What If … ? Discussion Strategy: Explanation
This activity is all about speculation.
It encourages learners to discuss possibilities and to imagine what might be the case.
It challenges them to use what they know to think creatively.
You can use the activity with a whole class, with pairs, or with groups.
Begin by identifying an aspect of the topic that learners will benefit from exploring.
Create a series of ‘What if …?’ questions connected to this. These questions should help learners to think creatively. They should also be linked together.
For a whole-class discussion, display your first ‘What if …?’ question on the board.
Give learners thinking time before asking them to share their thoughts with the person next to them.
Once learners have had a chance to discuss, select two or three learners to share their ideas with the class.
From here, you can develop a whole-class discussion that transitions onto the second and third ‘What if …?’ questions you have already prepared.
For paired discussion, display three connected ‘What if …?’ questions on the board.
Ask learners to decide which question they think is most interesting.
Challenge them to come up with a series of different, creative responses to their chosen question.
When they have done this, they should find another pair, team up with them, and compare notes. It doesn’t matter if pairs have chosen the same question or not. Either way, an interesting discussion should ensure.
For group discussion, put learners into groups of three or four.
Give each group a different ‘What if …?’ question to discuss.
Learners discuss their ‘What if …?’ questions and make a note of their key ideas.
Explain that once groups have established their ideas, they should decide which one they like the best and why. This sees groups justifying their choices.
When sufficient time has passed, bring the class back together.
Choose three or four groups to share their questions and to talk through the ideas they came up with.
If you want, you can turn this into a whole-class discussion. Learners can comment on the ideas that are put forward and suggest new ideas in response to the different ‘What if …?’ questions they hear.
What If …? Discussion Strategy: Example
Topic: Justice and the Law
The most important part of this activity is developing good questions.
Fitting them into the whole-class, paired, or group set-ups outlined above is fairly straightforward.
Here is a selection of ‘What if…?’ questions that could be used to stimulate discussion about justice and the law:
- What if there were no laws?
- What if all trials took place behind closed doors?
- What if politicians were allowed to appoint judges – and vice versa?
- What if the government redefined theft so that it only counted if goods of fifty pounds or more were stolen?
- What if it was made illegal to send people to prison?
- What if you had to create a new society from scratch and establish its laws?
- What if people could choose one law they didn’t have to follow?
The key is to create questions that get learners thinking critically and creatively.
In these examples, all the questions are designed to jolt learners out of familiar ways of thinking, encouraging them to look again at ideas they might take for granted.
‘What if …?’ questions are effective tools for doing this as they tend to undermine the assumptions and knowledge on which learners rely – deliberately so!
What If …? Discussion Strategy: Extensions and Developments
- Invite learners to come up with their own ‘What if …?’ questions. Sometimes it is helpful to establish success criteria and give learners some examples as a starting point. This can work particularly well as a homework task. The next lesson then begins with learners posing their ‘What if …?’ questions to each other, or the whole class, provoking critical and creative debates.
- In the group set-up outlined above, you might choose to add a drama element. This sees each group dramatizing the idea they have agreed on. Groups can then share their performances with the rest of the class, helping to further stimulate discussion.
