Human Graphing to promote class discussion and debate

Human Graphing is a great way to check for student to establish student views and perspectives on specific questions.

Two simple methods that human graphing include:

1. 4 Corners Graphing – Label four corners of the classroom e.g. A,B,C,D or 1,2,3,4. On a presentation slide, pose a question with 4 possible responses and ask students to move to the corner of the classroom aligned to their response.
2. Continuum Graphing – On one side of the classroom have the label ‘strongly agree’ and on the other side have the label strongly disagree. On a presentation slide, put up a statement where students must choose to agree or disagree. Students then stand at various points along the continuum from one side of the classroom to the other based on their agreement or disagreement level.

Having students commit to responses gives immediate feedback to teachers on student viewpoints or even collect information from the group. As opposed to some electronic polling software where responses are anonymous, human graphing allows the teacher see who is standing where. Quiet students in class, who may be more reluctant to respond to an openly asked question have now committed to sharing their viewpoint giving the teacher and others a starting point for further conversation and discussion in the class. Furthermore, this activity also gets students out of their seats and moving.

Teachers can use the human graph responses to group students for a debate, role play or discussion activity.