I’M A TRAINER … GET ME OUT OF HERE!
TEACHING AND LEARNING PEDAGOGY
20 interactive teaching activities for use in the interactive classroom
Interactive teaching is all about instructing the learners in a way they are actively involved with their learning process. There are different ways to create an involvement like this. Most of the time it’s through
teacher-student interaction
student-student interaction
the use of audio, visuals, video
hands-on demonstrations and exercises
You encourage your learners to be active members of your class, thinking on their own, using their brains, resulting in long-term memory retention. Not only the learners' knowledge will improve, but their interest, strength, knowledge, team spirit and freedom of expression will increase as well.
Ready? Here are some of the most effective ways to engage your learners!
3 Effective interactive teaching strategies to encourage speech in your classroom
First, let’s put some activities in the spotlight. The following interactive learner activities are three of the most effective ways to encourage more speech in your classroom.
1. THINK, PAIR AND SHARE
Set a problem or a question around a certain topic, and pair up your learners. Give each pair of learners enough time so they can reach a proper conclusion, and permit the kids to share their conclusion in their voice. This way your learners will be engaged, communicating, and remember more of the class than ever before.
2. BRAINSTORMING
Interactive brainstorming is mostly performed in group sessions. The process is useful for generating creative thoughts and ideas. Brainstorming helps learners learn to work together, and above all, learn from each other. You’ll be surprised by all the great ideas they come up with! Check out these 8 fun brainstorming apps you can use in your classroom, or use BookWidgets' Mindmap widget to structure thinking.
3. BUZZ SESSION
Participants come together in session groups that focus on a single topic. Within each group, every student contributes thoughts and ideas. Encourage discussion and collaboration among the learners within each group. Everyone should learn from each other’s input and experiences. As a teacher, you could give your learners some keywords to spark the conversation.
Of course, there are many other interactive teaching ideas as well. These can be split into different categories:
Individual student activities
Student pair activities
Student group activities
Interactive game activities
INDIVIDUAL STUDENT ACTIVITIES
4. EXIT SLIPS
These are best used at the end of the class session. You’ll ask the learners to write for one minute on a specific question. It might be generalized to “what was the most important thing you learned today”. Then, you can decide if you are going to open up a conversation about it in your next class. You can ask them if they still remember what they wrote down.
5. MISCONCEPTION CHECK
Discover learners' misconceptions. See if learners can identify what is the correct answer when given a false fact. It’s useful when going over a previous lesson. It encourages learners to think deeply and wager all the possibilities.
6. CIRCLE THE QUESTIONS
Make a worksheet or a survey that has a list of questions (make them specific) about your topic, and ask learners to circle (or check) the ones they don’t know the answers to. Then, let them turn in the paper.
Create corners concerning different questions that were circled. Let your learners work on the extra exercises and explanation in the corners, individually. As your learners will all have circled different questions, you have to give each learner a different and personalized order to visit the corners.
7. ASK THE WINNER
Ask learners to silently solve a problem on the board. After revealing the answer, instruct those who got it right to raise their hands (and keep them raised). Then, all other learners have to talk to someone with a raised hand to better understand the question and how to solve it next time.
STUDENT PAIR ACTIVITIES
8. PAIR-SHARE-REPEAT
After a Think-pair-share experience, which I’ve written about in the first interactive learning lesson idea, you can also ask learners to find a new partner and share the wisdom of the old partnership to this new partner.
9. TRAINER AND LEARNER
Let learners brainstorm the main points of the last lesson. Then, pair up your learners and assign them 2 roles. One of them is the trainer, and the other the learner. The trainer’s job is to sketch the main points, while the learner’s job is to cross off points on his/her list as they are mentioned and come up with 2 to 3 points that the trainer missed.
10. WISDOM FROM ANOTHER
After an individual brainstorm or creative activity, pair learners to share their results. Then, call for volunteers who found their partner’s work to be interesting or exemplary. Learners are often more willing to share the work of fellow learners publicly than their work. Of course, you can always encourage sharing their objectives as well.
11. FORCED DEBATE
Let learners’ debate in pairs. Learners must defend the opposite side of their personal opinion. It encourages them to step away from their own beliefs and teaches them to look through a different coloured glass once in a while.
Variation: one half of the class takes one position, the other half takes the other position. Learners line up and face each other. Each learner may only speak once so that all learners on both sides can engage the issue.
12. OPTIMIST/PESSIMIST
In pairs, learners take opposite emotional sides of a case study, statement, or topic. Encourage them to be empathic and truly “live” the case study. You’ll discover some good solution proposals and your learners will learn some exceptional social skills.
13. PEER REVIEW WRITING TASK
To assist learners with a writing assignment, encourage them to exchange drafts with a partner. The partner reads the essay and writes a three-paragraph response: the first paragraph outlines the strengths of the essay, the second paragraph discusses the essay’s problems, and the third paragraph is a description of what the partner would focus on in revision if it were her essay. Learners can learn a lot from each other and themselves as well!
STUDENT GROUP ACTIVITIES
14. BOARD ROTATION
This interactive learning strategy is even more interactive than others! Divide your class into different groups of learners and assign them to each of the boards you’ve set up in the room. Assign one topic/question per board. After each group writes an answer, they rotate to the next board. Here, they write their answer below the first answer of the previous group. Let them go around the room until all the groups have covered all the boards. Not that many boards in your classroom? Try using tablets and BookWidgets' interactive whiteboard.
15. PICK THE WINNER
Divide the class into groups and let them work on the same topic/problem. Let them record an answer/strategy on paper or digitally. Then, ask the groups to switch with a nearby group and let them evaluate their answer. After a few minutes, allow each set of groups to merge and ask them to select the best answer from the two choices, which will be presented to the complete class.
16. MOVIE APPLICATION
In groups, learners discuss examples of movies that made use of a concept or event discussed in class, trying to identify at least one way the movie makers got it right, and one way they got it wrong. Think about movies showing historical facts, geographical facts, biographies of famous people.
INTERACTIVE GAME ACTIVITIES
Create an interactive classroom full of interactive learning games. Games are so much fun for learners since it doesn’t feel like learning. With BookWidgets, you can make interactive learning games like crossword puzzles, pair matching games, bingo games, jigsaw puzzles, memory games, and many more in minutes (and there’s a Google Classroom integration as well).
17. CROSSWORD PUZZLE
The crossword game is perfect to use as repetition activity. Choose a list of words and their description, and BookWidgets creates an interactive crossword for you. The crossword game transforms these boring lessons into a fun experience.
18. SCRABBLE
Use the chapter (or course) title as the pool of letters from which to make words (e.g., mitochondrial DNA), and allow teams to brainstorm as many words relevant to the topic as possible. You can also actually play scrabble and ask learners to form words from the newly learned vocabulary.
19. WHO/WHAT AM I?
Tape a term or name on the back of each learner. You can also tape it on their forehead. Each student walks around the room, asking “yes or no” questions to the other learners in an effort to guess the term. Of course, the term has something to do with your lesson topic.
20. BINGO
Bingo is a fun game that can be used for all sorts of exercises: language exercises, introductory games, math exercises, etc. You’ll be surprised about how many interactive lesson activities you can do with just one game.