Importance of dialog and coversation in classroom?

Answer 1

Well, a direct answer on that is hard to give but one statistic comes to mind.

The average attention span is 15 minutes long. Less for teens.

So if you go for a whole hour talking about something your kids probably only picked up, at max, 15 minutes of it. Counter-act this by talking for 15-20 min. then maybe having a group activity or discussion on what you just talked about and do that for around 5-10 min and get back to your next point 15-20 min talk. That way you know everyone is paying attention and it refreshes what you just said a second time in their head.

This also would allow you to have 2 of these discussion where they should be picking up 90% of it per hour long class, instead of 1 long discussion where they only picked up 25% of it.

Good luck with your students!

In addition, if you really are talking about dialogue and not discussion, there are amazing benefits to facilitating dialogues in the classroom. The students will learn to work together as a group; they will become more active learners; they will dig deeper into questions and/or texts; they will develop better inter-personal skills; and they will become more curious and open-minded. So, VERY important.