Classroom talk in my class

I tend to see a lot of IRE type of talk in my classroom and really very little in depth conversations. I wondered if that was just because the students were younger and possibly unable to really form opinions or have deep conversations, but then i realized that they are capable of more than I give them credit for. I also noted that even though my CT does demonstrate some IRE types of talk, I think I have also done that when working with small groups of students just because that is the way I was trained to do it when I was in elementary school and I was mimicking my CT. I also thought it was interesting when we were talking in class about how a lot of us never really got any exposure to deep discussions until later in our years of schooling. I think this says a lot about how we were all brought up and how it could have potentially effected how we taught as teachers. If we hadn't read these articles or had this discussion, we could have run the risk of not having involved discussions with our students because we just assumed they either weren't ready or that we were supposed to teach that way because of the way we were taught. On the other hand, I think that some IRE is necessary just so the teacher can use it as an evaluation of what the students know and where to go from there. Possibly using it at the beginning of opening up a conversation might be beneficial. I think the scaffolding that would be most beneficial would be to give the students examples of how the presented question/topic might be answered. I think a lot of positive reinforcement is also necessary when first getting these discussions going and accepting a lot of answers as "right" answers to at least get the students talking. There are some students in my class who have a hard time vocalizing their ideas, so one way to handle this would be to ask those particular students more directed questions to at least get some sort of response out of them. Another technique could be asking those students if they agree or disagree with a previous students comment.