WAYS TO ENCOURAGE MORE STUDENTS TO TALK

 As a teacher, I tried the following method to encourage my student to talk and participate in the class. Because participation in class discussion is very important for their knowledge and learning.

1. Find Out Why Students Don't Participate

When I asked my students what kept them from participating, I got the usual responses: I don't know the answer; I hate being wrong; Someone else knows a better answer; I wasn't prepared. Noticing that these reasons centred around the concept of failing, I led a discussion about why it's acceptable to not be perfect. I shared the story of Ragish and the school egg drop contest. On the day of the event, in front of the entire school, Ragish's egg cracked wide open when he dropped it. Instead of moving on to the next student, the teacher judging the contest suggested that Ragish do some reading and try again the next day, which he did—and then the next day and the next after that. Finally, his project ended up among the top five champions. He eventually took that lesson in bouncing back from failure to MIT and then to Khan Academy, where he now works.

2. Show Students Their Fears Are Unfounded

Once I knew that the fear of failure was keeping my students from participating, I began demonstrating subtle failures in class. I gave the wrong fact, acknowledged my "mistake," modelled how to resolve the situation, and moved on. This removed the fear associated with being wrong and gave my students permission to make mistakes. I transformed my classroom into a safe space for trying, failing, and trying again. I could almost see students' relief as they realized that if their teacher made mistakes, they could too.

3. Create an Atmosphere That Encourages Participation

I knew I needed to reset students' expectations for in-class discussions, and they had to stop limiting themselves by thinking the only way to participate was by knowing the right answer. As a class, we reviewed our policy for maintaining a safe, collaborative space and came up with the following rules:

Be respectful.

Speak loud enough so everyone can hear.

Listen to classmates.

Don't interrupt who is speaking.

Build on your classmate's comments with your comments.

Use participation to not only answer questions but to seek help or ask for clarification.

4. Assess student's prior knowledge and tailor your lessons to build on what students already know. Students will feel successful and be more engaged when new content is linked to what they already know.

5. Allow for student collaboration. Well-timed opportunities for students to work together or even discuss a concept mid-lesson can be great for engagement. Turn and Talk is a great strategy where students are given a discussion topic and time to turn quickly and discuss with a partner. The 123 Teach strategy is also great for reviewing content. This works best for material that needs a lot of reviews–more knowledge level content. For this strategy, the teacher names the concept to be reviewed (e.g., the definition of a vocabulary word) and after counting 123 the students turn and review the concept with a partner as many times as they can until the teacher calls time.