By: Adrian De Guzman, Reporter

School’s main purpose is to help students learn and retain information. However, there are a few different ways that teachers can present this information to students. The main forms that they use are discussion and worksheet based teaching. While some teachers may prefer worksheets, discussions are better to enrich student’s minds and allow teachers to review material.

AP Human Geography teacher Mrs. Nicole Broder says, “I love discussion. I think that it’s a great way to learn and understand and open up dialogue and help students engage in what you’re talking about. I love having a diverse classroom, because you have so many people from different backgrounds and different experiences, so you get to grow a little bit more with those different perspectives.”

Discussion learning also helps students to flourish more in their learning environment rather than if they were doing individual work on worksheets. While discussing, students are exposed to other people’s opinions in a group, which can help them learn and grow more. This is different from worksheets which doesn’t allow students to express their opinions when they work alone

Learning with worksheets is much more rigid than learning through discussions. With discussions, there is typically no right or wrong answer, and if there is a wrong answer, it is immediately corrected in the discussion. However with worksheets, it’s black and white, yes or no, and if a person gets the wrong answer, they have to seek for the proper answer alone, and may seek out an incorrect one as well.

Chemistry teacher Mrs. Bridget Walters says that with discussions, teachers are able to tap into the creativity of the students. She believes that teachers need to tap into that creativity in order to allow students to think more freely. The perspectives that different students offer help everyone grow, including herself.

When teachers use the open discussion method, they are also able to capture the interest of students easily, because the students are forced to actively participate. Students find worksheets more tedious and boring, mainly because they think of it as busy work, and see it as a menial task.

Freshman Sahil Kapadia says, “Worksheets bore me, just like most other students. With discussions, at least they’re more interesting, and allow you to voice opinions that worksheets wouldn’t allow.”

Though not every teacher uses the discussion based learning style, it is still easily arguable that discussions holds significantly larger benefits than worksheets do. Compared to the bland and boring worksheet method, discussions fixate the interest of students, as well as create better opportunities to expose other opinions in the classroom. Students are able to combine all of their opinions in one discussion, and use that to help everyone in the classroom.