Blog #3 Discussion As A Way Of Teaching

From this reading, I find how it breaks apart the different parts of discussion to better define why discussions can and can't be effective in teaching. Overall I have always thought that having discussion in the classroom is an effective teaching style for most subjects (Such as English and other language arts type courses), however it does have it's setbacks for other subjects (personally discussion for Maths or Sciences).

Having discussion in the classroom seems to be more common for upper level courses after the main idea has already been learned in earlier years. And I find my courses now to really embody the types of discussion that is discussed in the reading for class ( http://webshare.northseattle.edu/Sustainability_in_Healthcare/Discussion_as_a_Way_of_Teaching%20INC-Learning%20Circles.pdf ) By having discussion in the classroom it seem easier to gage the understanding of students and better critique the discussion to aid whatever is lacking within that understanding.

Additionally I found the 'why discussions fail' topic to be interesting because these points that are being made seem rather simple to be doing as a teacher but seems to actually be very valid in why a lot of teachers end up talking to an unresponsive classroom. This is especially important because I personally have been in a lot of classes where participation in discussion is graded. If participation is being graded and there is a lack of understanding in the discussion or undefined guidelines then more times that not the grade being received for participation is going to be poor.