Active, Engaged and Learning

Helping Your Classroom Buzz with Excitement

By Jeri Asaro


Early spring is inching its way towards us. If you followed the advice listed in my last column, you know my belief is that January is for "taking back your classroom." Your school year is more than half-way over. Now that you have brought order back into what you do every day, March is a great month to try some new teaching ideas. Your students probably long for some surprises, and you could do with a step outside of your comfort zone. Undertaking new strategies during this time of year helps you to sample different approaches to add to next year's tool-kit. It keeps your teaching fresh, and you continue to learn.

It is a common belief that as teachers we should teach. The idea makes perfect sense. However, I urge you to reconsider that statement. Our role as teachers is to help our students to learn, and that does not necessarily mean we need to stand-up in front of a classroom and teach. Teacher-centered learning has a place, even on a daily basis, but a classroom where students are learning, takes the time to use student-centered strategies. Students need to be involved in their work, whether that means a lab experiment or an essay assignment. Teacher-facilitated and student-centered activities bring energy to the classroom. In the eyes of your students, you are showing them the benefits of the lesson in a more concrete format. Due to television and commercials, we are all trained for breaks every eight minutes. If you teach high school sophomores, you should not lecture for more than 15 minutes without an activity. Keep in mind; the average attention span of your students is the average age of the class. Most K-2 teachers use active learning strategies naturally as they are a necessity for survival. I encourage each of you to divide your lessons into smaller intervals mixing some teacher-centered ideas with student-centered activities so that students truly learn the material.

When you add tangible value to what is happening to your room, your class becomes enthusiastic to be there. Being in touch with your learners' perspectives makes any subject come alive to them. Achieving objectives becomes a student goal, rather than a teacher goal. Life skills are developed and expanded when communication skills are emphasized. As an educator, you become more alert and responsive to the needs of your students, and ultimately, the transfer of learning is more likely for them. Your subject comes alive to each and every learner. Simply put, the students enjoy it!

What are some strategies to consider? Let's start broad and simple.

• Stimulate discussion. It is one of the most common strategies in promoting active learning. It helps to motivate students toward learning through application of the information within a new setting. It develops critical thinking skills. Successful discussions are not always easy. Here are some ideas to consider:
1. Manage your classroom so that it is a supportive environment where students are encouraged to take risks without fear of being chastised or rejected.
2. Use open-ended questions to persuade students to answer using higher-order thinking processes. At the end of this column, please find a listing of good websites based on Bloom's Taxonomy.
3. For truly thought-provoking questions, give students a few minutes to write down their thoughts (how about a do-now activity as they enter the room), and then begin the discussion. Sharon Bowman, author of many books filled with active learning ideas, calls this activity the "One Minute Paper." (See a listing of her helpful books at the end of the column.) Some sample question starters include: "How does …?", "What is …?", "What are the differences between …?", and so on. Another good use of the One-Minute Paper is at the end of the class to ask questions like "What was the main point of today's class material?" "What was the "muddiest point" in today's lecture?" "What (if anything) do you find unclear about the concept of …?" You can take the same idea and use "the clearest point."
4. Consider small-group dialogues before whole class discussion begins. When students speak in small groups first, they gain some confidence in their ideas. Sharing with the whole group, later in the lesson, becomes more likely.
5. Use wait time when you ask the whole group a question. Give all students a chance to think for a minute and then join the discussion. Wait time is essential for both encouragement and achievement. Research shows that when wait time is increased to four-seven seconds, students respond more often and in a more thoughtful manner. Sometimes those seconds seem like hours, but they are worth the wait. Encourage all hands to be up and ready to share.
6. After giving students a chance to think about your question, consider calling on students using a random method – like popsicle sticks with students' names. This idea prevents you from always calling on the same three students.
7. Allow your students to include you in the discussion, and do not be afraid of being caught without knowing the answer. You are human.
• Try visual-based or audio-based instruction. It can be helpful in creating focal points for students. Use audio-clips or video-clips, and ask students to report their reactions to some facet of the material. If using a written response, ask students to provide an emotional or evaluative response. When using a video, or a long video-clip, this idea works great at a climatic point in the movie. Stop the movie, and force students to react or predict.
• Mix lecture with active learning methods. As I said before, there is definitely a place for teacher-centered instruction in every classroom. Sometimes it is even appropriate every day for a short period of time, but if you want students to listen to the lecture, they need to take some ownership about what you are going to say.
1. Try providing your students a list of important questions in advance of your topic, so they can take practical notes during the lecture process.
2. Have students jot down their questions during the lecture, and take breaks from time-to-time to discuss those questions.
3. During your lecture, ask students pointed questions which force them to make connections to prior knowledge.
• Ask questions all throughout any lesson. Effective teachers do not ask all of their questions as the end of the discussion, class period, video, chapter, novel, lecture, or meeting. The same is true for your students' questions. Do not make them hold those questions until the end.
• Use journal writing or writing prompts in all disciplines. They are a great way to settle down a class quickly, and a productive idea for involving students in doing things and thinking about what they are doing. Journaling ideas in all disciplines can be easily found on the internet. A great quote about your discipline is also a thought-provoking writing and discussion idea, and many of the state-mandated tests use quotations in assessing student writing.
• Consider the life skill of reading as a way to get students involved in your topic. We all know that the more we read, the more we comprehend, the better we write, and the more our vocabulary develops into one that is age-appropriate. These skills should not be saved for English class or homework. Within the classroom period, have students read silently or in a round-robin fashion. The reading activities should be kept short and should be assessed in some fashion, but time needs to be made to show and encourage literacy in every discipline.
• Promote problem-solving activities. When students learn to listen and rely on each other, they become a cohesive group. Brain-teasers, word-games, Sukudo, and riddles of all types work very well and can easily be found in books and on the internet. Small group, mini-activities in all disciplines can encourage team-building.
• Facilitate cooperative learning, in the true sense of the words. Within a group, students each take on roles with separate responsibilities, and they come together to share ideas and produce a product – whether it be a poster, a graphic organizer, a PowerPoint, or something extraordinary. If facilitated well, students love to work in groups, and they learn well in groups that are properly run. Teamwork skills, which will be needed in the workplace in years to come, are emphasized. But, cooperative learning should only be one tool to use in your tool-kit. Cooperative learning is a very specific strategy, and you should research how it works before you begin a cooperative group idea in your classroom.
• Attempt some project-based ideas which often take a few class periods, but more often than not, they meet many of the state standards. Debates, panel discussions, jigsaw activities, drama, role-playing, service-learning, simulation, student creative construction or writing, peer teaching, peer-editing, using technology and creative software programs all encourage active learning. Project-based learning is more upfront work for the teacher, but while you are in the classroom with your students, you gain the time back. Students are active and working, while you circulate and facilitate.

The aforementioned ideas are all rather broad, but what small concrete ideas can you try right away -- just to add a little spice to the classroom environment? Through my travels, I have found some great and easy-to-understand books with terrific ideas. At the end of the column, I have listed those book references for you. Below are my tried and true favorites obtained through many years of research. Trust me; I did not think of all of these ideas on my own. Observations, internet research, reading great books, and practicing what I saw in action elsewhere provided me with many great options.

Any of these easy, student-centered ideas could be added to your tool-kit tomorrow, but I encourage you to take baby steps. Try just a few in a week to see how they work, and then force yourself to give them a chance to develop. The first time, depending on the age of your students, you might see some eye-rolling and hesitation, but that reaction does not mean that students do not want to do these activities. Explain to your classes that you want to try some new ideas so that your class is more interesting for them. In my years of teaching, I have never had a class that did not eventually give in and actually enjoy the activities. But, kids are kids – they are going to give you a hard time at first.