Teaching Tips to Promote Active Learning, Class
Participation and Effective Teaching
The following tips are a combination of suggestions from an article called
“Student Participation/Active Learning” from University of the Sciences in
Philadelphia and my own suggestions.
(Vivian Moutafian, Math Instructor WHS Cat 2 Instructor)
Active learning within a large classroom
1.
Think, Pair, Share – present a question or problem. Allow for a few
minutes for students to think about the challenge. Then one
student shares as the other listens. Then the second student
repeats to the first what they said and they check for clarity or
correct any errors.
2.
In most classes a small number of the students do most of the
participating; it is common for one or two students to answer most
of the questions. One way to get more students to think about your
questions is to ask students to write the answer. Then you can call
on someone who does not usually volunteer and perhaps they will
feel better about answering a question.
3.
Ask students to give non-verbal responses as a group in response
to questions. This allows the teacher to check for understanding,
getting feedback from all students, and has the added advantage of
allowing all students to be active participants. Non-verbal
responses work well for short, simple answers. Encourage students
to give the responses in a way that they are sharing them with you,
rather than with the entire class.
4.
Ask students to give a group choral response, perhaps as the
“share” part of a “think, pair, share”. Again, this works best for
questions with short answers.
5.
Encourage students to give positive feedback to students who have
come to the board or made a class presentation. For example,
“Let’s give Mary three claps for that!” or “I think George deserves
an “Oh, yeah” for that. It allows students to be active, to give
credit to a classmate and it’s fun!
6.
Don’t allow students to “opt out”. If a student cannot answer a
question, move on to another student, but then return to the first
student and ask again. This way, students know that saying “I
don’t know” doesn’t make them exempt from thinking and paying
attention.
7.
Allow students to present part of a problem and then “pass the
pen” to a classmate of their choice.
8.
After asking students to work in pairs, ask them to present at the
board together.
Getting students to participate in class
Here are a few simple strategies to help students be comfortable enough to
respond to questions or participate more:
1. Give students a clue regarding the kind of response that you are
expecting.
2. Give students a minute to write their thoughts before anyone is called
upon.
3. Break students into small groups to discuss the answer; then bring them
back to the whole group.
4. Arrive early to class and chat with students informally. Greet students by
name as they enter the class. Stand at the door at the end of class and
say goodbye to students by name. This helps them feel more
comfortable; they are more likely to take the risk of contributing in a
class in which they are comfortable.
5. Use non-verbal means to invite people to participate - sit close to
students, make eye contact with them individually, move around the
room, or sit in different locations.
6. Make it your goal to verbalize each student’s name at least one time
during each class.
Promoting class discussion among the entire class
1. State your expectation for all class members to participate in class discussions
on the first day of class; state it clearly in your class syllabus;
2. If possible, arrange chairs in circle or U or have students seat in fixed seating in
such a way to foster eye contact with each other.
3. Sit among the students during the discussion part of the class.
4. Prepare open-ended questions in advance. Without an agenda, it is easier to get
off onto a tangent. You can allow the discussion to flow from these questions.
5. To help students focus on the question, put the question on an overhead, the
board or a slide.
6. If the questions to be answered are challenging or the students are shy about
participating, consider distributing the questions in advance to the students.
7. Do not answer your own questions.
8. Asking students to make presentations in class is a good way to get the
presenters very engaged with the material. However, the student-audience may
not be as engaged. Therefore, give the audience a specific assignment to do in
relation to the presentation. Depending on the level of the class, you might ask
them to be critics on the content presented, come up with an argument for the
opposite side, think of themselves as researchers having to come up with the
next research question to follow from this work, etc. Or you might ask the
students to summarize the presentation in a few bullet points and hand in their
summaries, write down 3 questions that the presentation raised, 3 areas the
listener wanted to learn more about relating to the topic. These hand-ins might
be given to the presenters for feedback to them.
9. One of the unintended consequences of holding class discussions can be that a
few people dominate the discussion. Often the discussion really is a series of
one-to-one dialogues between the student and the teacher and not a true
discussion. Perhaps we are encouraging students to think of only their own
contributions and not how to make it more of a collective learning experience.
To encourage more people to participate, you might give a few points to
everyone if majority or all of the people talk, depending on the size of the class;
if each person only talks once during a class; or if the discussion really builds on
other's comments - reflective, questioning, critical, new ideas coming from other
student comments and not a series of one-to-one dialogues.
Helping students learn more from lectures
1.
Many students who are new to studying a discipline often have
trouble seeing the structure to a lecture. One of the easiest ways
to provide structure is to provide an outline that contains only the
headings and subheadings with spaces in between. Students can
take notes from your headings.
2.
For all levels of students, if you provide too much detail in your
handout or outline, the students will not need to take notes and
perhaps will not attend to what you are saying as much.
3.
You might also want to provide a concept map or graphic organizer
of your lecture. Providing a concept map facilitates learning,
increases motivation and attention during the lecture. Students will
take notes to help them understand your concept map.
Helping students master the vocabulary and
definitions
1.
Plan to spend five minutes in class with the following activity to help
students master the vocabulary and definitions in your discipline:
Have the students make up and bring to class flash cards with the
word on one side and the definition on the reverse side or distribute a
set you made up or download from your textbook auxiliary material.
Pair off the students. Have each student ask the other person a word
or definition from the flash card. Alternate turns. If the student gets it
right, that student gets the flashcard or it is taken out of the active
pile. As the pile of cards gets smaller the pair is going over only those
words one did not know. Within five minutes most definitions can be
spoken by at least one person and learned by both. You can use this
exercise before class, part way through a unit or as a review before a
test.
2.
3.
Put up a “word wall” in class so that students become familiar with new
vocabulary.
Provide students with a list/matrix of vocabulary at the beginning of each
chapter. Vocabulary words can be entered on the left; the middle and
right hand cells of the matrix can be left for the student to write a
definition and a sketch or an example.
Ways to prevent a few students from dominating class
discussions
1. Give everyone five or six paper clips (you might want to get colored
ones) and tell them to bring them to every class. Every time a student
makes a contribution to the discussion, he or she should put a clip out in
front of them. When students use up their allotted clips, they cannot talk
any more. This might help the dominant ones to save some comments for
later.
2. Rather than calling on the first students who raise their hands, accustom
your students to raising, and then lowering their hands after you have
seen them. They need not raise their hands high, just high enough for you
to nod or acknowledge that you’ve seen them. You can make it clear that
you will call on a student only after most of the students have had time to
answer. Then you can decide who to call on.
Getting more students to answer your questions in
class
1. In most classes a small number of the students do most of the
participating, especially answering most of the questions. One way to
get more students to think about your questions, is to ask students to
write the answer. Then you can call on someone who does not usually
volunteer and perhaps they will feel better about answering a
question.
2. When asking a question, refrain from always taking the response from
the students who first raise their hand. Instead, let it be your policy
to acknowledge students who raise their hand with a nod; then have
them lower their hand. Let them know that you will wait until a
majority of the class has responded. This has the advantage of
allowing students who need more time to think or who are less
comfortable to respond. You can then call on a student who has not
already responded.
3. Be careful to call on equal numbers of boys and girls. Also, be careful not to
always call on the most verbal or eager students.
Getting students to come to class having read the
assignment
One way to motivate students to read and digest the assigned readings
ahead of class is to ask students to develop 1 3x5 card based upon their
reading assignment. These cards can be collected and returned during
the tests over this material. Their cards will only be as good as their
preparation.
Non-academic activities which may improve the
classroom learning environment
1. Assign students a brief get-to-know you assignment between the first and
the second class of a new year. Ask the students to tell you what they
think will be interesting in your course, what they think will be challenging
or difficult for them, and if they have any questions for you. You can also
ask them to tell you about their outside-of-school commitments, such as
athletics or after-school job and anything else they’d like you to know. At
the third class, make a few comments to show you heard them and are
incorporating their ideas into what you are doing.
2.
During the first day of class, especially if the students do not know
eachother, use a fun and humorous icebreaker to get everyone talking to
each other and to get to know each other.