and notes, briefly read new related material, and review essay drafts. Teachers then give each student in each group a specified number of uninterrupted minutes to speak in turn.
After every student has taken a turn, the teacher opens general discussion, setting the following ground rules:
1.  Students can only speak about others' ideas.
2.  Teachers and classmates can ask students to clarify their ideas, give examples, connect them more closely to what they read, or elaborate.
3.  Small groups can summarize overall points for other groups, including shared points, differences, and potential topics they missed.

Educator Techniques for Classroom Discussions
Students who feel comfortable with the teacher and the class are more likely to engage in open discussion. Teachers can encourage student openness and creativity by learning students' names and by posing questions rather than making comments. Lively discussions with all students participating are evidence that students are comfortable. A variety of student answers is evidence that the questioning technique works. When student discussions stray off the subject, learning goals will not be met. Teachers can redirect discussion by restating topics and questions previously announced, and by introducing new questions related to identified topics. When conversation refocuses on stated topics, teachers can identify specified learning goals/objectives students are meeting in their discussion. In most classes, a few students will dominate conversations. Teachers can pose less challenging questions, which can be answered even without preparation, to engage more reticent students, and then graduate to higher-level questions. They can evaluate all students' participation using checklists generated from attendance sheets.

Teaching Strategies to Encourage Discussion
During class discussions, students often contribute erroneous information. Teachers must be tactful in correcting them. If students withdraw from the conversation or cease further contributions, the teacher has not corrected them appropriately. If corrected students continue to contribute, the teacher has succeeded in providing positive reinforcement rather than punishment with the correction. Some ways to do this include acknowledging how the student came to a conclusion but explaining that it does not apply to the current context, or explaining how the student's response might be correct in another situation. Teachers can also provide incentives for students to contribute to class discussions. They may include participation in the syllabus as part of the grade, keep records to tally when each student contributes to a discussion, or assign different students to lead class discussions in turn.
These are some ways teachers can evaluate individual student participation in classroom discussions, as well as their own effectiveness in encouraging such participation.

Reducing Intimidation
Students often feel intimidated if 'put on the spot' to answer questions without warning. Teachers can put them at ease by allowing time to prepare. They can announce topics and questions for class discussion, giving students five minutes to jot down notes for responses and another five minutes for exchanging and reflecting on notes with classmates before beginning whole-class conversation. Teachers may distribute discussion topics at the end of one class for the next day's conversation or post questions online the night before class. One technique for evaluating discussions is asking students early in the term to write papers about the characteristics of good and bad class discussions, and then discuss what they have written. Teachers then compose a list of classroom discussion goals and give copies to all students. Another technique is an informal survey: ask students midway through the semester to evaluate the overall quality of class discussions. Share responses with the class, and inform them of plans incorporating their feedback to enhance discussions.

Promoting Discussion Outside of Class
Teachers can encourage in-class discussion by promoting group meetings and discussions outside the classroom. Interacting with students outside of class also promotes a sense of community. Teachers can demonstrate to students that they care about them as individuals and about their educational development by asking them about their holiday or summer plans, about how they are feeling during midterm and final exam periods, and about their other classes. Teachers can find online articles related to class material and email or text links to these for review. They can allow time at the beginning of each class for announcements and arrange classroom chairs in a semicircle to encourage conversation. These methods have all been found effective in promoting a sense of community, which in turn encourages class discussions. To address different student learning styles and abilities, teachers can vary the levels and types of questions they ask their students: asking them to give simple information, describe, compare, analyze, justify, compare, generalize, predict, or apply information.