Engage student interest in classroom discussions by using grade-appropriate techniques as a springboard for stimulating discussions. Engagement techniques can have a contemporary or a traditional character or combine both traditional and contemporary activities that support the students' interest in classroom discussion.
Identify past successes of other instructors in using engagement activities to determine some appropriate activities. Show-and-tell and field trips promote stimulating classroom discussion for a reason: It provide students an active role in learning that encourages discussion. Seek out other activities with the same effect of active participation in the learning to support stimulating classroom discussions.
Conduct classrooms during discussion times more as a facilitator than as an instructor. Allow the students to direct the discussion among themselves. Exercise care to encourage student participation by allowing students time to think before speaking and avoid interrupting students, or interposing your views as a teacher.
Consider using a setting other than the normal classroom as a means of facilitating stimulating discussion. With younger grades, teaching a discussion-focused class in an outdoor setting, or by taking a field trip, can provide a change of scene that can encourage stimulating discussion. At the college or university level, consider teaching advanced level courses in other than the normal classroom throughout the course of the full semester. A conference room in the college library makes an unusual setting that can promote stimulating discussion, for example. Arrange for such out-of-the-ordinary settings in advance whenever possible.
Take steps to encourage student participation in classroom discussion. Suggest, for example, that students consider bringing their "out in the corridor" discussions on topics into the actual classroom. According students this respect of their outside-the-classroom insights promotes both confidence and stimulating classroom discussion.
Consider the potential to use invitations to experts as a springboard for classroom discussions. Can you, for example, bring a local children's writer into a third or fourth grade classroom one day? Having an author read one of her own short children's stories out loud to the class, followed by a question and answer session on the story, the author read can lead to an especially lively classroom discussion.
Consider other creative ways to encourage student discussions such as those at the Grand Rapids Community College website. Some examples include pairing students off to discuss ideas, round robin sessions that encourage students to come up with as many ideas as possible in a set time, or students responding from different sides of an imaginary line called a value line that represents contrasting opinions on a topic.