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Many lecturers launch immediately into their talks without much in the way of introduction. There is a better approach: Begin your lectures with The Hook. The Hook is an attention-getting device that you use to help students engage in the lecture from the outset.

The Hook should be compelling enough to encourage students to set aside thinking about other things to focus on the lecture. If you seed engagement at the beginning, students are likely to try to stay with you throughout the session.

The Hook also sends a signal to the students about your lecture style so that they are better able to follow you, and it also provides them with a glimpse of the central message of the talk, which in turn can help their comprehension. There are many different approaches to The Hook, including the following:

1. Use a Quotation

A quotation from someone famous in your field or perhaps from popular culture can set the scene of a given lecture, be thought-provoking because it borrows authority, and help students to see the importance of the topic. Using the same quote to start and end the session can bookend the lecture and reinforce the lecture's theme.

2. Pose an Intriguing Question

A good question can help focus students' attention on the most important issue you are there to discuss. Bringing the question back at the end of the session can help students understand the value of the lecture, particularly if you have, at least in part,

answered the question. Alternately, consider introducing a new intriguing question that relates to the initial question, and that may pique interest in the upcoming lecture.

3. Show a Statistic

Provide an interesting or impressive statistic to start and end a lecture. This can draw in student learners and help them to understand the importance of a topic. An alternate universe scenario. You can capture student attention by providing a provocative what-if scenario.

4. Employ an Open-Ended Rhetorical Question or Series of Rhetorical Questions

You can start a lecture by asking students to consider an answer to a rhetorical question. Avoid asking a question that can be answered with a simple yes or no. If the question is not thought-provoking, students may shut down and quit listening.

5. Make a Contrarian Statement

You can begin a lecture by taking the opposite viewpoint on something that may be conventional wisdom.

6. Provide Unusual Detail

Consider starting a lecture with an unusual detail or little-known fact.

7. Tell a Story

Stories can be one of the most effective ways to start a lecture. People make sense of the world through stories, and moreover, we simply enjoy them.

The key to The Hook is to know your audience so that you can gauge how best to capture their attention. When you plan The Hook, try to imagine how students will react to it. Only use a relevant hook; if you try to use one just to be clever, students will know.

A professor in a course on leadership wanted to seed engagement at the very beginning of each lecture. She, therefore, developed a repertoire of Hooks, including the following:

Quotations

"A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus."-Martin

Luther King, Jr.

"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things."-Peter Drucker

"The first rule of leadership: everything is your fault."-Hopper, A Bug's Life

Statistic or fact

"According to the Grant Thornton International (2015), the percentage of women in senior business roles globally is 24; the percentage of firms with no women in senior management is 33."

An alternate universe scenario

"What if Steve Jobs had not been born?"

Open-Ended Rhetorical Question

"How do leaders become leaders?" or "What characteristics are essential to be a leader?"

Contrarian Statement

"Good leaders work smarter, not harder. That's what people say. I don't believe that. I believe that great leaders are exceptionally hard workers."

Unusual Detail

"Leaders have been around since humans began to live together in clans and tribes. Leadership research, however, is a relatively new field, with the first analyses of leadership starting only in the early twentieth century."

A Story

The following story is attributed to Gandhi and recounted by Erika Andersen in her book, Leading So People Will Follow(Jossey-Bass © 2012)to illustrate leading by example:
A young mother came to Gandhi leading her little boy by the hand and said, "Mahatma Ji, my son eats far too many sweets, and I'm concerned for his heath. If you tell him to stop, he will do it out of respect for you." Gandhi nodded, looked thoughtful, and then asked the mother to return in two weeks. Puzzled, the young woman did as he asked. Two weeks later, she returned and waited again to have the chance to speak to the master. When she came to the front of the line, she bowed respectfully to Gandhi and said, "Mahatma Ji, I came to you before and asked you to help my son understand he must not eat so many sweets. You asked me to return in two weeks, and so here we are." Gandhi smiled and said, "Ah yes, I remember." He turned to the little boy and said gravely, "Son, your health is very precious, and eating too much sugar could hurt your body and your teeth. You must stop eating so many sweets. Will you do that?" The little boy ducked his head, awed, and replied, "Yes, Gandhi Ji." The mother thanked Gandhi and then said, "Forgive me Mahatma Ji, but why did you make us wait? I don't understand why you couldn't have said that same thing two weeks ago." Gandhi replied, "Two weeks ago, I was eating too much sugar myself." Do you use any "hook" strategies in the classroom? Share your experiences with them in the comments below.
Excerpted and adapted from Interactive Lecturing: A Handbook for College Faculty by Elizabeth F. Barkley, Claire H. Major. Copyright ©, 2018, Wiley. All rights reserved.

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7 Ways to Use "The Hook" to Grab Students' Attention

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Many lecturers launch immediately into their talks without much in the way of introduction. There is a better approach: Begin your lectures with The Hook. The Hook is an attention-getting device that you use to help students engage in the lecture from the outset.

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How do you start your class every day?

Some teachers simply take attendance, others jump right into the their lesson. Many have no structured way they start class every day. However, the most effective and connected educators purposely plan a creative, engaging "hook" that grabs the students' attention, and sets the tone for the rest of class. Hooking your class from the start is vital to the overall success of the lesson.

When students walk into class, they must be immediately engaged. Otherwise, they will get bored, mentally wander, and turn their young minds off to learning completely. Even worse, the "difficult" students become behavior problems and wreak havoc on the classroom environment.

There are many different methods and techniques you can use to dynamically hook your students once they walk into your classroom. Many teachers I work with call it the "Initiation," "Bell Ringer," or "O-YO" (Own Your Own).

Here are four easy suggestions any teacher can quickly implement into their daily lesson plans to make the classroom a positive environment.
Photo: istock.com/FatCamera
1. Create "Do Now" sections to begin each class

I call the initial part of my lesson a "Do Now." From the first day of school to the last, my students are trained to make it a habit to immediately open their notebooks and write their Do Now assignment for the day. This year, every student in our school received their own laptop computer. So now, my students create a spot in their digital class notebooks to record the daily Do Now. Usually, I check their daily assignments during the end of each unit, and give them a classwork grade for their effort and answers.

Using the technology available to me is a huge advantage in making this a daily ritual. For years, the Do Now was projected onto my SmartBoard. Now, when students walk into my class, I have a hook waiting on the TV screen in the front.

So what, specifically, is a Do Now? It's an activity students have at very beginning of class that helps set tone for that lesson. Usually, it's a picture or graphic connected to our unit of study. Sometimes it's a primary source, like a famous historical quote or political cartoon connected to the era we are studying. Other times, it's a table of historical data with questions, or a short YouTube video connected to the daily lesson. I know several math teachers that use a "Problem of the Day" as a Do Now to activate their students' thinking.

Remember this - your Do Now can be ANYTHING that creatively starts the class and engages your students. And they should only take five or ten minutes to start!

2. Activate prior knowledge with your hook

When creating my daily Do Now, I think about the most engaging way to spark interest in my kids with the lesson, so they can be immediately connected to the topic. Often, my goal is to activate students and have them recall any previous knowledge about the topic I'm about to teach. Research indicates "what students already know about the content is one of the strongest indicators of how well they will learn new information!" (Marzano 2004). Therefore, it is critical that teachers begin to spend more time with focused instruction to check background knowledge.

Here are two examples of PowerPoint slides I use as Do Now activities to test prior knowledge in my U.S. History classes:

This slide will be on the screen the moment students step into my room during our World War II unit. Now, I am already aware of what my high school juniors have studied during their freshman and sophomore years. They previously studied the Pacific Theater of World War II during their Global Studies course their freshmen year. I ask them to write down what they remember this "deadly" plane was called and define its characteristics. As they quickly and quietly write down the term and definition (if they remember), I take attendance. Then I ask the class, "who remembers this dangerous type of aircraft from when you studied Japanese history with Mr. Olander?" Usually half of the class will remember. I call on students to answer until the correct answer is given. The next slide will give the exact word and definition:

This nugget of previous information is a hook and preview for my students on this next unit lesson. As they learned two years earlier, the kamikaze is symbolic of how desperate the Japanese were in 1945 to stop the American island-hopping offensive, and, eventually, another example of why the U.S. decided to use the atomic bomb to end World War II in the Pacific.

The second example is, again, an advantage of really knowing what your district's overall curriculum consists of. I know my students in tenth-grade Global Studies studied modern European history and the Great War. Therefore, they should be able to activate previous knowledge using this diagram before my lesson on the un-American attitudes in 1914 after World War I.

I ask for a volunteer or volunteers to come up to the TV, use my three-foot-long, old-school wooden ruler, and explain trench warfare using the knowledge stored in their "schemas" from Global Studies.

My students love to move around and get out of their seats so I ALWAYS have them ready to raise their hand to participate. It gives me a sense of how much each class remembers, and, if necessary, this will also help me adapt the beginning of my unit.

3. Introduce new content

How do you start a new unit or introduce your students to a new topic? Your hook could determine how enthused or excited your class may get about the new material. Again, remember with any Do Now you make, be creative, differentiate ideas, and try ANYTHING to see if it works.

To start my unit on the 1920s, I have this double Do Now on my PowerPoint slides to hook my students and introduce new content.

"Does anyone know what this is a picture of ... sometimes its called the 'car of the century'?" I ask the kids. Usually, at least one of my students will be able to help me identify and introduce the Model T to the class. Then, after a very brief lecture on mass production, the assembly line, and Henry Ford, the students work on this:

When students are working on this interdisciplinary Do Now, I am taking attendance, but they are fully engaged, working and connected to the classroom and the lesson for the day! After several minutes of individual work, we come together as a class to discuss and share responses.

The very best "hook" I ever saw in my 18-year educational career came in 2005 at Har-Bur middle school, the location of my first job as a seventh-grade geography teacher. As I walked to the copy room during my typical morning routine, I saw an eighth-grade science teacher taping the outside of his door with a huge piece of clear plastic sheathing. I had to check it out. As I walked through his door, he had turned his classroom into a gigantic cell! The outer walls and ceiling were covered in this massive plastic sheathing and different colored objects were taped all over them. Some of these colorful images were mitochondrion, others were the Golgi apparatus, and the biggest was the nucleus. Some 14 years later, the juniors and seniors that I teach ALL remember Mr. Samudosky's cell lesson years later because of his creative Do Now idea and amazing implementation.

4. Double check to see what students know

Besides initial engagement, the most common way I use my Do Now is to check for student understanding and learning growth. Again, this method can be used in many different ways to fit the class.

How many times do you assign homework when you know, based off years of experience or difficulty of work, that your students will struggle no matter what? When faced with this scenario, start your next class by checking to see what your students learned (or did not learn). Here is a visual example:

After projecting the above image, students know to begin discussions. They will "turn and talk" to each other as I circle the class and listen to student's explanations. Listening to the various discussions, I can gather information about what students know, and which students may have had trouble with the assignment. Sometimes, I'll hand a small note card to students as they enter my class and have them write a brief answer down. I collect and quickly read them. Often, I'll ask a student to come up front, use my pointer, and explain the diagram to the class.

Another Do Now that I love is a writing activity, which helps to assess learning and concurrently practice writing skills. Have you ever given your kids a "RAFT"? Students write from a different role in history for a specific audience with a format, usually a diary entry or letter, about a topic they have to share. R.A.F.T. These powerful writing simulations not only help students think critically about the subject matter, but gain the perspective of another person in history.

Below is one example of a RAFT assignment used after a two-day, powerful lesson on the Holocaust:

Teachers can get creative with these writing activities to assess student learning and understanding of a variety of social studies topics and content. Below is another example of how I use the RAFT as a Do Now to check if students get it.

Why is checking for understanding so important early on in the class period? First, you can immediately identify and confront misconceptions that interfere with student learning and redirect when needed. These activities are also an easy, informal approach to formative assessments. Not every formative assessment needs to go into your grade book. Sometimes, like in the examples above, you can simply check in with your students on their progress towards your learning targets.

IT'S ALL ABOUT ENGAGEMENT

The entire idea of creating a consistent "hook" within your lesson plan is tied to dynamic engagement. The 21st-century student can be tough to excite and connect with if you do not plan properly.

The Do Now format will engage your students from the beginning of class, setting a positive learning tone for the day, minimizing behavioral problems, and cognitively challenging your students to critically think and perform.

Want to try some digital Do Now activities?

Get a free trial of Active Classroom today.

Mr. Dennis Fowler is a high school social studies teacher at Lewis Mills High School in Burlington, CT, youth soccer and basketball coach, and motivational speaker. His professional development program is called "Connecting with Kids: Ideas to Engage Students and Build Relationships." His blog, called "Dynamic Engagement," explores better ways and methods to create a positive classroom climate through motivating actions and activities. You can connect with Dennis Fowler here.
References
Marzano, R. (2004), Building Background Knowledge. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

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The Hook: 4 Ways to Dynamically Engage Your Students from Day One

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How do you start your class every day? Some teachers simply take attendance, others jump right into the their lesson. Many have no structured way they start class every day. However, the most effective and connected educators purposely plan a creative, engaging "hook" that grabs the students' attention, and sets the tone for the rest of class.

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"Tick, Toc, Tick, Toc..."

How many of you pictured the crocodile from Peter Pan? If you have seen Peter Pan this simple phrase brings you back to the scene where Captain Hook realizes he is not alone in the water. As the viewer you are immediately engaged. You have background knowledge of what could happen to Captain Hook, you are wondering why the crocodile sounds like a ticking clock, and you continue watching because you need more! This is not the time to pause the movie to get a snack. The movie has your complete attention and that was their goal. You have been hooked!

What is a hook?

A hook is when a teacher uses an engaging way to grab their students' attention before the lesson. Hooks can be used to connect background knowledge to the lesson, bring excitement into the students' learning, and/or provide objectives to the content. Hooks can be short around 2-5 minutes with a short video, photograph, sound clip or they can take some time by doing a virtual field trip or a movement. Think about your classroom of students. What do they respond to best? What are their interests?

Why Hook Them?

Imagine you're standing at the front of the classroom. One student is playing with his shoe laces. Another student is watching what is happening out the window and about 8 others are daydreaming about what's for lunch and what they're going to play at recess. Diving into rigorous content when the majority of your class is not cognitively present for is a perfect storm for a flopped lesson, confused students, and a teacher walking away frustrated.

Hooks give teachers that edge they need to bring students attention back to the classroom, spark their interest, and give them the boost of energy they need to delve into the upcoming content. Did you know that the synonyms for the word "Hooked'' are enamored, captivated, absorbed? Are those not the words we want as teachers to describe our students in the act of learning!? If that alone doesn't convince you to incorporate hooks into your lessons, maybe these reasons will!

Lesson hooks:

Increase student engagement and motivation

Are an attention grabber

Lead into asking questions (lingering questions)

Spark curiosity

Create an event that students can connect to

Make content feel more relatable and relevant

Build classroom community and classroom culture

Are a vehicle for deeper discussions

Are really FUN

Now that we have given you some background on what a lesson hook is and why it's so beneficial, it's time to get to what you all have been waiting for...ideas on how to implement this into your teaching! Below, we have listed 10 hook ideas that can be modified to any grade level or content area.

If you are a beginning "hook" user it can be challenging to decide or know what to do. Remember to keep your students in mind and to start off simple.

Now that you have some background knowledge and ideas, go give it a try! See for yourself how these lesson hooks engage students, keep them motivated, and bring back the joy of learning in your classroom.

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Captain of a hook: 10 engaging lesson introduction ideas

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This post is written by Megan Diede and Kara Risby. Megan and Kara both currently teach primary at Prairie Wind Elementary in Gillette, Wyoming. They are

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9 Lesson Hook Strategies to Launch Learning

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Wondering how do you write a hook for a lesson and how to create a good lesson hook strategy? These lesson hook ideas will help!

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Holding students' attention in the classroom now is more difficult than years ago.

I blame electronics. No, really, I do.

Kids are constantly holding electronic devices in their hand - and from an early age. Yes, it's a technological generation, but has anyone else noticed that they constantly need to be entertained, or they lose interest VERY quickly? When I was a kid, my mom said, "Go play," and we did. Now I say, "Go play" to my kids, and they look at me like I'm nuts (which I am a little), and they say, "With what? There's nothing to do. We're bored."

*Sigh*

But, I'll get off my soapbox, because I could literally go on and on for an entire post just complaining about this...

Alright, so I lost track... What was this post about? Oh, right - holding students' attention in the classroom! When I was in college, we learned about anticipatory sets. These were the attention getters or the lesson openers that we had to include in our lesson. These were the parts that hooked the students and got them excited to learn about the upcoming concepts.

I don't know about you, but for me it seemed that once I got into that classroom and away from physically writing the "long form" of lesson plans, most of that formal stuff got away from me. My hooks really became a review of the day before.

Booooooooooorrrrrrrriiiiinnnnnnnggggg.

Even I was bored giving the "opener."

So, one night while watching Big Bang Theory (My absolute favorite show of all time! I'm such a geek, right?!), I decided to research through my old college binders (please tell me I'm not the only one that still has those laying around?) for ideas on how I could spruce up my attention grabbers. How could I open my lessons and hook my students right away?

(Wow, I took a long time getting to the point!)

A List of Ways to Catch Your Students' Attention

[Courtesy of my student teaching binder (collection of many unknown sources) and a few from brainstorming]

1.) Start with graphic organizers - KWL (we already know my opinion on this one), circle maps, concept maps, or even RAN.

2.) Catch their attention with a read aloud or a picture book related to the topic of interest or concept. I love using mentor texts to really grab students' attention and then use it to model a big idea with a smaller text!

3.) I know I just said too many electronics - but really, media clips do work. Short little YouTube pieces (watch them first), or media like Discovery Education or BrainPOP, make good intros.

4.) Use Question of the Day or Picture of the Day. I don't have to tell you about my Science Picture of the Day product, because you already know, but any of those would be a great intro and warm-up activity to really get the mind thinking!

5.) Photo puzzles or just plain photos in general work well. In my post Activities to Get Students Thinking, students are given only part of a picture, and they are asked several questions about it. Then, more of the picture is shown. As they view more of the picture, their thoughts related to the concept generally change. It definitely piques their interest and gets them excited to learn if they were "right" or not about the picture in its entirety.

6.) Bring in artifacts or materials such as art or props related to the lesson. I have brought in money from the Civil War era and Native American materials while teaching about them. Students love to see these things face-to-face - and to touch them is even more exciting!

7.) Food. That's all I have to say, right? If you are studying a country or a culture, then why not taste their food?! If you are studying fractions, then why not divide up a brownie square? Food and kids = attention and happiness. Too much sugar = headache. Tread the line carefully. 🙂

8.) I love a good role play, readers theater, or even a skit. This will definitely pique some interest, especially if students are involved. They love to visualize things and to be involved. Just write a few things out on index cards to start the lesson. I always confer with a few students before the lesson starts to make sure they are okay with it, and then boom - excellent start!

9.) Place a question on a piece of chart paper (or several different questions on their own pieces) and hang around the room, creating a carousel. Have students move around the room answering the questions on the chart paper. This could be review questions or even questions to find out what they know.

10.) Turn it into a fun game using the format of "Who or What Am I?" related to your topic/subject.

11.) Start with a demonstration, models, or manipulatives - WHOO-HOO! If you have followed me for a while, then you know I am all about demonstrations, experiments, and hands-on!

12.) Start with oral storytelling. Tell a story that relates to what you are teaching. Sometimes I have even made one up and then related back to it later in my lesson. It's okay to make it up (no one will know).

13.) Four Corners is a great game. Ask the class a question that has four choices for the answer. Place each one of the four answer choices on paper and tape them to each of the four corners of your classroom. Then, ask the class the question, and they move to the corner of their answer (not their BFF's answer).

14.) Bring in the news or a real-life event. Sometimes one of the best ways to catch your students' attention related to a topic that you have been learning about is to bring in something related to it from the news. For instance, when we were studying earth changes one year, the students were super excited to hear that an earthquake had happened (somewhere) and that they actually understood everything in the news article!

15.) Prompt with a critical thinking question or problem-solving task that could be done in written form, in cooperative learning form, or used for a debate or a discussion.

16.) Start with a joke, riddle, comic strip, or political cartoon related to the topic. Make sure it's related and appropriate. It would be pointless to just do a random joke and could get your students swinging from the chandeliers. That's not what you want. You want it to be a bridge into the lesson.

17.) Use as a fun way to open up and review past concepts. You can play it as a game or just as a few questions.

18.) Provide opportunities for relationship building between ideas. For example, consider the tic-tac-toe method or forced analogies.

19.) Do something completely unexpected! Students are always shocked to see their teachers do something unexpected - you know, like actually shopping at a store outside of school. So, it wouldn't be too hard to come up with something! 🙂

20.) Use a book excerpt or a quote. Quotes are a great way to get students thinking about a topic, and you can easily ask them what they think you will be learning about.

If all else fails, I guess you could technically just check homework or review the previous lesson.

*yawn*

The point is, if we are going to "compete" with electronics, we need to be on top of our game. We need to go "old school" and make sure we are including our attention getters and piquing the interests of our students from the start of our lessons. We need to make sure that our hooks get them curious and motivate them to learn. Most importantly, it must relate to the lesson! (If possible, it should also activate and build knowledge, too.)

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Holding students' attention in the classroom now is more difficult than years ago. I blame electronics. No, really, I do. Kids are constantly holding electronic devices in their hand - and from an early age. Yes, it's a technological generation, but has anyone else noticed that they constantly need to be entertained, or they lose interest VERY quickly?

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There are many benefits to getting students to work in pairs and groups. These range from giving students more speaking opportunities to creating better overall classroom dynamics.

There are three broad ways of grouping students. We can let the students choose who they wish to work with, the teacher can make the groups, or we can group them randomly. In this post, I'll show you a wealth of ways that you can organise your students randomly into pairs and groups.

The suggestions are organised into two sets. The first set of suggestions gets students to form a line which the teacher then divides up into pairs or groups of the desired size. The second set of suggestions gets students directly into pairs or groups.

Form a line

This grouping method requires students to stand up and form a line, complying to the set rule. The teacher then divides the line into pairs or groups. All except one of these require no extra preparation before class.

1. When did you last eat ice cream? - Students get into a line ranked in order of when they last ate ice cream (pizza, chocolate, etc.). The teacher then divides the line into pairs or groups as required.

2. Something in your bag or pocket - Each student chooses and takes out a personal item that they have in their bag or pocket (encourage students to choose a more unusual item, not just a pen, keys, a coin, etc.). Students get into a line in alphabetical order of the spelling of the name of the item they are holding. The teacher then divides the line into pairs or groups.

3. Birthdays - Students get into a line ranked in the order of their birthdays in the year. The teacher then divides the line into pairs or groups.

4. Words from the unit - The teacher selects words from the unit of the course book and writes each one on an individual piece of paper. The teacher gives one word to each student. Students get into a line in alphabetical order of the spelling of the words. The teacher then divides the line into pairs or groups.

5. What's your favourite food? - Students write their favourite food (animal, place, singer, etc.) on a piece of paper. They get into a line in alphabetical order of the word they wrote. The teacher then divides the line into pairs or groups.

6. What time did you go to bed last night? - Students get into a line ranked in order of the time that they went to bed last night. The teacher then divides the line into pairs or groups.

7. Alphabetical order - Students get into a line in alphabetical order of the spelling of their first/given name (or surname). The teacher then divides the line into pairs or groups. Alternatively, students could write their names backwards and get into alphabetical order of the reverse spelling of their names.

8. The youngest person living in your home - Students get into a line ranked in order of the age of the youngest person who lives in their home. The teacher then divides the line into pairs or groups.

9. How long did it take you to get here today? - Students get into a line ranked in order of how much time it took them to get to school today. The teacher then divides them into pairs or groups.

10. Where did you go on your last vacation? - Students get into a line ranked in alphabetical order of the name of the place they went on their last vacation. The teacher then divides the line into pairs or groups. Alternatively, this could be about the city/place they would most like to visit.

11. Last 2 digits of your phone number - Students get into a line ranked in order of the last two digits of their phone number. The teacher then divides the line into pairs or groups. Alternatively, this could be done with the last two digits on a personal ID.

12. What was the last thing you ate? - Students write the name of the last thing they ate on a piece of paper. Students get into a line in alphabetical order of the spelling of the food they last ate. The teacher then divides the line into pairs or groups.

13. Number of letters in your name - Students get into a line based on the number of letters in their full name. Students should decide if they wish to omit any name they do not normally use or do not like. The teacher then divides the line into pairs or groups.

14. How much time did you spend away from home yesterday? - Students get into a line ranked in order of the amount of time they spend away from their home yesterday. The teacher then divides the line into pairs or groups.

15. Last word on the page - The teacher assigns a different page number of the course book to each student. The assignment of the pages could be done in several ways, but the easiest is probably to get students to count consecutively around the class, although not necessarily starting on page 1 (e.g., 33, 34, 35 etc.). Students look at the last word on their assigned page and get into alphabetical order of their words. The teacher then divides the line into pairs or groups.

16. Date on a coin - Each student takes out a coin and looks at the year written on it. Students get into a line ranked in order of the dates on their coins. Some students will probably have coins with the same year, in which case they could rank themselves by how old or new each coin looks. The teacher then divides the line into pairs or groups.

Directly into pairs or groups

Most of these suggestions require some degree of preparation before class.

1. Grab the string - To get students into pairs, the teacher has pieces of string (one piece for every two students). The teacher holds all the pieces of string in a bunch in the middle and every student chooses and holds the end of a piece of string. The teacher then lets go of the string and students get into pairs with the person holding the other end of their piece of string (Dudley, E. & E. Osváth. 2016. Mixed-Ability Teaching. OUP).

2. Lollipop sticks - The teacher has the name of each student written on an individual lollipop stick (or name card). The teacher chooses sticks at random to put students into pairs or group. Note: there are also free apps that can randomly group students in a similar way.

3. What's the category? - To get students into groups of 4, the teacher chooses words of 4 kinds of fruit, 4 kinds of colour, 4 kinds of animal, 4 kinds of furniture, etc., and writes each word on a separate piece of paper. Each student gets a word at random. Students get into groups with people who have the same category of word.

4. Lengths of ribbon - The teacher has some pieces of ribbon cut into lengths (string or strips of reused paper also work). For example, if there are 12 students in the class and the teacher wants to make three groups of 4 students, there will be 4 short ribbons, 4 medium-length ribbons and 4 longer ribbons. The teacher holds all the ribbons so that students cannot see how long each ribbon is and gets each student to select one. Students get into groups with people with the same length of ribbon.

5. Parts of a picture - The teacher has a number of different pictures and each is cut up into pieces (the number of pieces corresponds to the size of the groups required). Each student gets a piece of a picture at random. Students get into groups with people who have the other pieces of the same picture.

6. Halves of sentences - To get students into pairs, the teacher chooses different sentences from the unit of the course book and writes each one on a strip of paper. Then each sentence is cut in half. Each student gets half of a sentence at random. Students get into pairs with the person with the corresponding half of the sentence.

7. Letters - The teacher prepares pieces of paper each with the letter A, B, C, or D, etc. written on each one. The teacher gives one piece of paper to each student. Students get into groups with people with the same letter. This can also be done with coloured tokens or coloured pieces of paper.

8. Team captains - The teacher selects some students to come to the front and be team captains. The number of team captains will depend on the required number of groups/teams. Each team captain then takes it in turns to choose team members. This can be done by team captains selecting who they want to be in their team or by randomly taking lollipop sticks or name cards (see 18).

9. Count around the class - The teacher allocates a number to each student (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, etc.) around the class. When all students have a number, all the students with the number 1 get into a group; all the students with the number 2 get into a group, etc.

Philip Haines moved to Mexico from England in 1995 and currently works as the Senior Academic Consultant for Oxford University Press Mexico. He has spoken internationally in three continents and nationally in every state in Mexico. Philip is the author/co-author of several ELT series published in Mexico.

Categories: Pre-school Children, Professional Development, Teenagers, Young Learners | Tags: Collaboration, Group assessment, groups, partners, Philip Haines, Working in pairs | Permalink.

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25 ways of randomly placing students into pairs or groups - Oxford University Press

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There are many benefits to getting students to work in pairs and groups. These range from giving students more speaking opportunities to creating better overall classroom dynamics. There are three broad ways of grouping students. We can let the students ... Continue reading →

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It should be easy to partner up students or put them in groups, right?

Well yes, yes it should. But any teacher who has been in the classroom knows that's not always the case. To make the process fun, easy, and as pain free as possible, we put together our favorite ideas for choosing partners and putting students into groups. You can also check out tips from Bridget Spackman of The Lettered Classroom in this video. We love them!

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLVHhhrxG0M[/embedyt]

1. Make it easy with Post-its.

Source: The Lettered Classroom

Grab two colors of sticky notes and then place them around the room. Different colors make a pair-students can grab a sticky note and choose a partner who has the other color. Or you can write down students' names on the notes and still have them find a partner with a different color sticky note. You can also use this trick to create groups. You'd just need more colors of Post-its.

2. Draw rocks.

Sounds simple, right? It's definitely simple, which is the beauty of it. Just gather rocks and paint them different colors. Then you can have students who draw the same color rock form groups or become partners.

3. Match up math questions and answers.

Source: Southern Fried Teaching

You'll have to make sure you don't have multiple answers to the same problem, but you can use this trick time and time again to partner up students.

4. Find your opposite.

Source: The Lettered Classroom

Use opposite cards to match up students. Just pass out the cards and then challenge students to find their match.

5. Use pipe cleaners.

Pipe cleaners are so inexpensive! You can sort out the colors you want to use to divide students into as few or as many groups as you'd like. Just count out the number you need, and you're ready to go.

6. Use paint swatches to divide up students.

Source: Upcycled Education

There are so many good uses for paint swatches. This teacher recommends using different colors as a way to divide groups. She has several ways to do this if you're looking for ideas. Take a look.

7. Add curriculum challenges to a deck of cards.

Source: The Lettered Classroom

You can definitely use playing cards as-is for dividing up students or picking partners and groups. But take it up a notch by including a recent curriculum question or problem to solve on the card. This is a good way to review material and put students together.

8. Try Scrabble tiles.

You can do this in multiple ways. You can just use certain letters and have students draw them. Or use Scrabble tiles to spell out certain words on the chalkboard and then group students once they've found the other tiles to spell out their word.

9. Use sticks with numbers and draw as you go.

Source: My Love of Teaching

Many classrooms will assign students numbers at the beginning of the year, which students eventually memorize. So for a quick way to divide up students, just draw numbers at random. We love these pencil designs from My Love of Teaching.

10. Designate group colors and then draw crayons.

Here's another one that's easy to do because you have access to so many crayons. Write down the different group colors on the board and then have students choose crayons randomly (or hand them out) to form those groups.

11. Redefine the way you use puzzle pieces.

Source: The Lettered Classroom

Whether you use a real puzzle with matching parts or create your own, this is a fun way to group or partner students in a random way. Just pass out all the pieces and have students find the right fit.

12. Use school colors.

Source: The Lettered Classroom

This is an easy one. Just cut out circles from construction paper-we recommend using your school's colors, but it's up to you-and laminate them. Place them on the floor as a quick way to sort students into two groups. You can also add more colors to create small groups.

13. Play a game of pick-up sticks.

Look at the games you already have in your classroom that can be repurposed. Pick-up sticks might be the perfect way to group students by color. Plus, they get to play at the same time. Also look at using a deck of Go Fish or Old Maid cards for partner grouping.
What are your favorite ways to group or partner students? Come and share in our WeAreTeachers HELPLINE group on Facebook! Plus, get our tips for classroom management, according to the wonderful Mary Poppins.

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13 Clever Ways to Pick Student Partners or Groups

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Learn the best ways to partner students and form student groups with this video and creative tips. We have plenty of easy-to-implement ideas.

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VentureLab

July 31, 2020

It’s important to be mindful of how to group kids and to have different strategies for splitting kids up into groups for team challenges. A huge part of entrepreneurship is working in teams, so it’s helpful to have lots of ways to group kids.

Group work will help students think of ideas they never would have had and gives them confidence in knowing they are part of a team that helps solve problems.

This list includes 14 great ways to make groups of all sizes, from partner pairs to large teams!

Partner grouping ideas (2 students):

1. Elbow Partners: Turn to the person at your elbow (either one) and partner up with them.

2. Coin Flip: Each student gets a coin. Flip it in the air. Look how the coin or counter landed and find a person with the same coin face (heads or tails) and pair up with them.

3. Sit, Stand, Squat: Everyone will walk around the room (to music if you’d like). Once the music stops or you say, “freeze,” students will decide if they want to sit, stand, or squat. Once they make their choice, students will partner with someone who did the same action as them. Alternatively, for a larger group suggestion, have all sitters in one group, all standers in another, and squatters together.

4. Freeze Dance: Play music and have kids can dance or just walk around (they can walk or dance in slow motion if they want to!). Stop the music. Kids must high-five the person closest to them; that is their partner

5. Animal Act-It-Out: Act like your favorite animal. When instructor says, “freeze,” find a partner that acted out either the same animal as you or someone whose animal has the same characteristics (same body covering, same animal group, same habitat, etc.).

6. Inside Circle, Outside Circle: Half the group will stand in a large circle and the other half will form a smaller circle inside and facing the students in that large circle. Either play music or just have students walk around in their respective circles. When the music stops or instructor says, “freeze,” students will stop moving. The person they are facing is their partner.

Larger grouping ideas (3+ students):

Written with groups of 4 in mind, these methods can be modified easily with group sizes ranging from 3-6. Any of the strategies for creating partner groups from above can also be used to form larger groups as well; simply repeat activity, adding or combining groups until you have the desired number of group members!

1. Puzzle Pictures: Print as many pictures as the total number of groups you want to have of anything your kids might like (puppy, superhero, snack, etc.). Cut the picture into 4 pieces. Students will walk around to find the matching pieces to make the complete picture and form their group.

2. Popsicle Stick Groups: Gather enough popsicle sticks for all of your students and then divide them into 4 groups—label the popsicle sticks in each group with the number 1, 2, 3, or 4. Put the labelled popsicle sticks in a cup. Students will draw out a stick, and all of the students with same number on them will be in a group.

3. I Am an Entrepreneur: Stand in a circle (If you have a board or large chart paper, write “I Am An Entrepreneur.” If not, say that sentence out loud to students). Go around and each student will say one word of that sentence. Tell them to remember what word they said. After everyone in the circle has said a word, tell all of the “I’”s to go to one corner of the room, all the “Am”s in another, the “An”s in the third corner, and the “Entrepreneur”s in the last corner.

4. You Choose: Let students choose a partner. Then, instructor chooses partner groups to combine to make groups of 4.

5. Card Deck: Decide how many groups of 4 you will need and put in four cards of the same suit for each group (for example, if you want to have 5 groups of 4, leave 4 aces, 4 queens, 4 kings, 4 jacks, and 4 10’s in the pile of cards students will draw from). Have students draw a card from the pile or leave a card face down on their desk. Students will find and stand with group members with the same card.

6. Draw a Color: Put four strips or squares of paper of four (or the total number of groups you will have) different colors in a bag. Students will draw out a strip or square and find their group members with matching colors.

7. Picture Match: Put four copies of four (or the total number of groups you want to have) different pictures in a bag or hat (pictures could be of anything that will interest your kids-animals, superheroes, TV shows they enjoy, public figures they are learning about or admire, etc.). Students will draw out a picture and find their group members with a matching picture.

8. Opposites Attract: For each group of 4 students, print 2 cards with one picture and 2 cards that have the opposite picture (for example, 2 (identical) pictures of summer and two (identical) pictures of winter). Give out one card to each student. Students will first find the match to their card, and then find the 2 opposites to their card to form a group of 4 (Picture ideas could include hot/cold, day/night, empty/full, left/right, sweet/sour, heavy/light).

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14 Fun Ways to Group Up Students - VentureLab

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A huge part of entrepreneurship is working in teams, so it's helpful to have lots of ways to group kids. This list includes 14 great ways to make groups of all sizes, from partner pairs to large teams!

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Centers. A word most teachers either love or hate. Lengthy planning, chaos, and students working on meaningless activities were all fears that came to mind when I was beginning to roll them out in my classroom. However, they don't always need to be this way. They can also be a useful way to differentiate the work that students are doing, while also helping to remediate or extend any learning that is occurring in the classroom. Here are 5 simple tips for rolling the centers out with older students:

Before you get started with rolling out centers, you need to make sure that you have clear expectations of what you would like to achieve in your classroom. When I got started with embedding centers into my classroom, I needed to make sure I understood what I wanted students to be doing before I asked them to get started with the work. What was my intention for using centers? Once I clarified this for myself, I could then easily communicate this with my students.

Not only did I need clear expectations for centers as a whole, but I also needed to set clear expectations for each center. We spent some time as a class reviewing the expectations of each of the individual centers before centers were rolled out. Then I was able to answer questions, teach students the expectations, and ensure that the activity flowed as I had initially anticipated. The key was to continue to hold students to these expectations as the centers rolled out.

This cannot be emphasized enough: It is imperative to take your time rolling out centers. When I taught fifth grade, my administrators recommended using the first six weeks of school to completely roll out centers. Six weeks seemed like forever at the time; however, when you break it down, it makes complete sense. Here's a general outline of what this could look like:

Week 1: Help students get used to doing independent work after a mini-lesson and to the routines of asking for help.

Weeks 2-3: Whole group model and practice the centers' expectations and activities. Typically, I would spend one day as a whole class on each center activity (I had 4 centers going at a time). After one center was introduced, students were allowed to go to their desks once they completed their work.

Weeks 4-5: As students complete their independent work, those who are on-task can choose a center to go to instead of having to stay at their seat. Monitor behavior as they are working at centers. Toward the end of week five, I sat at the small group table where I would be eventually pulling small groups so that students got used to be being in that space within the classroom.

Week 6: In week six, pull small groups while students are at centers. I started small with only one group and slowly added groups as I found students became more comfortable with the procedures set forth in the classroom.

Students need to know that the work that they do in centers is just as vital as the work that they do in our whole class lesson. It is essential that in turn, the center activities are meaningful. Here are several ways to do this:

Align them to the current unit as extra practice

Align them to your previous unit as review or extension

Use centers as a time to review MAP instructional areas

Use them as a way to address gaps in student knowledge

Provide multiple options at centers in terms of level of rigor

Change up the content of centers regularly

When I implemented centers, I used MAP goal strands and had a center for each topic. This way, I could ensure students were able to practice different skills at different times even if it was not covered in the curriculum. With a small set of tablets or technological devices, center time is also a great way to get students on programs that help them individualize their learning.

Sometimes with a busy schedule, short class periods, and lots of curriculum, centers seem unmanageable in several grade levels - particularly in middle and high school. However, sometimes it is more manageable if you alternate days. A colleague successfully alternated days for her sixth grade classes that functioned like the traditional 40-minute class period middle school. Students knew that Tuesdays and Thursdays were always center days; Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays were dedicated to more defined curriculum.

The important part about centers is that students have choice in what they are doing..."

Centers do not have to be an everyday occurrence. Doing centers might make the most sense for your class once a week, at the beginning of each unit, or as a method for re-teaching after an assessment. The important part about centers is that students have choice in what they are doing and that it allows for students to work at their own levels.

It is essential to allow students the opportunity to give themselves and their peers feedback, as well as for you to give students feedback. This will help move the learning forward and enable students to be active participants in their own learning. This feedback and reflection could occur in multiple ways:

Integrate self-monitoring tools and rubrics into each individual center

Incorporate technology into your centers, such as apps or online sites that allow students to have a digital chat forum and provide feedback to each other

At the end of each day or week, create time and space for students to self-assess on their learning for the week

Provide written feedback on center work for students

No matter which of these tips you follow, you can make centers work for you. Every teacher has a different style of classroom management, instruction, and classroom set-up, so the same prescribed method will not work for everyone. Hopefully these five tips will get you started!

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5 tips for rolling out centers - #edchat

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Centers. A word most teachers either love or hate. Lengthy planning, chaos, and students working on meaningless activities were all fears that came to mind when I was beginning to roll them out in my classroom. However, they don't always need to be this way.

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Group work is an essential part of any student-centered classroom. Long gone are the days when kids were expected to work on assignments alone at desks arranged in neat rows - and for good reason. The National Education Association supports cooperative learning because of its research-proven benefits.

Teachers who find creative ways to group students in the classroom can see many positive results. When compared to competitive and individual learning methods, group work tends to see a higher increase in academic improvement, is more productive, and is more caring and supportive of classmates. It also promotes higher self-esteem and better social skills.

Figuring out ways to group students without creating behavior problems can be a bit challenging. However, doing so can boost your students' overall learning experiences tenfold. Here are some trending options that can take your classroom to the next level.

Option 1: You choose

I consider myself a semi-adventurous teacher when it comes to collaborative learning. I'm creative with my lesson plans and love using technology (we will talk more about tech grouping later.) I also like to have a little control over placement. Could you imagine allowing all the talkers to sit together while placing all the loners in a group? That probably wouldn't work out too well.

Then there are certain assignments that require mixed grouping. I love having students take part in reading discussion groups. For these, you need a mix of abilities. Otherwise, the advanced kids finish too quickly, and those who struggle, sit there in silence.

For a teacher-selected mix, try these ideas out:

1. Find a classroom layout that works for you

Before you can decide on a grouping option, you'll need to look at desk layouts and find the optimal one for group work. Some commonly used setups suggested by Create-Abilities include:

The Double E

Pairs (examples given later on)

Four square (my personal favorite)

Stadium seating

Double horseshoe front

Many Us

Groups of six or eight

2. Continents, patterns, and colors

Once you've decided on a layout, you can dive into other creative ways to group students in the classroom. In my last school, every classroom had a theme. Mine was travel, so I arranged my students in groups based on the names of the continents (i.e., Africa, South America, Asia, and so on).

Then, I grouped students' desks in a "four square" setup like the one below. Sometimes when teaching in small groups, I would travel from section to section. At other times, each group would travel to a new continent to complete a stationed assignment.

If travel isn't your thing, here are some other group name ideas:

Patterns: stars, dots, stripes, plaid

Colors: yellow, orange, blue, green

Under the sea: jellyfish, dolphins, turtles, sharks

Dinosaurs: spinosaurus, triceratops, ankylosaurus, stegosaurus

Plants: sunflowers, poppies, daisies, bluebells

Artists: Rembrandts, Kahlos, Picassos, Monets

3. Buttons and shapes

This is a great option if you need students to sit in a certain grouping because of accommodations or behavior but want to quickly pull them into other groupings for activities. It also works for any desk layout. So, if you choose something other than "four square" or individual groupings, buttons and shapes is a good option.

Walking around the room while students are seated, place a colored button (one color per group) on each student's desk. Then, have the students stand and meet their partners at a particular place in the room. When they finish the assignment, they return to their individual groups. This can work with shapes, tiles, or any other small object that you have available.

4. Behavior grouping with tech

Even your most well-behaved student can benefit from this type of grouping. I like to mix my talkative students with the quieter ones, my "wiggle worms" with my more stoic kids, and so on. This helps with classroom reward systems as well.

For example, Classcraft allows you to group students in its classroom management system. Students can be warriors, mages, or healers. Assigning each group to a Classcraft team will not only encourage positive student behavior but also build a sense of social connection and teamwork.

5. Partner pairs

I get it. Sometimes, rows are the only thing that will work. If you must (or just really want to) group your students in traditional rows, consider two options.

The first is to make rows with pairs like in the example below:

Or, you could assign each student a "turn and talk" partner with whom they hold discussions during collaborative work. By assigning these partners yourself, you can cut down on the unnecessary drama and hurt feelings that tend to happen when certain students aren't chosen by their peers.

Option 2: They choose

Teachers who are brave enough to let their students choose where to sit probably wouldn't read this article. So, if you're still reading, you might be wondering when, if ever, you should allow students to group themselves. Personally, I only do this as a reward or when ability/behavior does not factor into the assignment at all. If you decide to give it a try, consider these options:

1. Interest groups

This works especially well with history and reading but can work in other subjects as well. For example, if you were teaching a lesson about the Intercontinental Railroad, you could use centers around the room. One might involve creating a steam engine blueprint (art), one might have a find-and-color word search (reading), another might be STEM-based (building a model), and so on.

Students could make their own groups based on interests and then switch at the sound of a timer. This allows the groups to very and for each student to have a chance to participate in the activities that interest them the most.

2. Popsicle sticks

This is a random grouping teacher favorite, but students can use it as well. First, write each student's name on a popsicle stick. Then, place them in a container. Allow each student to pull a stick. This gives them a sense of having some say in the selection process without allowing the group selection to become a popularity contest.

Side note: I have a strict policy when it comes to students considering others' feelings during partner selections. During the first few days of school, I explain that any "aww, man!"s or disappointed faces during partner-picks will lead to them being assigned by me every time.

Photo credit: preschoolcrafts

3. Paint swatch secret ballot

This option is similar to interests but can be used with any activity. First, laminate enough color swatches for everyone in the class. For example, you might have five green, five red, five blue, etc. Have students come up in pairs to choose a color. Once the student has made a selection, instruct them to write their first name (or initials, class numbers, etc.) on a swatch and place it into a tub as if they were casting a secret ballot.

The last two called will have fewer options to choose from, so they get the special task of pulling out the other swatches and telling their peers how to group up. You can make this even more random by instructing students not to tell the others which color they chose.

4. Random name selector

Do a quick Google search for a random name selector (there are tons of these online) and enter your students' names or class numbers. Decide how many groups you want, and choose that many students to be group leaders. Have each leader come to the smartboard (if you have one) or your computer and randomly select X number of students using the random selector. Voilà! This is another one of the many creative ways to group students in the classroom.

5. Team Shake

This last option is actually more random than it is teacher or student chosen, but it is still worth mentioning. Team Shake is a cool app that you can download on a classroom tablet. To use it, enter the number of groups desired, how many students are to be in each group and the names of your students. A special student is selected to be the "shaker" and is asked to shake the tablet. Like magic, the teams are assigned!

Which of these creative ways to group students in the classroom is your favorite? We'd love to hear your feedback!
Photo credit: feliphe schiarolli / unsplash

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10 creative ways to group students in the classroom - Classcraft Blog

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Group work is an essential part of any student-centered classroom. Long gone are the days when kids were expected to work on assignments alone at desks arranged in neat rows - and for good reason. The National Education Association supports cooperative learning because of its research-proven benefits.

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Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to purchase through my links, at no cost to you. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Read the full disclosure here.

Choosing teams can be almost as important as the game you are actually playing.

You want your teams to be an even match. A game where one team is significantly better than the other is not much fun for the losing team.

Having control over who is on what team is a good way for a facilitator to maintain control of the group. You can split up two kids who are likely to mess around if they are together, ensure that the teams have even ability, and make sure that your students are learning to work with all other students, not just their friends.

Consider the Following Team Choosing Methods

1. Counting Off Numbers

Children line-up and you count off: 1-2, 1-2, 1-2, etc.; for variation use Colors-Red-Blue, Red-Blue, etc. (Caution: Watch to make sure kids don't position themselves to get a "certain" number or color to be on their Team of choice.)

This method works well when you want to have a quick system or split up two students but want team selection to seem random.

2. Children Decide

If you have a group where the students are all of the similar abilities and get along with each other, then you can let them pick their own teams. This is a good method when you want the kids to feel as though they have control of the program. Caution: Watch that no feelings get hurt. This method works well-ONLY when skills are even; otherwise, avoid it.

3. Staff Decides

When you want to maintain complete control over the teams, you can decide who is on what team. Youth seldom complain about this method, when you explain that you want the teams to be evenly matched because of all the different grades.

4. Draw Straws

This is good when you have students of similar ability and want to choose teams with controlled randomness. Take Popsicle or chop sticks and put different colors of electrical tape or paint around the end.

Hold them in your hand or container so that students cannot see the colors. Have each of the students pick a stick; they then separate into teams based on the color of their stick.

5. Rock, Paper, Scissors

This method is fun if you don't have a large group and also have longer playing time. It also works well when you have students of similar abilities and you want the teams chosen with student-controlled randomness.

Students play rock, paper, scissors, but without the scissors, so they can only throw rock or paper. Pair off the kids and they keep doing this until there is an even number of rocks and papers for your two teams.

Don't forget about Rock, Paper, Scissors to settle "who goes first" with two people!

Flipping a coin (heads or tails) also works well.

6. Top Draft Picks

Let captains choose some players for their teams and have game facilitator place the rest of the children on the teams so that NO ONE is chosen last! The kids won't complain and teams are usually pretty fair because all of the better athletes are split up early!

Looking for Team Captains? Who Goes First?? Who Chooses a Game? Etc.

7. Guess the Number

The leader picks a number within a range and youth try to guess the number. Example: Leader says, "I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 50". The child closest to the number is the winner!
Need to Get a Certain Number of Kids-into a Certain Number of Groups?
8. Use Number Pops

Write numbers on craft or Popsicle sticks; these numbers should correlate to the number of groups you would like to have and the number of kids in each group.

Example: If you want six groups of four students, then write four 1's, four 2's and so on.

You can also write numbers on containers to separate your groups into sizes of 4, 5, and 6.

Good to use with activities where your participants are limited in numbers such as cooking with kids, making play dough, goop, etc. Have children pick their stick to see with which group they will cook or do a science project. No more of "That's not fair!"

Note: It will take a little work to prepare the sticks-but once you do them they're done! I did some for sample purposes. I bought colored sticks and it only took about 15 minutes to get them done!
I still use a similar method with my grandchildren to see who chooses first. It's almost like magic! Hold straws or sticks-with one that is shortened. The kids just don't argue with a short straw or stick!!! (Barb)

9. Find a Partner

The next time you need children to find a partner, try this approach from Marlene Kliman and Martha Merson of Mixing in Math. You'll mix up social groups and get children involved in measuring at the same time.

Instead of asking children to line up in pairs, ask them to find a partner who has something in common with them, for instance:

Find a partner with the same length index finger as yours.

Find a partner with the same arm span as yours.

Find a partner whose feet are as long as yours.

Children pair up with the first person they find who has the same measurement. Anyone who can't find a partner joins the person or pair who comes closest.

10. Jelly Roll

"Jelly Roll' can be used when you need to group up kids, sit them down...have a meeting, explain something, etc.

To Start: Previously, assign your large group a method to get them into smaller groups... this can be done by assigning each individual small group a color, season, number, animal, etc.

Call "Jelly-Roll" and the kids get into their small groups.

Have each small group hold hands in one long line and then roll from one end to the other into a "jelly roll" - and then sit down.

Time youth to see which group can "Roll" and sit the fastest...and then see if they can "beat" their best time. At first, this may be confusing-but when the kids get the routine down-it will go quickly. Just practice-practice-practice... All you need to do is yell "Jelly Roll"...and then they do their thing!

Hi Barb!
I just wanted to let you know how the jelly roll went. First of all, I decided to rename it the "cinnamon roll" just because I thought the kids would better understand what a cinnamon roll looks like than a jelly roll, for visualization purposes.

I separated them around 10 in each group- and they did a great job at it! Before they started we had each group pick which end of the line would make the center of the cinnamon roll, so they knew which way to turn. All the children were very excited because we never really do group or team activities like this. Then we tried having all the children do it together in one big roll. It was a lot of fun for everyone and they were all really pumped!

Thanks for this great team-building exercise! As far as using it for breaking children into groups, I definitely think it would be a good way to do that in a bigger program. Our program is so small that we never really break into groups, but if we did, we would use this method. I'm sure we will do this again just because the children loved it so much! Lia-Baldwin Elementary School

11. Ducks and Cows (For a game that needs two teams...)

To go along with a Farm or Harvest theme ....this is a great way to divide children into two teams. Players close their eyes while one person taps them on their shoulders and designates them either a "duck" or "cow."

On a given signal, keeping their eyes closed-the players must make their animal sounds to gather into their two teams. The ducks "quack" and the cows "moo." When the two groups all "find each other-begin your game.

Conclusion

We hope you have found some useful games and activities to help pick groups or teams in the classroom. It is important to be thoughtful when picking teams. Many adults share memories of being picked last and how that made them feel and what it did to their self-esteem.
Selecting Teams is a Transition~You may also be interested in:

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11 Creative Ways to Pick Teams or Groups in the Classroom - Kid Activities

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Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to purchase through my links, at no cost to you. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Read the full disclosure here. Choosing teams can be almost as important as the game you are actually playing.

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Information needs to be presented clearly and in the most appropriate way possible. The layout, design and format must suit the purpose and audience. The following are all possible formats:

In each of the above you could include one or all of these:

The final three cannot be used in print but the use of digital leaflets, newsletters and posters is common practice.

Before you start work on your information, ask yourself the following questions:

What is its purpose?

Who is going to read or look at it, ie who is the audience?

These questions will help you to decide the best way to present the information.

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Different ways to present information - Presenting information on computers - KS3 ICT Revision - BBC Bitesize

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Information needs to be presented clearly and in the most appropriate way possible. The layout, design and format must suit the purpose and audience. The following are all possible formats: In each of the above you could include one or all of these: The final three cannot be used in print but the use of digital leaflets, newsletters and posters is common practice.

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Let's face it: School isn't always the most exciting place for most kids to be. As a teacher, you may find it difficult to think of new, fresh ideas for your classroom. Especially as the end of the year draws near, your class routine can become mundane for everyone. Adding fun, new activities at the start of class can motivate kids to want to come to school, boost grades, and encourage positive behavior.

Bell ringers are a great way to break the ice every day at the beginning of class. They are a fun way to get students engaged and receptive to learning without sacrificing the need for a daily routine. Here are some bell ringer ideas to help warm up your class for the day.

11 warm-up activities in the classroom

Photo: Classcraft

Classcraft is an online platform that uses the fun of games to make lessons stick and reinforces positive behavior. The game itself is in the interaction between students, the online aspect plays a supporting role.

Each student creates their own profile and character to use throughout the year. When students show positive behaviors, like helping classmates, they earn experience points (XP). They can trade in XP to level up their character and unlock new abilities in the real world, like eating in class. The game builds a positive classroom climate and gives students opportunities to help each other. When there is a negative behavior, such as bullying, there can be a loss of XP.

Classcraft's random events feature offers a great way to start class. Called The Riders of Vay, these minigames allow you to reward your students for completing tasks. You can challenge students to answer class-related questions and reward them for correct answers. Classcraft is a wonderful way to make lessons stick and reinforce good behavior with rewards that will excite your students.

2. Try popcorn reading

Popcorn reading is a great way to keep kids engaged while exercising their brain muscles. The rules are simple: One student starts reading aloud and then calls out "popcorn" when they finish. This prompts the next student to pick up where the previous one left off. You can choose the reading order with a seating chart, or you can have each student pick the next person that will read aloud. If you choose the latter option, be sure to have a system in place that prevents one student from reading aloud many times.

3. Have sharing time

Sharing time is a dedicated period where each student can share what is going on in their lives. There are no rules about what they can share during this time (as long as it's appropriate, of course). You and your students might talk about plans for the weekend, a good thing that happened throughout the week, or things you're looking forward to. This will be a fun time for everyone to decompress and get the juices flowing before you dive into the lesson plan.

Photo: Michal Parzuchowski/unsplash

4. Solve a brain teaser

Brain teasers are an easy way to kick off class time right. There is no shortage of resources to pull from the internet, and brain teasers are fun for kids and teachers alike. These don't have to relate to the subject matter, which makes this option great for all ages. Write one on the board before class, and give your students a little time to solve it on their own.

5. Watch a video

With technology being center stage, most kids enjoy watching TV and playing video games in their free time. What better way to start class than to do something everyone enjoys? The video can be educational or goofy. Some all-time favorites are cat videos, music videos (as long as they're appropriate), and baby videos. There are also lots of family-friendly YouTube channels you can pick from.

6. Start a debate

If your kids seem to be always dragging feet in the classroom, a great way to get the blood pumping is to start a debate. These can center around hot-button topics, or they can be silly. The subject doesn't matter - just make sure everyone gets involved and voices their opinions. You could try topics like, "Should students have permission to use cellphones during school hours?" for a serious debate. If you are going for a more playful approach, try something like, "Do pineapples belong on pizza?"

Pro tip: Let the class pick the topic for maximum engagement and fun!

7. Present a writing prompt

Do you need a bell ringer that requires minimal preparation but takes up more than five minutes of the beginning of class? Writing prompts are the perfect solution! There is an unlimited variety of subjects to choose from that will interest you and your students. You can use prompts like, "What accomplishment in your life are you most proud of?" or, "What is an event in the world that deserves to be trending on Twitter?"

This presents an opportunity for students to express themselves while talking about subjects they are passionate about. Here's a twist: You can use a picture as a writing prompt instead of actual words. This will really get the creative juices flowing.

Photo: Ben Mullin/Unsplash

8. Create a crossword

Before class is in session, write a word on the board crossword-style. Invite each student to the board to create a new word stemming from the letters that are already available. This one is great for engaging your more introverted students in classroom activities. You can make the game even more fun by giving letters value and offering prizes like a free pass for missing homework or an extra credit opportunity.

9. Take a breather

Sometimes, the best way to get ready for class is to settle down a bit before it begins. Try starting each day off with quiet time. Use this time to meditate or read. Your students will appreciate the freedom to spend this time as they choose. You can earmark quiet time to brush up on study guides, so try this one on test day and see how it affects your class's grades.

10. Joke of the day

At the beginning of each day, write a new joke on the whiteboard. You might get a few moans and groans (especially if you have teenagers), but it's a surefire way to boost morale and show your more playful side. When you give your students a chance to see a different side of you, they'll appreciate your genuineness and be more motivated to apply themselves in your class.

11. Let loose

Take five minutes at the beginning of class to let your students let loose. Use this time to do things that aren't normally permitted, like having several conversations at once or using cellphones. You could also have everyone run in place or engage in physical activity if you don't want to compromise class rules. This will allow your students to get the excess energy out of their systems before you start your lesson for the day.
Photo: pressfoto/freepik.com

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11 innovative and fun ways to start class - Classcraft Blog

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Let's face it: School isn't always the most exciting place for most kids to be. As a teacher, you may find it difficult to think of new, fresh ideas for your classroom. Especially as the end of the year draws near, your class routine can become mundane for everyone.

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Toss that Test Aside!

As we all know, students already get plenty of tests, so why not let your elementary students show what they learned creatively? Whether your students are reading independent books or your class has just finished an inquiry project on space or pioneers, a culminating project can really cement that learning. Whether you're focused on building academics or building character, we have some great ideas!

Here are 72+ fun presentation ideas for elementary students to show what they know, including presentation ideas, simple service projects for schools, and community service projects. These ideas are perfect for making learning more engaging and fun for younger students.

Innovation Presentation Ideas (projects for elementary students)

1. Create a poster

2. Make a PowerPoint presentation - You can use presentation tools or templates to guide your students and make the process easier.

3. Design a model

4. Make a shoebox diorama

5. Use a 3-panel display board

6. Make a timeline

7. Create a board game incorporating key elements

8. Write a poem

9. Write and perform a skit

10. Make a TV or radio commercial

11. Make a collage

12. Make a mobile

13. Create a test about the topic

14. Make a word search

15. Make a crossword puzzle

16. Write a report

17. Create a flow chart or diagram

18. Write an interview of a relevant person

19. Create questions and an answer key

20. Write journal/diary entries

21. Write a postcard or letter exchange

22. Create a scrapbook

23. Create a photo album

24. Make an instructional video

25. Give a presentation

26. Create an interactive notebook

27. Create a set of task cards

28. Make a pamphlet or brochure

29. Write a newspaper article

30. Perform a puppet show

31. Hold a debate

32. Hold a mock court case

33. Create an episode of a reality show

34. Create a game show

35. Have a panel discussion of "experts"

36. Compose a rap or other song

37. Use a Venn diagram to compare two aspects of the topic

38. Design a comic strip about the topic

39. Create a children's story about the topic

40. Create a map

41. Write a fable or myth about the topic

Have you tried Minds in Bloom Unlimited? Sign up for a free trial and choose 3 book report activities of your choice!

1. Create a help wanted ad and a letter/resume to answer it

2. Write a text message dialogue relevant to the topic

3. Write a series of tweets relevant to the topic

4. Create a Facebook wall relative to the topic

5. Create a Pinterest board relative to the topic

6. Start a blog or explore other website ideas for students to share their knowledge on the topic at hand

7. Decorate a box and fill with relevant objects

8. Create a foldable

9. Create a flip book

10. Create a Cootie Catcher

11. Create a cereal based on the topic (cover a cereal box)

12. Assemble a time capsule

13. Create several bookmarks about different aspects of the topic

14. Write a recipe relevant to the topic (good for showing causes of an event)

15. Do a newscast

16. Write an acrostic poem

17. Create an Internet scavenger hunt

18. Write an advice column with several problems related to the topic

19. Create flash cards or trivia cards

20. Create a cheer relevant to the topic

21. Make a short documentary film

22. Create a museum exhibit, an informational presentation format that doesn't rely on technology, allowing students to express their understanding in a tangible, hands-on way

23. Create a top 10 list relevant to the topic

24. Create a simple video game

25. Make a "Choose Your Own Adventure" story

26. Create a mini book with one fact/idea per page

27. Create a glossary of relevant terms

28. Make a paper chain with a different fact for each link

29. Make a flower with a different fact for each petal

30. Write a handbook or instruction book

31. Create a newsletter

32. Design a mural related to the topic

33. Create a quiz show-style game for classmates to participate in

34. Build a diorama using LEGO bricks or other building materials

35. Develop a trivia board game related to the topic, like historical events

36. Create an infographic to illustrate key concepts

37. Design a 3D model or sculpture using clay, cardboard, or other materials

38. Create a short animation or stop-motion video about the topic

39. Organize a class art gallery featuring artwork inspired by the topic

40. Make a digital storybook or eBook on the topic

41. Write a series of short stories or a novella related to the topic

42. Create a virtual reality experience or simulation about the topic

43. Implement a Genius Hour where students can discuss their passions!

For High School and College Students

While the ideas above are mainly geared towards elementary students, middle school, high school, and college students can also benefit from exploring creative presentations and projects.

The following sections provide additional suggestions for older students looking for unique ways to showcase their knowledge.

Creative Presentation Ideas for High School and College Students

1. Develop a multimedia presentation slides, PowerPoint, or Google Slides) using video, audio, and visual elements. The entire presentation can be recorded and the video presentation can be shared with the appropriate audience.

2. Create an interactive website or blog to present the research or project

3. Design an engaging infographic to illustrate key concepts

4. Host a podcast episode or series related to the topic

5. Collaborate with other students to create a short film or documentary

Creative Study Guide Ideas for High School and College Students

1. Develop a mind map to connect and visualize key concepts

2. Create flashcards with illustrations or mnemonics to aid memory

3. Design a flowchart to outline the steps or stages of a process

4. Develop an interactive quiz or game to test knowledge

5. Collaborate with classmates to create a shared study guide or resource

Online Projects for Students (for use on various presentation websites)

1. Create a virtual museum or gallery showcasing a specific topic or theme

2. Develop a web-based learning module or tutorial

3. Collaborate with other students to create a virtual event or conference

4. Design a digital escape room focused on a particular subject. Read more about how you can make your own escape room!

5. Play around with augmented reality! Read about Quiver.

6. Create an online community or forum for discussing and sharing ideas related to a specific area of study

As you can see, there are numerous creative presentation ideas without PowerPoint that students can use to showcase their own learning and understanding. From elementary students to high school and college project ideas, these innovative activities provide a fun and engaging way to demonstrate learning and foster a deeper understanding of the material.

10 Simple Service Projects for Schools

1. Organize a school supplies drive for a local school in need

2. Set up a creative activities workshop for students at a nearby preschool or kindergarten

3. Create a community service project focused on environmental conservation

4. Partner with a local food bank to organize a food drive

5. Volunteer at a local food pantry to help distribute goods to those in need

6. Plan a school-wide clean-up day to beautify the campus

7. Organize a clothing or toy drive for a local children's shelter

8. Develop a tutoring program for younger students in need of academic assistance

9. Coordinate a school-wide recycling initiative to promote sustainability

10. Host a charity fundraiser event to support a cause important to your school community

Further Reading and Related Blog Posts:

If you enjoyed this post and are looking for more ideas and inspiration, be sure to check out these other related posts on our blog:

1. Summer Projects for Teachers and Their Kids - Discover fun and educational summer projects that teachers can enjoy with their own children, making the most of the break while still engaging in learning.

2. Parents: Please Don't Do Your Kids' Projects! - This post discusses the importance of allowing children to complete their own projects, fostering independence, creativity, and critical thinking skills.

3. Awesome Hands-On End of Year Projects - Explore a variety of hands-on projects perfect for wrapping up the school year, keeping students engaged and motivated as the summer break approaches.

4. Hands-On Projects for Creative and Critical Thinking - Dive into a selection of hands-on projects that promote creative and critical thinking skills, making learning an interactive and enjoyable experience for students.

5. Make Project-Based Learning Fit Your Students' Needs - Learn how to adapt project-based learning to suit the unique needs of your students, ensuring they get the most out of these engaging and educational experiences.

By exploring these additional resources, you'll find even more creative ideas and strategies to enhance your students' learning experiences and promote their growth in and out of the classroom.

You can get 15 of these ideas with student instruction sheets and grading rubrics with Ready-to-Use Creative Book Reports.

Did we miss any of your favorite creative ways to show student learning? Leave it in the comments!

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72 Creative Ways for Students to Show What They Know

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Toss that Test Aside! As we all know, students already get plenty of tests, so why not let your elementary students show what they learned creatively? Whether your students are reading independent books or your class has just finished an inquiry project on space or pioneers, a culminating project can really cement that learning.

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At school, you don't often get the opportunity to choose the format in which you answer a question.

You'll usually be told whether you should be answering a question in the form of an essay, a presentation, or more rarely something more creative like a poster. But that means on the rare occasions when you do have to choose the format for an answer yourself, you may not know where to start, and might end up falling back on the same boring staples as the rest of your class.
Yet there are lots of different ways to represent information, and they each have their advantages and disadvantages for different purposes. Let's say you've been asked to discuss female superheroes in the 21st century through whatever format you choose. Here are the options, and what each one is best suited for.

1. Essays

You've probably written so many essays that you've never really thought of them as just one possible way of conveying information. An essay is an extended piece of writing that follows an established structure: an introduction that outlines the argument that will be made, a series of paragraphs that expand on that argument, and a conclusion that sums it all up. And that definition contains the essence of an essay: they are structured around a central argument, so if you don't have a point to make then they're the wrong choice.
If your title is "To what extent is Wonder Woman a feminist film?" then an essay is a good option. But an essay won't work for a purely descriptive title like "Notable female superheroes of the 21st century". Essays should address a complex argument, where good points could be made on either side. The title can be a yes or no question ("did 2004's doom female superheroes at the box office?") and you can come down on one side or the other, but you should acknowledge and discuss different perspectives while putting forward your own point of view.

2. Presentations

We've all sat through boring presentations - like the ones where there are paragraphs of text on each slide, and the speaker stands there reading them out as if you couldn't read them for yourself. Bad presentations are normally a result of people choosing to give a presentation when they should have given a speech, written an essay, or created a poster. A presentation offers you the chance to combine images with short amount of text and your own spoken explanations; if you don't need images, or you don't need a spoken explanation, then a presentation is probably the wrong choice and your attempts to illustrate or explain will come across as forced.
But if you do have images that benefit from being explained at greater length than you can manage on paper, or if your speech really needs illustration to make sense, then a presentation could be the right choice. For instance, if you're talking about Harley Quinn's costume design, being able to play short clips from Suicide Squad or include costume design images could be very helpful to your audience. The other bonus of presentations is that they are interactive as your audience can ask questions as you go along, or at the end, which can be handy for particularly complex subjects.

3. Articles

Essays aren't the only way of presenting information in a long-form, written way, even though they're usually the only option open to you at school. You can allow yourself a lot more flexibility by instead writing an article - that's in the newspaper or magazine sense, rather than the academic sense. An article can be any length from a couple of hundred words to the exhausting 10,000 pieces that you might read in the New York Times . You can promote a definite point of view, write something purely descriptive, or describe the various ideas in a space without coming to any definite point of view.
That's not to say that articles have no rules at all. You can't use academic conventions such as footnotes. In general, articles are more focused on you as the writer than an impersonal essay in which you can't use the word "I". They are less formal than essays, but you should still stick to a single theme, be concise and avoid waffle. If you're writing an article as a cheat's way out of writing an essay, it's probably not going to be very good.

4. Infographics

Is the information you have to convey primarily visual? And does it really need that much explanation? If not, consider using an infographic - one of the quickest ways to convey a small amount of information in an easily comprehensible way (assuming you have the necessarily design skills, of course).
An infographic would be a great way to convey a list of the different ways superhero films have changed in the 21st century - for instance, in colour scheme, soundtrack and length. But the information you're conveying does need to be relatively limited, without the need for too many words - more than a hundred and you probably shouldn't be using an infographic. It should also be comprehensible at a glance. An infographic is a means of conveying facts rather than making complex arguments, so don't create one hoping that your readers will infer anything below the surface of the facts you've included.

5. Comics

Comics such as XKCD on password strength or the difficulties of ordering comments on a website, or the Pencilsword on equality of opportunity all explain relatively complicated concepts - that you could easily write an essay on - in a way that you can read in less than five minutes. The two XKCD examples are almost more like infographics than conventional comics that use the progression of panels to tell a story, demonstrating the flexibility of the medium.
That said, many explanatory comics try to force the explanation into the medium. You might have encountered comics that are just a character in each panel giving a speech with different gestures to imply tone of voice. Takethis comic on self-care - the amount of text significantly outweighs the images, which add very little to the reader's understanding. One tip is that if you can write the text for the comic and it'll still make as much sense without the images, a comic is probably not the best choice for the information you want to convey. But for anything that involves both images and telling a story - for instance, showing the parallels between different plots of superhero films - a comic could be spot on.

6. Videos

Making a good video is surprisingly straightforward. You can film yourself, or something relating to your subject, at a reasonable quality with the camera on your phone and a selfie stick; there are also some selfie sticks specifically designed to help you get a wobble-free video. If you want to create something even simpler, such as a video that consists of images with captions and music, there are plenty of suitable free video editors available.
Video is a particularly good medium if you'd like to include other video footage - for instance, if you're showing a clip from a film, possibly with yourself talking over the footage to provide commentary. There's no point in making a video that's just you talking to camera, especially if you're going to be presenting it standing next to it, watching yourself talk. Videos allow you to combine lots of different types of still and moving images along with explanations; the average person speaks at between 110 and 150 words per minute, so you can get through a lot of explanation quickly in video form, using tone of voice and emphasis to make your meaning clearer.

7. Speeches

All ways of representing information depend on your own abilities. But while you can edit an essay until it flows well and use the content of your slides to fall back on when giving a presentation, giving a speech can involve a lot more pressure as it really does depend on your own abilities at the point when you're called upon to speak.
But if you can speak well, this can be a very effective way of conveying information. It's not just out of tradition that politicians give speeches rather than sending out infographics or making PowerPoint presentations when they want to persuade people to vote for them. People respond best to other people; while they might not be swayed by the words of your speech written down on the page, the act of engaging with you as an audience while you speak them can make all the difference.
Speeches are best reserved for simple points (e.g. stories of female superheroes are inspiring to women) rather than complex explanations. They're a medium for persuasion more than information, so any facts you present should be easily memorable. Anecdotes can also be very effective.

8. Reports

If you don't want to present an argument in essay form, but an article seems too informal for your topic or style, then you might want to consider writing a report. For instance, if you want to provide information on the commercial success of Captain Marvel comics, then a report might be the ideal form to present it. Reports combine explanatory text with images and graphics such as charts, tables and graphs where appropriate. You should aim to be concise - reports should not use extraneous text - but you have the freedom to write paragraphs of explanation in a report, either supported by or to elucidate the graphics you're using, in a way that you would, for instance, in an infographic.
It's arguable that the medium to which a report is closest is in fact a presentation in the way that it combines text with other supporting material. The key advantage of reports over presentations is that they allow you to go into much more detail as the reader can scrutinise them at their own pace, rather than the pace being dictated by your presenting speed.

9. Posters

Posters can convey a variety of different types of information. There's the kind of poster that provides simple information in a clear and obvious way - "put your litter in the bin" with a big photo of a bin, or "walkway may be slippy when wet" with a drawing of someone falling over. Then there are posters that work on the same principle but convey more information, such as a map with images of places and a short blurb about each of them (there's some crossover with infographics here). At the other extreme from the simple posters, there are posters for scientific conference (usually looking something like ) that tell you very little at a glance, but nonetheless serve to convey complex information quickly.
A poster is a good choice if you're not sure how long your audience will be prepared to engage with you for, and you want them to learn something from you even if they don't choose to stick around. A scientific poster is not too different from a report, just on a larger piece of paper, but the crucial part is that someone can look at a poster and pick up your topic in the middle, then walk away, which is less likely with a report.

10. Leaflets

Leaflets are another medium that combine explanatory text with supporting graphics, but for less complex information and a lesser amount of detail than a report or even a poster in the scientific style. Images:
There are different styles of leaflet for different purposes - for instance, a book-shaped leaflet encourages the reader to read in a particular direction, namely the order in which books are read (so in English, from left to right), while a gate-fold leaflet can provide basic information on the outside and then unfold to provide additional detail. In this way, you can use your choice of leaflet to structure the way in which your reader engages with the information provided in a more elaborate way than an article or report. A leaflet should be short, simple and attractive, making them a good choice if your graphic design skills are stronger than your writing skills.
hands writing an essay; man speaking in front of projector; tablet and newspaper; boy designing an infographic; comics; video camera; two microphones; paper reports and tablet; posters on a wall; leaflets; guy with laptop in a blue room; classroom with map

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10 Ways to Represent Information and How to Make the Most of Them - Oxford Royale Academy

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At school, you don't often get the opportunity to choose the format in which you answer a question. You might also enjoy... 20 Thought-Provoking Books to Enhance Your Understanding of Your Chosen Subject The 6 Levels of Educational Complexity and How to Use Them You'll usually be told whether you should be answering a question...

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Suggestion for implementing the strategy ‘Using whole-class strategies to support students with speech, language and communication needs in years 7–13’

On this page:

Offer text-to-speech tools

Offer text-to-speech tools

A how-to guide to get students up and running with Read and Write for Google.

Note: The text-to-speech features are free for students.

Video hosted on Youtube http://youtu.be/YJ5N1BQc0bc

Utilise technologies

Utilise technologies

Use technologies to enable learning.

A computer or a tablet provides language and visual support that can be revisited as often as required.

Information can be presented in multisensory ways and presentation can be adapted to individual needs, supporting independence.

A combination of visual and auditory stimuli is provided.

Students can learn at their own pace and revisit to consolidate learning as often as they like.

Differentiated work can be presented flexibly in order to meet individual learning requirements.

Ideas for presenting content

Ideas for presenting content

Ideas for presenting content in a variety of ways to support understanding.

Take a multisensory approach – use real experiences, physical activity and manipulables.

Provide multiple visual and concrete examples of information. Use infographics, real objects, images, video, and interactives on devices.

Support text with visuals and audio. Turn on the closed captions on videos.

Present digital rather than printed text so that students can personalise the ways they access it.

Use blogs, wikis and online tools such as Moodle to bring together different versions of content in one place, for example, a YouTube video, a graphic and some text.

Support under&shy;standing with visuals

Support understanding with visuals

Offer information in more than one way.

Use symbols and graphics to illustrate text.

Keep the layout clean and uncluttered.

Find videos with closed captions

Find videos with closed captions

How to find YouTube videos with closed captions using a laptop or desktop computer.

Search for YouTube and open the home page.

Type search subject (for example “frogs”) into YouTube search bar and press return key.

On left of screen, click the tab called “Filters” and a menu box will open.

Select “subtitles/CC” under the Features list.

Select a video from the selection of filtered videos presented by YouTube.

Watch the selected video with the closed captions turned on to check for accuracy before sharing with students.

Share closed captioned video with students.

Using movies

Using movies

Students watch movies using subtitles to foster reading comprehension and fluency.

Popular movies help children improve literacy

Publisher: University of Canterbury

Visit website

Next steps

Return to the guide “Speech, language and communication needs ”

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Suggestion for implementing the strategy Helpful classroom strategies years 9-13 within the Guide to Speech, language and communica­tion needs

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With most people tuning out of a PowerPoint presentation within the first 10 minutes, developing engaging slide show presentation ideas that keep your audience hooked till the end can be a challenge.

This is why we've created this post with 100+ creative presentation ideas to help you put together exciting presentations that don't put your audience to sleep. You can use these presentation ideas for business meetings, webinars, classrooms, online courses, pitch decks and more.

Here are some of the ideas we're covering:

Use neon colors and duotones

Unify transitions horizontally

Use a monochrome palette

Tell a personal story

Use isometric illustrations

In this article, you'll find unique slide examples, templates, designs and more. Put these slide show presentation ideas to practice using our presentation maker and create your own presentation in minutes.
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Quick Read

Add bright and bold colors to make your presentation stand out and grab your audience's attention. Create a vibrant and dynamic look by using neon colors and duotones.

Instead of using different transitions for each slide, use the same transition horizontally throughout your presentation. This creates a cohesive and visually pleasing flow.

To create a sophisticated, minimalist look, limit your color choices to shades of a single color.

Connect with your audience and make your message more relatable by incorporating personal anecdotes or stories into your presentation.

Add depth and dimension to your presentation with isometric illustrations, which can be a fun and engaging way to present complex information.

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100+ Creative Presentation Ideas

1 Use Neon Colors

Neon colors will give your presentation enough color kick to keep the viewer's attention. Use neon colors either as the background, as specific elements or as details inside the slides. The trick with neon is to not go overboard with the contrasts. Instead of using a neon rainbow, think more along the lines of neon accents.

2 Be Minimal

Using a minimal design composition is a great way of being unique. The trick is to have just enough information and visual details for the viewer to feel comfortable seeing the slides. A minimal design can instill calm and awe in your audience when done right. The trick with minimalism is to know when enough is enough, you wouldn't want to be boring instead of minimal.

Use this presentation theme and mix-and-match the slides! Create Now

3 Use all caps

Another creative presentation idea is using all caps when you feel like the topic of your presentation can be delivered with few words. Using all capitals in your slides will give the message importance. This design might not be suited for a text-heavy presentation but maybe one with an audio narrative that goes along with it, or bullet points.

4 Go vertical

Rectangular presentations are definitely the norm, but with the rise of Instagram Stories, this might be starting to change. Now that we can put archived stories into a Highlights, why not publish vertical presentations there? Going vertical is just one idea, along with that you can add any other design technique.

5 Use duotones

Duotone doesn't exactly mean "two colors," it actually means "two tones." The idea behind this design angle is to use two contrasting tonalities which can have different shades. The difference between duotone and two colors is that it has a more edgy look. Depending on what two tonalities you choose, it can be subtle or very powerful. The photos used in the design also need to be customized to the duotone color you chose.

6 Add a video in different shapes or snippets

Videos can be a powerful tool in your arsenal for engaging your audience during a presentation. Not only do they help to break up the monotony of a lecture-style presentation, but they can also help to explain complex concepts, add visual interest, and evoke emotions.

One way to make your videos stand out is by using different shapes or snippets. Rather than presenting a standard rectangular video, consider incorporating shapes such as circles, triangles or diamonds. These shapes can add a unique and visually appealing element to your presentation.

Another way to incorporate video snippets is by breaking up a longer video into smaller, bite-sized pieces. This can be particularly useful if you have a lengthy video that you want to show but don't want to lose your audience's attention. By breaking it up into smaller segments, you can keep your audience engaged and prevent them from losing interest.

Don't worry about the design complexity. If you create your presentation in Visme, you can resize your videos instantly and turn them into any shape you want.

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7 Unify transitions horizontally

Unifying the transitions between slides is always a great idea, but doing it horizontally is especially effective. By keeping all the movements going in one direction, it's both easy to follow and will look great. You don't need to just apply horizontal transitions to the switch between slides, you can also apply animation to the titles and images. As long as they all go in the same direction, you are gold.

8 Black and white + spot of bright color

This presentation design idea is highly effective if you're looking for a creative way to present information.

Adding a bright color to a black and white scheme can add just the right amount of attention-grabbing detail to your presentation. Try choosing a powerful color so that it's really noticeable and pops visually. You can use the color in small amounts or in large sections. Up to you, just remember to maintain a balance throughout.

9 Use a color theme

A cohesive color theme throughout your presentation can engage your audience and create a more visually appealing experience.

To start, consider the overall tone of your presentation and what emotions you want to evoke in your audience. Are you presenting on a serious topic, such as healthcare or finance, where a more subdued color palette may be appropriate?

Or are you presenting on a more lighthearted topic, such as creativity or innovation, where bright and bold colors can help to capture your audience's attention?

Once you have a general idea of your color palette, try to use it consistently throughout your slides. This means using the same background, font and accent colors for headings and graphics- like the presentation template below.

Visme's presentation templates offer a wide range of professionally designed themes with 300+ slides in 20+ different categories. You can create visually stunning slides with our carefully curated color schemes and stylish designs.

Read this article about 25 free presentation themes in Visme and find the perfect one.

10 Add full-screen videos

The use of full-screen video in your slides can have a big impact on your storytelling. There's a catch though. The wrong video will be detrimental to your message, be mindful of the videos you chose to grace the background of your slides. The video should either tell your story without words or be a complement that won't interfere. The wrong video will confuse your viewers and it will be hard to get their undivided attention back.

If you're looking for quick idea inspiration, check out our YouTube video where Mike shares 30 of our favorite presentation ideas at a glance.

11 Use an 80's visual style

If looking for a unique design style, why not try an 80's style for a change. Neon graffiti writing, disco balls, and brightly colored shapes might go well with your presentation's topic. You can use 80's visuals as small complementary elements or as the entirety of the presentation style. Nevertheless, if your presentation is about something quite serious then maybe you should try another style.

12 Go vintage

Another creative presentation idea is the vintage look. This could work really well with a history-themed presentation or anything to do with recuperating old traditions. When we say "vintage" we mean sepia-toned photos, intricate picture frames, bold fonts which look like they came out of old posters.

A vintage color palette is usually pastel turquoise green, ochre yellow and washed out blue and orange. You could consider using vintage mockup sets to create scenes for your slides, or use vintage style fonts, and old photographs as backgrounds.

13 Use a monochrome palette

A monochrome palette is one that maintains a single tonality in different strengths. For example, you can create a presentation in shades of blue, or in shades of orange. Use the palest shade for the background and a stronger shade for the titles and decorative shapes. Try doing it the opposite way as well. You can even use photos with a bit of a filter effect in the chosen color by adding a color filter.

14 Tell a personal story

Telling stories from your own life-whether those stories are deeply moving, humorous tales, or just little snippets that allow someone to look into your history-can be a great way to make a presentation more meaningful.

Colin Stokes uses this to his advantage in his TED talk. He begins by talking about the movies he watches with his daughter and what she likes, and then moving into watching a movie with his son, and wondering how it has affected him, allowing him to move seamlessly into his actual points.

Watch the video below to learn how Colin Stokes did it

Choose a relevant story from your past, and tell it with all the honesty that you can. Your audience will feel that, sympathize, and therefore connect more with your message.

15 Creative photo crops

The photos in your presentations can be cropped hundreds of different ways. From simple circles or rectangles to more elaborate triangles, polygons, letter shapes or even a brushstroke. Analyze the message of your presentation to know which shape to use for the cropping of your photos. You can also create a collage with the shapes as long as they don't distract from the information being presented.

16 Add fun illustrations

Adding fun illustrations is a great idea to engage your audience during a presentation. They can help break up text-heavy slides, make your presentation more visually attractive and reinforce your message.

Hand-drawn doodles, icons and graphics and animated GIFs are all illustrations you can use. To maximize the visual impact of your illustrations, you can use them in 3D.

With Visme, you can enhance your presentation by adding 3D objects that allow you to customize their colors, size and alignment. Additionally, you can add 3D animated graphics to take things to the next level.

When using illustrations, it's important to remember to use them sparingly to avoid overwhelming your audience. Less is more when it comes to adding graphics to your slides. Remember to match the illustrations with your theme and color scheme to keep things consistent.

17 Thick and bold fonts

Huge chunky fonts are a great way to call attention to titles on slides. You could even try making the letters bleed over the edges or place the words vertical along the side. The best thick and bold fonts are the ones with minimal decorations. Try using fonts that have strong corners or the opposite, extreme rounded terminals. It will also work best if the title is short and sweet.

18 Go with nature

Freshen up your presentation with some natural elements around the edges or as a background. You could use full-screen background photos of leaves, or use palm fronds coming in from the sides of the slides. Another presentation idea would be to use nature related photography along with other design ideas like interesting photo crops. This technique could be used for presentations which relate to nature or natural topics, but also for a home decor proposal or creative direction pitch for a TV ad. This technique could be used for presentations about environmental topics or even about home decoration.

19 Use circles

Circles represent wholeness and a natural sense of completion. They can signify eternity and constant movement. They can also make your presentation more friendly and emotionally accessible. You can try using circles as decorative elements or as the shape for cropping images and as backgrounds for illustrations.

20 Add some sparkle (glitter backgrounds)

21 Get crafty (ripped paper details)

Sometimes to tell a story, visual details can really help get a mood across. Ripped paper shapes and edges can give a presentation a special feel, almost as if it was done by hand. This visual technique works for any type of presentation except maybe in a corporate setting. Ripped paper can be found on creative graphics resource sites or you can do it yourself and take a photo.

22 Cut-out paper illustrations

Another crafty idea to design your slides is by using cut paper illustrations. This technique could look really crafty or quite elegant if done well. Cut paper can be used as an elaborate background, as the letters in titles or as decorative elements. There are some great cut paper bundles online to use as PNG files which can be uploaded to the Visme editor.

23 Pathway transitions

24 Use isometric illustrations

If you are looking for a different way to illustrate your slides, why not consider using isometric illustrations? This style of illustration is great for explaining things that can be separated into parts. The parts can be animated as well. An isometric illustration can work for any kind of presentation, from technology to corporate. It will give your presentation a modern edge and a professional look.

25 Use motion graphics

Motion graphics are a great way to illustrate an idea with animated objects. They don't tell stories on their own, they support the context and illustrate the content.

For example, if your presentation is about travel, you could have flying airplanes across the slides or bags on a luggage conveyor belt. For something more abstract, you can use moving shapes and add effects to the titles. Your Visme editor has a variety of design tools to help you create all sorts of content with motion graphics.

Here's what one of Visme's satisfied customers Jessica L. | Small-Business Owner, has to say about Visme's presentation tool:
"No need to go back to PowerPoint. Visme makes project presentations easy and fast. Lots of useful templates and excellent graphics. I enjoy the features they continue to add and update often. They make project work easy".
26 Add GIFs to your slides

27 Use quotes between slides

Quotes can be good breathers between a bunch of informative slides. You can either use them to separate ideas inside your presentation or to start new sections of information. It's important that your quotes represent the topic of your presentation so that they make sense and not confuse the viewer.

28 Start with "once upon a time"

One of the most effective and engaging ways to present a presentation is by incorporating creative storytelling techniques.

If a presentation can be created as a story, then why not go all the way and start the presentation with a classic story opening? Using the "once upon a time" phrase will instantly grab the viewer's attention because it will be out of the ordinary. Make a slide especially for it with a visual that matches the topic of your presentation.

29 Turn the slides into a scrolling infographic instead of a presentation

To showcase your content in a unique and engaging way, consider using creative slide ideas that break away from the traditional slide-by-slide approach. For instance, you can arrange your slides vertically to create a scrolling infographic instead of a classic slide-by-slide transition presentation.

An added bonus to this presentation style is to add parallax scrolling or interaction animation. As the viewer scrolls down, the information fills each slide progressively. It doesn't continue until the viewer scrolls again. This technique is best for displaying online slide show presentation ideas.

30 Engage Your Audience

What's one of the best ways to make your presentations more interesting? Make the audience a part of them.

Regardless if you're presenting in person to a room full of people or via Zoom to viewers around the world, there are a number of techniques to engage your audience with both your content and yourself. The trick is to make them feel connected somehow, like they can relate. You can achieve this with humor, storytelling, asking questions and inviting them to leave comments in the webinar chat window.

Take this speech by Donovan Livingston. He delivers a commencement speech in spoken word poetry, and specifically encourages the audience to take part, saying they should clap, throw their hands in the air, or otherwise participate if they feel so moved. While not seen, several people heard cheering and clapping throughout the video.

Participation can also be accomplished through things such as games, posing questions or something as simple as asking participants to raise their hands.

31 Use a scrunched paper background

Give your presentation a laid-back and grunge feel by designing it with a scrunched paper background. It can be any kind of paper really, depending on your topic. It could be notebook paper, or printer paper, it could even be recycled paper. Try a few different types of paper until you find the one that suits your story.

32 Add interactive pop-ups

Adding interactive pop-ups is a game-changer when it comes to creative ways of presenting. These pop-ups allow you to go beyond the traditional approach, giving your audience a more dynamic and engaging experience.

Interactive pop-ups can take many forms, from quizzes and polls to clickable infographics and interactive timelines. With Visme, you can access various interactive features that can help you create engaging and effective presentations.

For example, you can create clickable icons or buttons that allow your audience to explore additional information or resources. You can also create interactive timelines that enable your audience to explore different events or milestones.

One of the most powerful interactive features of Visme is the ability to create quizzes and polls. You can make interactive questions and answer options that allow your audience to engage with your presentation on a deeper level.

You can also use this feature to gather feedback from your audience, allowing you to tailor your presentation to their needs and interests.

Watch the video below or read this article to learn how to create an interactive presentation.

33 Use a back-to-school theme

A back-to-school theme can make your presentation look like a lot of fun. This is a great technique for teachers and educators welcoming their students back to a new school year. The background can be a sheet of notebook paper, an open notebook, or a blackboard. The edges could be decorated with pencils and paperclips, maybe an eraser or sharpener. The back-to-school theme has lots of possibilities.

34 Use a billboard-inspired theme

Use billboard mockups to create slides which look like billboards. This could look interesting and quite unique. You could use the same billboard for all the slides, or different ones for a more varied approach. This technique would work great with a pitch for an election or a local spot in a government office.

35 Use black-and-white photography

Black and white photography is a classic design technique. They import elegance and sophistication to any design by providing a minimalistic approach to the visuals. The photos can either be desaturated from color photos or given an artistic flair with extra contrast and fewer grey tones.

36 Explain your reasons

What people really want to know is why you're giving the presentation you're giving. This is especially true if you're pitching to investors or potential new clients. When you share your why with the audience using storytelling and body language, you make meaningful connections and lasting relationships

Simon Sinek explains quite well why this is so important-the greatest leaders, the ones who inspire the most people, understand why they do the things they do, rather than just what or how.

37 Add an audio narrative

Your presentation doesn't need to be silent, especially if you won't be standing by it to tell the story yourself. Adding an audio narrative can turn a viewable presentation into an experience. You can either set it up as a video that runs on its own and the viewer looks and listens, or it can be triggered by arrows that are clicked on.

38 Follow a space theme with photography

Most of the photos from Nasa are labeled as public domain. Meaning that you can give your presentation a space theme quite easily. Choose images of astronauts in space or more abstract and colorful images like distant galaxies and nebulas. The latter can make great backgrounds behind content without the topic necessarily being about space.

39 Do a space theme with illustration

An illustrated space theme can be either colorful and whimsical or sober and elegant. By choosing the style of illustration you use, you can either use this technique for presentations related to children or scientists. Cartoon astronauts can be lots of fun, line illustration planets can be educational and data-driven drawings can be informational.

40 Include music

Sometimes, when listening to someone talk for long periods of time, it helps to have something else to draw your attention. While images are great, including music can really help stimulate an audience and set the mood.

Dean Burnett talks about why this happens: "[Music] provides non-invasive noise and pleasurable feelings, to effectively neutralize the unconscious attention system's ability to distract us." Essentially, music is entertaining enough that, when in the background, can keep us focused on otherwise un-entertaining things.

Whether incorporated into individual slides, in a video, done live, or with a music-playing device nearby, this creative presentation idea can be a great way to enhance the quality of your speech or talk.

41 Graffiti photography backgrounds and details

42 Stop-motion

The stop-motion technique can take time but it can also make your presentation unforgettable. There are lots of ways to use stop-motion, either with characters doing actions or objects that move around and create a scene. Stop-motion can also be used to create titles that move into place. What the title is written with can be anything, from toys to plants. The theme and topic of your presentation will ultimately be the driving point to what kind of stop-motion can be used. But be sure that it works from educational to promotional to corporate.

43 Claymation

Very similar to stop-motion, claymation is the animation of things created with clay or play-doh. Anything can be created with clay, so the possibilities really are endless about what can be achieved. This technique really does take a lot of time, you can source it out to a professional or buy some already created footage. The claymation can be just a decorative element in the background or it could also be the center of the presentation.

44 Color blocking

The color blocking technique is another creative presentation idea that entails using color in large sections and in contrasting tones. The idea is that the color blocks will be strong and colorful. The color blocks can either be the shapes that determine where the information goes or just a way to separate the slides in specific sections. Any type of presentation can benefit from color blocking. Just make sure you use colors that go together and don't clash.

45 Get surreal

Surrealism is an avant-garde movement from the 20th century which was meant to tap into subconscious creativity. This might not be the kind of design technique for any sort of presentation but it can work for one that is about art, or literature or other creative outlets. There are plenty of surrealist artworks in the public domain sector or the Metropolitan Museum of Art. These can be used as subtle backgrounds or visual complements to the text.

46 Polaroids

Polaroids are a photography favorite. The original Polaroids from the 70's could be used as vintage polaroids that have been kept in a box for years. The newest Instamatic photographs, which are the new kind of polaroids, can be used for a fun way to show photos and visuals in presentation slides. You could either use one polaroid per slide or a collection of polaroids on a table or corkboard.

There are many topics that can work with Polaroid photography backgrounds and details in your slide show presentation ideas.

47 Use a Handwriting Font

48 Use a geometric background

A geometric background can look really nice on any presentation. Geometric backgrounds can be tiled polygons or more abstract compositions of different size polygons. The decision to choose between tiled shapes and more creative compositions will depend on your creative angle and disposition. You can use these types of designs with any colors, so you can match the theme or your brand.

49 Coffee style design

Using a coffee-style design can work for any PowerPoint presentation idea, from office-related topics to digital nomads to anything or anyone who loves coffee. If the background is subtle, it can fit a more serious topic or data report. It can make a boring presentation just a bit more visually entertaining than the rest. Of course, it can also be perfect for a small coffee brewer pitching their company to investors.

50 Include memes

You've seen them everywhere by this point. You might be pretty sick of them. However, that doesn't mean memes can't be useful-in fact, using a couple strategically can surprise the audience and make them laugh.

The presentation " Memes, Memes Everywhere" focuses on, unsurprisingly, memes, and explains their purpose while using examples on every slide, which help support their points and add some humor to a very text-heavy presentation.

Choosing relevant memes and using them sparingly can really help add some personality to your presentation, without distracting from the work.

51 Polka dots

Using a polka-dot background can give your presentation a whimsical look or simply give it a subtle texture. The polka dots could be small and soft or big and punchy. A strong polka-dot background can work great in a creative setting or even a boring data analysis. The style of polka dots will depend on the general topic of your presentation. You can use the polka-dot design as a full background or as a decorative section on the slide.

52 Metaphors

Visual metaphors can be useful in a similar manner; they can spice up your presentation, illustrate your point, and make your work far more entertaining. James Geary speaks about just how important metaphors are.

His presentation provides several examples of metaphors--such as the phrase "some jobs are jails"--and explains just how hard it is to ignore the lasting power of a well-used metaphor. Because of the connotations a metaphor can bring to the table, their use is an excellent way to imbue added meaning to your words.

53 Use timelines in your slides

Timelines can be used in lots of different ways inside a PowerPoint presentation, and the ideas are limitless. A timeline can either be inside one slide, or it can be connected between various slides. You can make a timeline with icons, connected shapes, or an inclined line. The timeline can be a visual way of explaining a chronological event or a plan of action that needs to be taken care of. Make sure the timeline fits the rest of the theme.

54 Use a comic book style

Comic books are a source of inspiration for many people. The visual aspect of a comic style composition can really make your presentation shine. There are a few ways you can use this technique. You could set up the slides as if they were snippets of a comic book, place the text in speech and thought bubbles and apply a background with a pointillist texture. If using characters, make sure the characters fit the theme of your presentation. For a perfect fit, hire a designer to create a comic book presentation just for your company.

55 Use a manga style

Looking for creative PowerPoint slide ideas that stand out? Consider taking inspiration from the Japanese art of Manga. Manga can give your presentation a distinct and eye-catching look, much like comic books.

It isn't as versatile as a comic book because it has a more specific look, so it might not work for all topics. It can work for more creative outlets like fashion, art, and photography. Manga has a specific style for the atmosphere around the unique characters as well. They are more common in black and white and look very photographic.

56 Use psychedelic visuals

Psychedelia was a big part of the design world in the 60's and 70's. Music and creative event posters were so intricate and colorful that they took an important place in the design history books. This design style can be used for a unique visual approach in your presentations. Just like many other techniques we have mentioned, they can be used as a background in slides or as decorative elements. The swirly shapes and contrasting colors can call attention to the viewer in a positive way.

57 Use neon lights

Neon lights are a great way to give your presentation some life when it's otherwise visually bland. There are plenty of neon light fonts available online to choose from, from classic style neon tubing on a wall to a neon style given to a font to make it look like neon. Presentations of any topic can be given an additional visual with a bit of neon brightness.

58 Cinemagraph backgrounds

A cinemagraph is like a GIF loaded with elegance. The idea behind a cinemagraph is a photo with a moving section which makes it look cinematic. This kind of background can keep your viewers happily hypnotized while listening to your audio narrative or keep them on the slide longer to truly grasp the information being given. There are cinemagraphs available for all sorts of themes and topics. You can definitely find one that suits your needs.

59 Full-screen video backgrounds

A full-screen background can be really appealing. But just like other design ideas, the video you choose needs to match the theme and topic of your presentation. Your best bet is to have a video which is directly related to what your presentation is about. Videos can be created especially for your purpose, sourced with permission from YouTube or bought from a stock video site.

60 Visualize data

Staring at a large amount of numbers on screen can be overwhelming for most people, even if the realities of those numbers enforce your point. What's the best way to avoid scaring your crowd? Put the data into easily understandable visualizations.

If you want to take this a step further, you can use illustrations or create infographics to make these data visualizations even more engaging.

61 Use a wild west theme

The wild west is not a very versatile theme but can work for a history project or a proposal for a wild west themed party or event. What entails a wild west theme? Brown sandy tones, horses, cowboys, and tumbleweeds. If the full-on wild west theme is too much, you can also take a cue from the era and be inspired by the color scheme. Another approach would be to use photography from the actual west of the United States, mountains and deserts and so on.

62 Use mind maps

63 Use interactive geographic maps

Looking for creative ways to make a presentation more interactive? Consider using an interactive map instead of a static one.

The difference between a static map and an interactive map will define how much attention your slides get. Regions can switch colors according to a change in data over time, making the map more into a chart. With Visme, you can make your maps interactive with live data. All you need to do is sync your data from a Google Sheets file and when your presentation is published online, your map will always be synchronized to that data.

64 Color contrasts

65 Live data graphs

Adding live data to a presentation can turn your slides into evergreen content in a flash. You can use any type of chart and populate it with live data such as bar graphs, line graphs, pie graphs, and more. You can add live data graphs to one or two slides in your presentation or have a series of them. Creating a live data graph is easy with the Visme editor.

66 Color fade transitions

Transitions come in lots of different styles. We have mentioned horizontal transitions, animated transitions, and pathway transitions. This particular technique involves color as the ruling factor.

A color-fade transition makes each slide connected to each other through color. This can be achieved with gradients, color blocks, or colored photo filters. Make your PowerPoint presentation ideas stand out with color fade transitions.

67 "Grow" your presentation so it looks like one animated slide

This creative PowerPoint idea is quite interesting as it really only uses one slide that grows upon itself. The practical way to do this is to create the final slide with all the parts and information set up like a finished puzzle. Once you have the completed slide, duplicate it as many times as you need and systematically take off a bit of information until you've reached the first title slide. Once you have all the slides, make sure they are in order before downloading the entire thing.

68 Use humor

Want a great way to connect with your audience and make a memorable, more engaging presentation? Be funny. When used strategically, this is a great way to capture attention.

Morgan Spurlock makes wonderful use of this in his TED talk. For example, in one of his earliest statements, he offered individuals the opportunity to buy the rights to name his TED talk-which he refers to again at the end, where he reveals the title. He peppers the entire presentation with humorous commentary that nonetheless supports his point.

Create relevant jokes or find a way to bring out the humor in your subject, and your audience will be much more engaged and more likely to remember your words.

69 Tree diagram transitions

A tree diagram is one of the eight thinking maps which help visualize idea and concepts. The purpose of a tree diagram is to classify and organize information. This map can help build a presentation by making sure each slide is a continuation of the one before. They might need to be grouped into sections so that all the information is relayed easily.

70 Journal style (with hand-drawn illustrations on the margins)

One creative presentation idea is to make your talk just a little bit different than the rest is to use a journal style. The general visual idea for this technique is to make your slides look like the pages of a journal. The style of the journal will depend on what your presentation topic is. It can be a whimsical bullet journal or an intricate botany journal. You could even consider handwriting on paper as a background.

71 Ink splatters

Use ink splatters to decorate your slides any way you like. They can be big and impressive behind the content, or they can be small and subtle like drops from a pen. An ink splatter can give your presentation a bit of an artistic flair and if done right, can make your slides look elegant and clean. Any style of presentation can benefit from some ink splatters as a decorative element.

If you're looking for fresh presentation slide ideas, why not experiment with ink splatters and see how they can enhance your next presentation?

72 Passport with stamps

73 Express your emotions

We can sometimes be afraid of expressing how we feel, even to those we're close to, much less in front of a crowd. However, showing them makes your words more authentic and can generate compassion or excitement in your audience.

Take this TED talk by Thordis Elva and Tom Stranger , for example. While the two talk about their experiences, their voices break and crack. The emotional turmoil they went through is clearly heard, and viewers can clearly understand their pain.

This can take some getting used to, and some courage. However, the results are well worth the effort.

74 Use a video game theme

Video games come in all shapes and sizes. From kids' games to arcade games to car games. Each one has their own style, just like presentations do. If you think a video game visual style is good for your project, consider all the different kinds until you find the one that fits best. You can use game screenshots as backgrounds or infuse the entire design of the presentation with the video game style you chose.

75 Use postcards

76 Incorporate robots in the design

Using robots in your slides can be a creative approach to visually elevate your presentation. There are different styles of robots you can add to your presentation design; realistic photography of anamorphic robots, cute illustrated robots, or robotic parts from factories. These visuals might only apply for technology-themed presentations or about robots themselves. Cute illustrations of robots can be great backgrounds for whimsical topics or other styles of storytelling presentations.

77 Chalk on blackboard

Looking for creative slides presentation ideas? Consider using a chalkboard design to add a unique and nostalgic touch to your presentation.

Writing on a chalkboard is not limited to a school setting or a bar menu. These two might be the most common yet they are not the only possibilities for using chalk on a blackboard. A good handwriting font is the best companion to a chalkboard design. Some of these fonts are already available with a chalky texture and others might need some professional tweaking to get the right texture.

78 Get inspired by a specific location

Even if the PowerPoint presentation ideas you are designing are not about a specific place in the world, you can be inspired by one to set up the color scheme and feel of the slides. For example, if you get inspired by Greece, you can use white and light blue hues or even photos of Greek islands. If you get inspired by Brazil, you can use photos of the beach, the texture of the boardwalk tiles or green, blue, and yellow color schemes.

79 Use props

Using props can quickly turn a run-of-the-mill presentation into a unique, interactive experience. Kenny Nguyen demonstrates this well. In his talk he often refers to the "sword of yes" and "shield of no." Naturally he picks up a sword and shield from the table to help demonstrate his points.

Choosing similar props can help you really illustrate your points-and make it that much more entertaining, too.

80 Use hashtags as titles

In the age of social media, hashtags are used every day. They appear regularly on social media, in spoken and written conversations, and of course in content marketing. Why not include some hashtags as titles? This technique will work great in a presentation for a social media content management pitch, or an in an influencer marketing strategy. On another note, hashtag titles can even be used for any type of presentation geared at the digital generation.

81 Black background, white letters, and color accents

When you use a black background, the colors that you place on top will usually look brighter than if they were on a white background. When creating this kind of color palette, make sure the colors you use don't clash with each other or with the black. Along with the bright colors, make sure you use white to make the composition pop! Neon colors or pastel tones are what will work best.

82 Vintage film edges

Even though we are used to taking photos with our phones, the classic nostalgia of film is still prevalent in the world of visuals and design. The graphic representation of a film negative is as recognizable as an envelope representing an email. Use a vintage film edge along the horizontal edges of your slides to give your visuals a cinematic feel. Even better if you make the edges animated so that it looks like it's rolling along on a projector.

83 Adult coloring book inspired design

Using a coloring book design can be really creative. Practically anything can be turned into a coloring book style illustration. A great way to use this technique is to have the first slide with the un-colored illustration and then progressively color in the illustration as the slides progress. Furthermore, if the illustration is depictive of the information, the visuals can be even more engaging.

84 Stripes

A stripes design is as classic as it gets. From pinstripes to artistic colorful lines, you can use them as a subtle background or a powerful striped theme intertwined with text boxes. Stripes are the kind of design technique that can work for any type of presentation, from corporate to educational.

85 Make each slide look like a social media post

Just like postcards and polaroids, you could try a creative approach and use social media templates to put the content in. The most notorious social media visual channel is Instagram. It has been known to inspire offline events as well. Make your slides look like social media posts or social media pages. For this technique, you can either use screenshots or templates.

86 Ink in water

Dropping ink in water creates beautiful colorful bubbly designs which can be photographed at high speed. These images can be used as backgrounds for any type of creative theme presentations. Choose the color and thickness of the ink design to match the theme of your presentation. There are also animated versions of this effect which can be bought like video stock.

87 Lego bricks

Use lego bricks as inspiration to fill your presentation slides with color and fun. Use the bricks to create slide frames, letters or even charts. The best approach to a lego inspired presentation is to be creative. There are lots of things you can do with lego, you could go as far as using the legos to write the titles of the slides. Don't use the Lego logo though unless you are specifically designing a presentation about lego.

88 Use classic storytelling techniques

A presentation is, in a way, like a story-you're talking about your chosen subject and leading viewers on a journey to discover what that subject means. Moreover, stories hold an intrinsic interest for us. Therefore, you can easily use several storytelling techniques to help improve your presentation.

Alex Blinkoff goes into this in great detail, examining things such as "The Hero's Journey" and provides several examples of ways to use storytelling techniques in your presentations. Check them out, and decide what might work best for your subject.

89 Jigsaw puzzles

Pieces of a jigsaw puzzle can be used to make charts, infographic diagrams, or interlocking frames. The idea behind puzzle pieces is that things come together to form a whole and this concept can be used for any slide and any kind of presentation. Make sure to use a suitable color palette that matches your theme and the rest of the presentation.

90 Headlines coming in animated on boats/trains/airplane

Headlines or titles can be given a life of their own inside the slides. One interesting and creative approach would be to make the titles enter the slide on top of some kind of vehicle. The vehicle could be anything, from a train to a boat, to an airplane. Depending on the type of vehicle, this animated technique can be used for child-themed topics, transportation themes, travel ideas, or even about a corporate sales report.

91 Use a camouflage design

Camo doesn't necessarily need to convey a sense of military, although it does carry a strong connection. Thankfully, camouflage comes in different styles, from jungle greens to desert browns. Other out of the box camouflage styles are the ones where the colors are completely off the charts, like pinks and blues. Camouflage designs are better used as backgrounds or small subtle sections.

92 Use unique novelty fonts for headers

There are so many novelty fonts to choose from out there these days! Using a unique novelty font for the titles and headers is a great way to add some visual pizzazz to your slides. Try looking for some really special fonts that carry personality. Once you have selected the font, add some color and texture to make it look even better.

93 Use a city skyline

Using a background of a city skyline can work great for a presentation related to business or corporate topics. It can also be perfect for an urban travel related theme or educational presentation. You can choose to use photography as a background or with the buildings cut out from the sky. Another choice is to find an illustrated city skyline and use it as a border on the slides.

94 Use a connected dots background

One of the design trends of the last few years is the connected dots visual. It's used on websites and on printed flyers. It's so versatile that it can be added to any kind of presentation in a heartbeat. The lines can be short or long between the dots and the composition can be tight or spread out. You can find connected dot visuals easily on sites like Freepik, in lots of different colors. If you can manage vector graphics, you can also change the composition of the dots quite easily yourself.

95 Use a bokeh background

Bokeh is a photography and light technique which turns dots of light into bright shiny spheres. With a bit of creativity, the lights can be turned into shapes, like hearts or stars. This design style is great for backgrounds since it's mostly abstract. It works best as a complement to the content instead of an important visual aspect. You can find bokeh backgrounds in stock photo sites or make it yourself.

96 Use watercolor designs

The use of watercolor designs is an easy way of infusing some lively color into a presentation. Watercolors can be a splash on the background, shapes around the content, or colorful strokes intertwined with text boxes. Depending on the color of the paint used, the watercolor technique can be used for any type of presentation. A soft watercolor brushed background can work for a feminine theme and a deep intense splash can add visual creativity to an otherwise boring corporate presentation.

Just like watercolor graphics, paint can add a dose of creativity to any presentation. Different to watercolors though, paint is more intense. Paint based graphics come in all shapes and sizes, from thick brush strokes to paint drips. Digital paint compositions can also make great backgrounds for colorful and creative presentations.

98 Use bright fun colors

Why create a bland presentation when you can make it fun and colorful instead? Creative color palettes can include up to six different colors which look great together. Use shapes, cut-outs, color blocks, swashes, anything your heart desires. This technique is for letting go and being creatively free with color. Just make sure the colors go together by trying out some palettes first.

99 Use arrow graphics

Arrows symbolize direction. They can be a great addition to your charts, infographic visuals and slide sections. You could even do the entire presentation using arrows. According to their size, color, and thickness, they have different temperaments. Look for different styles of arrows and see if they fit your topic and theme. Freepik has some great arrow visuals and the Visme editor also has arrow icons and infographic visuals.

100 Use electronic visuals

Another great idea for a background visual is the inside of a computer system. The intricate details of a motherboard or a close up of a memory chip can make a great visual impact. Apart from using an electronic background image, little pieces of electronic devices can be placed around the slide as decoration. This technique is generally limited to electronic or computer theme topics.

101 Metaphors

Visual metaphors can be useful in a similar manner. They can spice up your presentation, illustrate your point, and make your work far more entertaining. James Geary speaks about just how important metaphors are.

His presentation provides several examples of metaphors--such as the phrase "some jobs are jails"--and explains just how hard it is to ignore the lasting power of a well-used metaphor. Because of the connotations a metaphor can bring to the table, their use is an excellent way to imbue added meaning to your words.

102 Keep it feminine

A feminine style design can work for your presentation if your company makes products for women or if your targeted audience is women. By feminine design, we mean light and soft colors, subtle shapes and a general airy feeling to the composition. Feminine design can be minimal but it can also be decadent and full of style. Whichever you chose, make sure it fits with your audience.

103 Go futuristic

A futuristic style can fit any theme as long as the concept of the future depicted, fits the topic of the presentation. Futuristic design can be of many different styles; from spaceship driving controls to cosmos related atmospheres, to flying cars, and artificial intelligence. Even color palettes can look futuristic if you add some metallic tones.

104 Add a music background

A music soundtrack can be added to any presentation that doesn't have any other sort of audio already. The best music for a presentation is one without lyrics, in other words, an instrumental track. A good track will accompany the content in a positive way and not interfere with the message. You can find audio tracks easily online.

105 Communicate with images

A picture can speak a thousand words. Naturally, they can be used to communicate concepts that, for the sake of space or time, you might not be able to include in the presentation itself. This slide deck uses this strategy to its advantage.

The presentation includes many images as backgrounds and minimal text. The images used always either enhance what's being said or, in some cases, provide the answer for viewers. For example, the second slide states "The Landscape Today," and includes a bleak background with a broken, tilted picture frame, emphasizing the idea that the following slides (which describe the landscape) offer some pretty disheartening information.

Using images in a related fashion can help express your views and emphasize your message.

106 Include artsy data visualization

Data visualization is a way of showing data and information in a way that is visually expressive. Creative data analysts can make some really beautiful creations and you can hire them to make them for you. If you haven't seen any creative data visualizations, take a look at our collection of the best of 2018 and get inspired. You can either make the whole presentation into a data viz or add them to some of the slides.

107 Stay branded

This creative tip is a simple one. When creating your presentation, do your best to stay on brand. This, of course, will work only if you are creating a presentation for your own brand. If creating one for a client, then you should stay on brand with their own brand style guide. This means only use the brand colors and fonts, use photos, textures, and shapes that match the brand.

108 Ask questions

A great tip to make your PowerPoint presentations ideas more interactive is to ask questions from your audience. Like the example below, you can display only your question on the slide. Once the audience has pitched in their opinions and answers, you can click to reveal the actual answer. You can enable this type of interactivity on click when making a presentation in Visme.

109 Replace boring bullet points with visuals

While adding bullet points in your slides might be better than adding walls of text, they're still not the most effective way to get your message across and engage your audience. Take things up a notch and replace boring bullets with visuals, such as photos and even icons. Here's an example of how you can use icons to add a creative twist to the plain ol' bullet points.

110 Share your slide deck

Downloading your slide deck and presenting in front of an audience is not the only way to use your presentation. Make the most of your slides by sharing your presentation online.

Add interactive elements, such as clickable buttons, links, hover effects, popups, embedded videos and more so your audience can view and engage with your slides on their own.

If you've created your presentation in Visme, you can share your presentation publicly or privately using a link, or embed it anywhere you like.

Start Using These Creative Presentation Ideas

Ready to start creating your own presentation after over 100 pieces of inspiration? Choose your favorite creative presentation ideas and incorporate them into your own presentation.

You can add interactivity, animation, visuals and all kinds of creative elements to your presentations when you design them in Visme's online presentation maker. With our Dynamic Field feature, you can automatically update key information in real-time across all your slides or multiple projects. Customize existing dynamic fields or create new ones and format them to maintain design consistency.

Create a free account with Visme to start building a presentation your audience will love.

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100+ Creative Presentation Ideas to Engage Your Audience

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We've created a list of creative presentation ideas to inspire and engage your audience. Create a catchy presentation with these 100+ ideas.

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30 Creative Presentation Ideas for 2023

Here are 30 cool presentations ideas you can use for your next presentation:

1. Use Speech Bubbles

Speech bubbles add a fun element to your slide. (Presentation template Source: Envato Elements) (Graphic Source: Envato Elements)

A creative presentation idea is to put your thoughts or key points into speech bubbles. You can also use them to add notes, commentary, or milestones to a timeline.

When you use speech bubbles, be careful not to overuse them. The point of the speech bubbles is to make the text stand out. The text won't stand out if you use too many speech bubbles. Instead, it'll lose its effect.

2. Create a Timeline

A cool presentation idea that is great for organizing thoughts, facts, or information it to use a timeline.

Each step in a timeline is typically marked with an image icon or shape. So, a timeline can add visual interest to your information. They also help guide the audience through a narrative while also allowing you the ability to talk through specific points.

3. Audio Narration

Another unique presentation idea is to use pre-recorded audio in your presentation.

When you add narration to your presentation, you're creating more of an immersive experience. Using narration with matching visuals can be more emotional and impact your audience more.

4. Use Bright Colors

A way to have fun presentations is to add bright colors. There are two ways you can do this:

1. Use a colorful and exciting background that'll grab the audience's attention. Or use pops of color. When using pops of color, it's best to place your color strategically.

2. If you've got an important bit of text that you want your audience to pay attention to, put your pop of color behind that text.

5. Use Repetition

Another creative presentation idea is to use repetition.

Repetition is the oldest trick to remember something. So, if you want your audience to remember a specific phrase, try using repetition.

Choose a phrase that's short and simple. If the phrase is too long, it'll be harder to remember. Also, don't repeat the phrase too often. If you do people could tune you out.

6. Tell a Story

The human brain is designed to respond to stories as both a survival mechanism and as an entertainment mechanism. That double role has helped develop it into one of the most powerful communication tools humans have known.

Stories are much more interesting than facts because stories entertain us. Storytelling grabs and maintains attention. It helps the audience understand and remember what was said long after the story's over.

Instead of presenting your work as a series of facts that'll bore even the most kind-hearted audiences, organize your facts into a story.

And use a professional design with captivating photo layouts and graphics. This connects your audience visually to your story. Consider the stylish Polarity PowerPoint Template:

What interesting connections can you make between your facts? What story can you build around them that'll help your audience stay engaged from start to finish? Tell your story.

Learn more about the presentation writing process:

7. Ask Questions at Crucial Moments

Statements sound trite and expected. Especially during a presentation. A presentation essentially consists of a series of statements strung together. So, one more statement isn't likely to intrigue the audience-not even an exceptional one.

But what if you ask a question instead?

A question breaks up your regular presentation rhythm and helps mark what you're saying as important. It turns your presentation from a passive story into an active quest that the audience can explore on their own through their answers.

Answering a question (even if only in their heads) makes your audience feel involved in your presentation and keeps them glued to your words.

8. Prepare and Practice

Ever wonder how the best presenters always seem relaxed, focused, and engaging? It's easy to think that to be a great presenter, you need to be completely self-assured and comfortable in front of a crowd.

Preparation really starts at the very beginning. To succeed, take your presentation topics and map them out. This happens before you ever open your favorite presentation app to edit slides.

A big part of that is outlining your presentations. Just as novelists outline their books, great presenters map out big ideas in advance.

Think of your outline " roadmap" as a way to get your audience exactly where you want them to go. Following that outline as you build your slides helps you stay focused.

Once you've outlined and built your slides, it's time to rehearse relentlessly. It's not much fun, but it serves to build your self-confidence. You learn your content and become comfortable with it.

This translates directly into a confident stage presence. By feeling better about yourself (and your presentation topics), you'll give a better presentation. And in turn, this fuels audience engagement. Your self-assurance ensures their involvement.

9. Organize Your Presentation Into 3 Clear Points

The number three has been considered somewhat of a magical number in many cultures since antiquity. Something about things in threes fascinates the human mind and helps it retain information better. Consider these phrases:

body, mind, and soul

lock, stock, and barrel

pb and j (two ingredients, but three consonants in this abbreviated form)

blood, sweat, and tears

Magical or not, the number three works like a charm. At the end of the presentation, we can all remember three things that were said.

So instead of leaving those precious three things to luck, why not take charge? Organize your presentation into three main points or takeaways. Then you can be sure that your audience is paying attention to the important things and not the insignificant details.

Even if you're making more than three points, which you likely will be, you can find ways to organize all your minor points into three main categories. That way, you can easily address and summarize the gist of your presentation at the end.

Cost, timeline, results. Problem, suggestions, solution. Beginning, middle, and end. Just remember to divide it into three!

10. Break It Up With Humor

Humor makes the world go around. And the same holds true for the business world. At the end of the day, no one likes to work with a stiff.

So even when you're presenting in front of a "serious" client or investor, remember to use humor in your presentation. This doesn't mean you've got to crack jokes the entire time. It simply means being cheerful, lighthearted, and personable.

Humor not your strong point? No worries. You can even find presentations on creating presentations with humor!

23 Tips From Comedians to Be Funnier in Your Next Presentation from David Nihill.

While it can be challenging to nail the right tone with your use of humor it's one of the best presentation ideas to work on. Humor works to:

break the ice between you and your audience

puts everyone at ease, and helps them feel friendly, and well-disposed towards you (which can lead to improved results from your presentation)

open people up to the fun presentation ideas you're offering in your presentation

11. Design Your PowerPoint for Persuasion, Not Distraction

If you're using a slide deck, have a goal in mind. That goal is typically to inform or to persuade (or both.)

People see a ton of presentations - especially those key audiences like potential investors and customers! That means it's essential to stand out.

This is where Envato Elements comes in. It's loaded with designs that work perfectly for creative ways to present a project. Elements is the ultimate resource for presenters who need creative ways to present a project.

Elements offers thousands of PowerPoint templates. Each one is available for a flat monthly rate. That's right: join today and you'll have unlimited downloads of all the amazing templates you can ever use.

These templates are built by creative experts with you in mind. Many offer advanced features impossible to find in any free template.

With Elements, you gain peace of mind thanks to the ease of use. You'll save time and money and will impress even the most discerning audience.

This is a powerful offer. And Elements has far more than presentation templates. Your membership also includes stock photos, music, fonts, and more.

All these are useful to build unforgettable fun presentations in 2023. Join today!

12. Don't Read From Your Slides

Reading from a slide that everyone in the room can see (and read for themselves) is boring and makes you look unprepared. Your PowerPoint isn't there to remind you what to say, but to help your audience better understand the point you're making.

When you read off your PPT presentation, your audience will inevitably read along with you. And it's been shown that our minds wander 20-40% of the time while reading.

That means that while you're reading your slides, your audience is distracted. They may be wondering if they've left the iron on or what they're having for dinner. And that's not what you want them to be thinking about!

Keep the text of your slides short. Only use it to highlight important points you're making or to mark the headlines of different sections of your presentation.

Your slides should never be a crutch to your presentation when you can't remember what to say. And they should never contain more than a few lines of text on them.

Slides aren't for reading, but for emphasizing your points quickly.

13. Use Visuals to Ground Abstract Ideas

If you can't use a million bullet points to summarize your presentation on your slides, then what should your slides contain?

Visuals! Lots of visuals!

Graphs, charts, and pies that illustrate your point and help emphasize it. Also, include images that make an impact on the audience and make the gist of your argument memorable.

There's a difference between saying that your solution will cut costs by 20% and showing what that looks like on a graph with real numbers. It helps bring the idea from the abstract domain of theory into the concrete domain of facts.

And don't just stick to traditional presentation visuals. This isn't 2010, after all. Remember that cool presentation ideas today aren't the same as a decade ago.

Bring your presentation into the current era by including a variety of your visual elements. Using graphics, emojis, and even GIFs where appropriate will help give currency to your presentation and bring it to life.

Here's one of our most popular PowerPoint templates, The X Note. It includes many innovative slide design options, from photo layouts, to timelines, and more:

Discover the best PowerPoint templates with great infographics in this curated article:

Visuals, whether emojis, graphics, or images, shouldn't be used gratuitously in your presentation. Instead, everything you put into your slideshow should have a specific purpose.

A powerful way to use images is through visual metaphors. Don't just tell your client that with your plan new followers will come to them like bees to honey. Illustrate it with an image to help the point stick in their mind.

Visual images of a situation we're already familiar with help retain points longer in our memory. They give us something easy to refer to.

15. Make Your Examples Personal

Another creative presentation idea is to personalize your talk for the specific audience you're talking to on each occasion. You can always adjust and personalize your presentation experience to the specific audience.

Give examples in your presentation that involve the audience and show how your solution will benefit them.

People may not care (or may think they don't care) about your solution or talk if it just discusses the general. As soon as people realize that something can directly affect and benefit them personally, they start paying attention!

Show your audience the direct effects of your presentation by including them in your examples. You'll have their full attention and work your way halfway to that yes!

16. Use an On-Topic Template to Guide Your Presentation

Premium templates like those found on Envato Elements deliver unmatched style and content choices. Many focus on being flexible, offering the ability to quickly adapt to any topic.

Some of the most useful templates, though, take the opposite approach. These focus on a specific theme to offer creative ways to present a project.

Imagine for a moment you're launching a new mobile app. There are templates for that. Or perhaps you're opening a new restaurant and want to bring in customers. You're covered, thanks to custom templates.

The advantage here is twofold:

1. You'll find razor-focused slides built for your industry or specialty. These help you to brainstorm new PPT presentation ideas and share them in creative ways.

2. These very same slides save you valuable time and effort. How? Well, you don't have to build custom layouts from scratch. The tedious art of slide design transforms into a quick drag-and-drop exercise.

In other words, you can plan and build your next creative presentation more quickly, all thanks to on-topic templates.

Even better: your audience will be "wowed" by focused layouts that look tailored for you.

17. Add Music!

This may not be common practice in most presentations you've seen, but it's been proven to work by science. According to research done by Ronald A. Berk of John Hopkins University:

"Music embedded throughout a PowerPoint presentation can sustain attention, while slipping the content into long-term memory."

And it isn't new science! We've all known this for many decades. Case in point: can you think of how many movies you've seen in your lifetime that had no music? I'll give you a hint: Zero!

Ever since we discovered how to add sound to movies, we've not only been recording dialogue but also music from them. Because music helps set the mood, gives the right emotional effect, and adds excitement.

What's another way you can use music? To lighten up the mood and give everyone a mini dance break!

If you decide to use it, adding music can make for a really cool presentation that stands out in your audience's mind.

So, try this innovative presentation idea and add the appropriate music to your next presentation to help bring it to life.

18. Don't Go it Alone: Embrace Teams and Collaborate

Do you sometimes struggle to dream up unique topics for presentation use? You're not alone.

Nor should you be. Successful presentations are often fueled by collaboration. In other words, teamwork. There's no reason to do everything by yourself.

This can happen at any stage of the process, from brainstorming to the public delivery. By enlisting collaborators, your audience will enjoy the very best your team has to offer.

Suppose you've got a colleague who's a wizard with building amazing charts. Or you're presenting about a project and want your audience to hear from its architect. The possibilities for teamwork are endless.

Sometimes, it's great to add collaborators to break up the monotony. No matter how fabulous you are in front of a crowd, audiences may lose focus if you talk for too long. If you've got a lot to share, bringing in other voices helps them stay engaged.

Don't forget that you don't have to be in direct proximity to collaborate. With online team features, you can share files with others around the globe.

And even as you present, you can bring in other speakers with online tools like Zoom. In today's world, this is more powerful (and useful) than ever before.

19. Build for Big Rooms

As you explore unique topics for a presentation, it's easy to get caught up in the big idea. But that should never distract you from key tactical details. Chances are, as you build your slides, you're working on a single screen. That means you might forget that major PowerPoint presentations are delivered in large spaces.

What looks great on your screen may be impossible to read for a viewer standing in the back of a lecture hall. Or, your slide might be too crowded, just like we've already seen. The takeaway here is: always build presentations for big rooms.

That means to keep slides neat and clean, use large and readable fonts, and linger on each slide to give every viewer the chance to absorb it. No matter what presentation topics you're discussing, taking your time helps audiences engage with your creative mission.

Also, explore contrast. Often, dark backgrounds and light text are more readable than the reverse.

As you can see in this slide from The X Note PowerPoint Template, contrast is easier on the eyes. It also delivers bold and unconventional styling to your slide deck! Truly, a win-win for you and your team.

Above all, make sure viewers can see and understand your inspirational presentation topics-even from a distance.

20. Watch Your Animations

Many presentation topics will include a lot of different slides. And each of those slides might hold several different types of content. Thanks to PowerPoint, it's easy to add custom animations and transitions with a few clicks.

These motions really pull your audience in by unveiling new items with a cool flourish. Plus, they'll help you bring focus to key areas and ensure viewers engage with you.

But be careful.

Opt for clean and simple movements that don't detract from your narrative. Fades and pushes are top choices for stylish and simple animations.

It's just as important to organize your animations. If they happen at the wrong time, or in the wrong order, it can absolutely derail your presentation in a flash. Luckily, this is amazingly easy to avoid. In fact, learn to do it in only 60 seconds with our quick tutorial!

21. Style With SmartArt

PowerPoint is built to bring your fun presentation ideas to life. One great way is by using SmartArt. We've already looked at some infographics and charts you may find built into PowerPoint templates. SmartArt takes this to a higher level. In a few clicks, you can build your very own custom infographics on any slide. Let's add SmartArt to a slide.

SmartArt lives on the Insert tab on PowerPoint's ribbon. You'll find it under the Illustrations group. To add SmartArt, simply click on the button and launch the menu seen here.

Use SmartArt to build informative graphics that you can continually update.

You'll see several creative categories for how to present ideas. These include:

Simply click on one, then fill in your relevant information. PowerPoint includes a host of built-in design options to help you fully customize your fun presentation ideas.

For example, you can add new steps to a process chart. Or you can change SmartArt colors to precisely match your branding.

Of course, like any slide feature, overusing SmartArt can distract. But, when used carefully, it's a powerful tool to visualize relationships. Many infographics take a numerical focus, whereas SmartArt is more about ideas and how they connect with each other.

For more on using SmartArt, check out our post and screencast showing you exactly how to get started!

22. Turn to Videos to Add Interest

As you can already see, plain text is no way to inspire audiences to take action in 2023. It's essential to use other mediums, like photos, charts, infographics, and more.

One of these is video, and it's a category all its own. Have unique topics for presentation use? Bring them to life with video.

Imagine for a moment that you want viewers to hear from an expert on a given topic. Maybe they're unavailable to attend the presentation, or present live remotely. Here's your easy fix. Pre-record their narration and add it right to your slides.

Or perhaps you want to show off a scene that photos alone can't capture. Add a video to your slides. It instantly boosts audience interest - and it might give you a little break while they watch!

Your favorite presentation apps often include easy-to-use video features. In fact, you can add YouTube videos right to PowerPoint slides.

In-slide video is becoming increasingly popular, and it's a great way to add a bit of flair to your next slide deck for 2023. Learn more below:

23. Align Objects

Design for persuasion, not distraction. Organize. Use visuals. All those are big creative presentation ideas we've already explored. But they don't tell the full story.

Let's build a slide in the Neo PowerPoint Template to show you what I mean.

See the slide below? It features a cool infographic and bold text blocks.

It's also a mess. Nothing is aligned, and content is thrown all around the slide. Any self-respecting viewer will take a single look and recognize sloppy work when they see it. All it takes is a few clicks to totally transform the layout.

Alignment means what it says: pieces of content on the slide are neatly arranged relative to:

1. the borders of the slide and

2. other content.

As you can see here, changing this layout makes the very same slide instantly appear neat and clean. The audience will now focus on the content, not your messy style.

24. Create Quizzes

Quizzes can liven up a presentation and help engage your audience by adding a game like element. Many viewers will enjoy interacting with the quiz. But don't forget to make it fun.

A creative PowerPoint presentation idea is to create little quizzes throughout your presentation if it's long. If your presentation isn't long, you can create a quiz at the end of your presentation.

Asking questions ensures that people listen to your presentation. If you're offering a prize to the quiz winner, tell the audience about the quiz and prize at the beginning of your presentation.

25. Pay Attention to Body Language

Body language is essential when giving your creative presentation. If you're hiding behind a stand, then you look nervous.

But if you walk around on stage and engage the audience, you'll look confident and knowledgeable. Learn more about body language in this tutorial:

26. Address Audience Questions

If your presentation topic is complicated, then let the audience to ask questions anonymously. This makes the audience feel heard and allows you to make sure they understand the topic.

Plus, letting the audience to anonymously ask questions takes the pressure off the individual audience member.

27. Turn to Props

A creative presentation idea is to use props. This works well if you aren't presenting to a large audience.

Props can prove or reinforce a point. They'll make the presentation more interesting for your audience.

Besides, people are naturally more visual. So, using props allows them to visualize what you're discussing.

If your presentation audience is large, then it might be hard to do a quiz effectively.

If you use Twitter hashtags, you can read audience opinions to questions on Twitter. Just make sure you create a unique hashtag for your event.

29. Close Strong!

So, you've delivered an amazing presentation and shared stunning slides along the way. Now it's time to wrap up with a strong finish.

No matter how good your slide deck, it's absolutely key to recap and summarize at the end. After all, that's one of the best ways to ensure retention and action.

There are a few things to keep in mind. Remember how you should organize your presentation into three clear points? It's time to revisit those.

Highlight key points, touching on each one and briefly recapping how it fits into the message. This locks your message into memory. As you can see in this slide from our MILD PowerPoint Template, a single slide will do the trick.

These interesting presentation topics for work truly drove the entire slide deck. Give them the attention they deserve.

The other big element of a strong close is the call to action. Chances are, you're sharing slides to get an audience reaction. If it's simply to educate them, your three clear points will suffice. But if you're, say, fundraising or recruiting, the close is where you ask the audience to do something.

The call to action follows all the normal rules you now know well. Make it clear, bold, and concise. Make your intentions known and make your pitch inspirational. Like any good cause, people need to believe in you and your message.

We began by talking about presentation topics and their goals. Whenever you present, you're trying to inform and/or persuade your audience.

Either way, you want them to take your message home with them to be remembered, considered, and acted upon.

Think of your favorite speeches, or the best presentations you've ever seen. Chances are, you remember a few key details be they quotes or memorable visuals.

In other words, no audience can be expected to remember everything. And if you expect them to take detailed notes, you'll find them falling more and more behind you.

Your solution is simple: share your slides after the presentation is over. This is now easier than ever.

You can upload slides to YouTube or share them in PDF format. It's digital, easy to access, and saves a few trees, too!

The Best Source for Simple PowerPoint Templates

Envato Elements is a subscription service where you can find top-notch premium presentation templates. To become a subscriber, pay a flat low monthly fee. Once you've subscribed, you get unlimited access to presentation templates, audio, stock images, and much more.

Discover how to create with Envato Elements.

Envato Elements is an excellent value if you need presentation templates or other digital assets often.

How to Come Up With Interesting PowerPoint Presentation Ideas (With Creative Examples)

Presentations have a place in nearly every environment. In this section, I'll share three of my favorite template options that give you fun PowerPoint presentation ideas. You'll see that there are templates for practically every purpose that you can use to launch your next presentation.

1. Educational and Scientific Topics

In the educational world, teachers and students alike put their presentation topics in PowerPoint presentations. When you're cramming for a presentation, you need creative presentation topics to be successful.

Check out these two articles with PowerPoint ideas for educational and scientific PPT presentation ideas:

2. Pitch Decks

Next, maybe you've heard of a pitch deck. This is a specific type of presentation that startups and founders use to launch a new company or business.

Your potential investors have likely already seen every idea under the sun. So, it helps to use creative presentation topics to frame your company differently. Try these templates show you how to present an idea for a new company:

3. Marketing Presentation Topics

Another popular arena for presenting creative presentation topics is in marketing PowerPoints. No matter what you're marketing, you can use these two resources to put together creative presentations with a solid approach:

For every presentation you build, using a template is one of the best ways to get creative presentation ideas. You'll find pre-built slides that spark the writing process.

How to Create Unique Topics For a Presentation

Still not inspired? It's possible to use techniques to generate interesting presentation topics for work.

Here are three tips that I use to generate presentation topics:

1. Start with brainstorming. At first, you don't need to create structured ideas. A piece of paper and a pen away from your daily distractions can help you generate creative presentation topics. I typically start with a freeform mind map, connecting ideas that I want to share with my audience.Naturally, connections between these creative presentation ideas will form and the story will develop naturally.

2. Draw on personal experience. Not every presentation is personal in nature. But connecting the topic to your personal experience is a powerful storytelling tool. Think about how your personal story connects to the topic to generate creative presentation ideas.

3. Take an unconventional view. Even if it isn't your personal view, thought-provoking presentations sometimes take unconventional views. You don't have to take a controversial topic to take an unconventional view. Instead, take a commonly accepted belief and challenge it to get creative.

Dig deep and you might be surprised how many creative presentation topics you might be able to generate. Creative presentation topics are easier to generate when you use this three-step approach.

How to Quickly Customize Creative Presentations That Inspire (In 2023)

Premium templates are one of the best creative ways to present a project. They're quick and easy to use and deliver inspiring results. Let's learn how to customize a slide deck to bring presentation topics to life.

Want to follow along? Start crafting creative ways to present a project with the help of Momentum from Envato Elements.

Let's get started:

1. Choose Slides to Work With

As you think about unique topics for presentation designs, it pays to consider your goal. That means choosing only the slides that work best for your idea. In PowerPoint, find the View tab, then click on Slide Sorter.

Use View > Slide Sorter to select the slides to use in your project.

Here, you can click on slides and drag them around to change up the sequence. Or you can hold down Shift on your keyboard and select those that you don't want to use. Then, press Delete. Once you're finished, click Normal on the View tab to start editing.

2. Add Your Text

Adding your own text is the best place to start. Slide decks like this include an array of text placeholders. All you've got to do is "fill in the blanks" - replacing the existing text with words of your own.

Begin by highlighting any text you see on a slide. Then, start typing. Repeat throughout the slide deck as needed.

3. Customize Fonts

You might not think of text when you imagine creative, inspiring presentation topics. But it's really one of the best ways to stand out! Any font can be changed, resized, or customized with things like bolds and underlines, along with different colors.

Use the Fonts section to select a new color for your text.

To do that, select some text on the slide. Then, on the Home tab, find the Fonts group just left of center. You'll see an array of buttons for every text effect and font change imaginable. Click on each to explore and apply.

4. Show Off Your Photos

Of all the creative ways to present a project, adding images is at the top of the list. And custom PPT themes like this make it easy. Many slides include pre-built image placeholders.

To use one, simply browse to an image file on your computer. Then, drag it over the placeholder, and drop it into place. That's all it takes. PowerPoint imports the image and adds it to your slide. What's more: it's scaled to fit perfectly.

5. Change Shape Colors

Most templates are going to have a default color palette. They look great, but you don't have to stick to them on every slide. In fact, changing a shape color is a creative way to add contrast.

Click on a shape, then choose a new color from the Shape Fill dropdown.

Click on a shape, then choose Shape Format on the menu. On the left side, click Shape Fill. You'll see a color chooser drop-down, from which you can apply any custom color that you want.

5 Top Creative PowerPoint Presentation Template Designs for 2023

Want to bring your presentation topics to life? Turn to these five templates that are trending on Envato Elements. They're the best out there for creative presentations today:

Need a winning way to explore unique topics for presentation decks? Rotario is ready for you. With a retro color theme and minimalist style, it's one of the best ways to share your favorite content. In total, there are 35 slides included.

Inspire your audience with this powerful presentation deck for PPT. Over 70 unique slides feature every type of layout conceivable. Light and dark versions help you choose a color palette that's right every time. Plus, you'll benefit from included vector icons and many aspect ratios. It's versatile, flexible, and easy to use.

For business presentation topics, you can still be creative and inspire your audience. In fact, inspiration may lead to funding, support for your projects, and more. Let Lakewood do the talking for you, in elegant and readable style. It includes a full set of infographics and diagrams to help bring data to life.

With unmatched style and funky graphics, Halogue is a top creative choice for 2023. Over 40 slides center around master layouts, making bulk edits a breeze. A unique custom icon pack lets you bring new life to every slide. In fact, each design element is totally customizable. This gives you the ultimate creative control.

Think all the creative ways to present a project involve bright, flashy slides? Think again. Reddo proves the opposite, delivering a sleek and beautiful slide deck for your next project. You'll find 120 layouts inside, some featuring modern infographics, Excel-based charts, and more. It's a fashionable way to make that great first impression.

Learn More About Presentations

Want to give the best presentation? Read these articles to learn more:

More Creative PowerPoint Templates

If you're still looking for premium templates, check these articles out:

Download Our Free PDF eBook on Making Great Presentations

Want even more skills to make great presentations? Download our free eBook: The Complete Guide to Making Great Presentations, which comes with a subscription to the Tuts+ Business Newsletter.

This 30-page PDF guide with included checklist will help you with the complete presentation process. Learn how to write your presentation, design it like a pro, and quickly prepare it to present powerfully.

Make Your Next Presentation Memorable!

Simply presenting the facts makes for a baseline presentation. To impress, convince, and convert your audience with your presentation you'll need to build some structure and excitement into your talk both verbally and visually.

Take advantage of these creative ideas for making your presentation better.

For even more ideas on how to improve your presentation, check out this article featuring presentation tips or browse through our featured presentation material:

How do you structure and design your presentations? And what will you do differently in your next presentation given these unique presentation ideas?

Use these creative presentation ideas now. Download a template. And start your next great presentation today!

Editorial Note: This tutorial was originally published in September of 2016. It's been updated to include new information-with special help from Andrew Childress and

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Creative Presentation Ideas to Inspire Audiences to Act +Video | Envato Tuts+

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As a business owner you'll have to give presentations about your work-awesome, brilliant, and intriguing presentations. You need creative presentation ideas.

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Picture the absolute worst student experience you've had as a learner, when you were totally disengaged in a particular class. What impeded your learning? Why didn't the course hold your attention? Was the content personally meaningful to you? Did the instructor seem to care about you or your interests at all?

Students form judgments about their courses and their instructors within the opening moments of a class. When teachers fail to hook students' attention up front, engagement remains a struggle for the rest of the semester.

To better approach engagement in my courses at Bryant University-whether on the first day or any day of the semester-I start with empathy. Think about what the course is going to be like for your students. And begin getting to know them-even before they enter your classroom.

Here are seven strategies to help you connect and engage with students in every class you teach, whether that's in person, online, or in hybrid classrooms.

1. Really Get to Know Your Students

Research shows that when you build relationships with students by getting to know them and allowing them to know you, they will learn more. Through knowledge of their backgrounds and interests, you'll be better equipped to connect class content to their lives. You'll enjoy teaching more as well. Here are a few ways I get to know my students.

Index cards. On the first day of class, I have students list on an index card where they're from, their interests, their area of study, past internships, favorite hobbies, professional aspirations, and anything else they would like me to know about them. Of course, this helps me get to know each student. But the primary objective is to use some of that knowledge in the classroom-by incorporating their interests into our discussions and activities. You might think, why index cards? Seems pretty old school. However, I keep the cards in little file boxes forever. When students graduate and return years later to visit or write to ask for a recommendation, it helps jog my memory and recall my personal connection to them.

Google Forms. The same information can be gathered through a Google Forms document. One advantage of this approach is the ability to send the document to students and receive responses prior to our first session.

VoiceThread. This app lets you create a video that others can comment on through text, audio, or video. I create and upload a five-minute introduction of myself for my students. I ask them to comment on my video by posting their own introductory video. They can see their peers' videos as well, so not only am I learning about the students, but they're also learning about one another before the first day of class.

"To me, engagement is also about showing the students you care."

Informal group meetings. In the first few weeks of class, I post times when students and I can get together outside of my office hours. These meetings are in groups of six to eight students and are purely voluntary. We meet for 45 minutes, and the rule of these meetings is we don't discuss the class. When we were able to get together in person, we would meet for coffee or lunches; however, adapting this for online modes since the pandemic started has been easy. It's a great way to get to know students' interests and career or grad school plans-topics about them. And while we don't talk about our particular course, I do like to ask general questions about what they feel makes a great class and about their favorite teaching techniques and learning methods.

2. Establish Expectations for Participation

Students are concerned about what kind of impression they'll have on their teachers, and often this uncertainty makes them hesitant to speak up in class. This self-censoring is an obstacle to collective learning and the exchange of ideas. To combat this, create a climate of psychological safety within your classroom where students know that it's OK to speak up. And make participation a requirement from the start. Here are some ways to encourage participation in your classes:

Call on students-but pay attention when extra support is needed. Collective learning can't happen if the same three people are responding all the time. To get broad participation, I cold call students. They all know ahead of time that I may call on them at any time. For students who are particularly reticent or anxious about that possibility, I might do a warm call and let them know ahead of time so they have some warning. I also emphasize that in my class there's no downside to wrong answers. If I call on you and you're stuck, I'll ask your classmates to come to your aid. "Help them out" is a phrase I use all the time, and students appreciate it. So there's no downside to wrong answers unless you clearly didn't do the work before class.

Have students grade each others' in-class involvement. My students are graded on their thoughtful contributions to class, but not by me. Peer grading certainly motivates students to participate. But it also provides me an incredibly rich record of how students contributed to their peers' learning throughout the course.

Ban the podium when teaching in person. Many teachers spend entire class sessions hiding behind their podiums, clinging to them for dear life. The podium becomes a physical and a psychological barrier. Instead, model psychological safety by getting away from it. Certainly, there are limitations when teaching online, but in person we should be out among the students where we can interact with them. In my classroom, there is no front or back-I teach from the middle.

3. Answer the "So What?" in Everything You Do-and Say

Engagement also happens when the work we give students is personally meaningful. Why does what we're talking about matter? What are the implications for students' lives? Based on your knowledge of the students, how does the topic relate to their next classes, to their careers, to whatever they're passionate about outside the classroom?

Articulating the "so what?" before you hand out an assignment-and including compelling examples that reinforce the subject's relevance-motivates students to do the work well, not just for the grade. For instance, I asked students recently to consider the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. I posed the question, "Why didn't the world take the threat more seriously in late 2019 and early 2020?" We had a lively discussion. Students told stories of how they felt when reading news about the virus as the first cases began to emerge. Then, I assigned our multimedia case study about the Columbia space shuttle accident. I explained that the case would shed light on the crucial question of why humans downplay ambiguous or weak signals of an emerging threat. By relating the case to the headlines of today and their personal experience with the pandemic, I motivated the students to immerse themselves in the Columbia multimedia material.

4. Create Meaningful Prework

Students will also come to class more prepared to contribute if you set the stage with effective prework activities. Reading assignments alone aren't sufficient, and grades are not enough to motivate. We have to broaden our perspective and think creatively about what prework is. The tasks we give students should answer the "so what?" question and require them to grapple with the material in some way, so they're not blank slates when they get to class. It's all about preparing them to engage. I've found the following tasks to be more effective than assigned readings:

Watch a ShowMe tutorial. This is an Apple app, though there are similar apps for other platforms. ShowMe turns your tablet into a whiteboard so that you can draw and bring in different colors and images as you record your voice. It doesn't have to be fancy. The key is making a short video that breaks down a concept and readies students to apply that information. We need to get away from posting lengthy lecture videos and expecting students to sit through them.

"Articulating the 'so what?' before you hand out an assignment-and including compelling examples that reinforce the subject's relevance-motivates students to do the work well, not just for the grade."

Listen to an Audacity podcast. With this free software, you can record short audio podcasts that students can listen to on the go. My podcasts include a few simple bullet points and reviews of key topics.

Conduct interviews. Give students something active to do with the material. Sometimes the most effective prework is having them go out and be anthropologists, to observe or interview people about the topic. It could be someone on campus, out in the community, or even in their own homes.

5. Pace Your Lessons Well

Studies show that class activities should be changed every 7 to 10 minutes in order to keep students' attention. It's also a good idea avoid long lectures, which are a very passive classroom activity, and instead choose activities that involve students. Verbal discussions and Q&As offer some interaction and a break from lecturing, but that doesn't quite equal engagement. Here are a few ways to break up lectures by shifting the topic or mode of instruction:

Short videos. Interject a related video clip and get students to respond to it. Obviously, YouTube is a great source for this.

Polling apps. Every so often, poll the class to get students' quick responses to a particular question or topic. With several polling apps available, you can choose one that's best suited to your classroom setup. Poll Everywhere lets students vote or respond using their smartphones. For online classes, Zoom has its own polling software.

Group work and sharing. Engage students in teamwork. Have them complete a task in teams, then share what they've done with the rest of the class. This can be done in breakout groups when online, but if in person, grouping teams together and getting students up to write things on the board also provides them a chance to move around during the class session.

6. Make Learning Experiences Active and Varied

Pacing your class activities goes hand in hand with incorporating multiple approaches to learning. At one time, I taught almost strictly by the case method. While case studies require much more active learning than a lecture does, they quickly become redundant if used every day. Pedagogical variety, with an emphasis on active learning, is important within individual class sessions and throughout the semester.

Some of the varied learning experiences I've used include working in teams to solve puzzles; running simulations, such as a two-hour virtual climb of Mount Everest; and playing the competitive Ball Point game as an example of iterative problem-solving. Our faculty at Bryant University have partnered with corporations, nonprofits, and public sector agencies to sponsor hands-on projects in which students develop solutions for organizations. In all of these examples, students are engaged in active and collaborative learning.

7. Show Students That You Care

Part of maintaining the rapport and engagement you've fostered from day one is celebrating student successes-even those beyond your classroom. I follow campus news and events and I connect with students on LinkedIn. When I read about their achievements, such as landing a new job or internship, I'll send a little note of congratulations. And they are always grateful for it. To me, engagement is also about showing the students you care.

An Engaged Student Is an Inspired One

Many of us have heard the saying, "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." In my teaching, I aim to do much more than transmit a small body of knowledge over the course of a semester. For me, engaging students means sparking their intellectual curiosity, encouraging them to ask thought-provoking questions, and motivating them to tackle challenging problems. If we engage them, we can inspire them to excel in our classrooms and become productive lifelong learners.

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Engaging Students on the First Day and Every Day

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Seven strategies to help you connect and engage with students in every class you teach, whether in person, online, or in hybrid classrooms.

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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When student engagement is going downhill, we often find ourselves reaching for the prop box.

We pull out random videos, time-sucking resources, overly complex activities... anything to get and keep attention. But even these can't compete with our students' pen tricks, doodling, and discussions of what happened at recess. And there's a simple reason why:

Our students aren't engaged by things. They're engaged by us. That's why the best (and easiest) ways to increase student engagement come from you.

We compiled 20 essential strategies that generate lasting engagement, without the flashy props and hours of post-school prep.

Let the countdown begin!

20. Connect learning to the real world

We've all heard it before: "When am I ever going to use this?" Answer this question and you'll engage students with content that they know is relevant to life beyond school. Use anecdotes, case studies, and real-life examples from outside the classroom to root your teaching in "the real world".

19. Engage with your students' interests

Find out what already engages your students and build it into the learning process.

Using mathematics as an example, you could have students chart their performance in a video game over the week. You might even get your budding social media influencers to calculate a projected number of Instagram followers.

Learning what excites your students does more than just engage them. You'll build strong relationships and rapport, too.

18. Fill "dead time"

"Dead time" is any point in a lesson where students are left without something to do. You might be handing out a worksheet, getting a presentation set up, or waiting interminably for a YouTube video to load. These are brief windows that leave just enough time for students to tune out, after which time it can be very difficult to get them back.

Fill these blank spaces with low-order activities to hold students' attention. These should be quick, easy, and require minimal follow-up. For example:

Think Pair Share: students reflect on something, discuss with a partner, and then share with the rest of the class once everyone is ready

Quickwrite: write down three questions or points that have been raised by the lesson so far

What I know already: if you're just about to dive into new content, ask students to identify three things they already know about the subject and jot them down as bullet points.

17. Use group work and collaboration

Collaborating with small groups gives students a welcome break from solo bookwork. They'll benefit from each other's perspectives and the ability to express their ideas.

Use your judgment and knowledge of who works well together when organizing group work. Engineering the groups might avoid troublesome partnerships, while allowing students to work with friends might generate the buzz you need for more productive activity.

16. Encourage students to present and share work regularly

Giving students a regular opportunity to share their thoughts and demonstrate learning in front of their peers drives engagement in two ways:

it makes students accountable

it lets them hear from someone other than their teacher.

If your students quiver in fear at the thought of speaking in front of the class, combine presentations with group work. A few ideas:

Have students present in groups after a group task.

Let students share each other's work within smaller groups before asking them to choose one piece to share with the rest of the class.

Let students read or present their work while sitting down. It avoids the pressure of having to "stand and deliver".

Ask for one contribution from each group after discussion, with each group nominating a "spokesperson".

Above all else, make presenting and sharing a regular part of class activity. Your class will become an equitable and engaging space that echoes with the voice of every student, not just your own!

15. Give your students a say

If you don't know how to engage your students, let them tell you! Give your students a say in classroom activity by:

providing a choice of different activities (e.g. group work or solo)

seeking student input for assessment design (e.g. students can choose a final product, provided it meets the criteria)

periodic check-ins to monitor the pace of delivery (e.g. "do we need to go over this a bit more slowly or are we feeling pretty confident?").

Giving students a choice also fosters their sense of ownership over their learning. They'll move from passive consumers to active learners with a stake in classroom activity.

14. Use mixed media

Present learning content in a variety of mediums, including video, audio, and digital resources. Using such tech-rich resources is engaging for two reasons. It's a welcome change from the stacks of paper our students are usually saddled with, and it establishes a direct and relevant connection with the digital world they inhabit.

13. Get your students moving

If your students struggle to sit still for an entire lesson, get them moving. All that pent-up energy can be channelled into a learning activity that puts them on their feet. Try the following.

Have students come to the front and brainstorm together on the whiteboard.

Have students rotate through different stations around the room over the course of an activity.

Have students split into groups or arrange themselves in different areas of the room.

Take a stand: have students move to a particular area of the room to indicate their thoughts on an issue (e.g. "everyone who thinks x, move to the right side of the room; if you think y, stand on the left").

Movement works equally well to engage sluggish or weary students. A quick bit of physical activity will leave them more alert for the next phase of learning.

12. Read the room

If you're steadily losing students to doodling, off-topic chatter, and the pervasive "need to tear and ball up little pieces of paper", it's time to shake things up.

Cut the activity short if it's dragging, clarify instructions if there's confusion, or switch to a more student-centered activity for greater engagement.

Remember: it's impossible to have every student engaged 100% of the time. The next best thing we can do is to notice disengagement and respond to it quickly.

11. Scaffold tasks with checkpoints

If you dump all your instructions on students at the start of a lesson before turning them loose with an activity, confusion and disengagement will likely follow.

That's why it's important to scaffold larger tasks by breaking them into achievable steps. Each of these can be separated by brief "checkpoints" of instruction reorienting students and reminding them of what needs to be done next. They also serve as a periodic call to attention when students are liable to go off track.

10. Focus on discovery and inquiry

Sometimes the best thing you can do for engagement is to get out of your students' way.

Let them discover learning for themselves without being spoon-fed. They'll exercise critical and creative thinking, and pursue the lines of inquiry that interest them.

This doesn't mean you should retreat behind the teacher's desk. Observe your students, listen to them, and talk to them about what they're thinking. Be their guide as opposed to their instructor.

9. Ask good questions

Ask good questions of your students and you'll drive rich, engaging discussions that are open to everyone.

Good questions should be:

open-ended: to avoid "yes/no" answers

equitable: open to answers of varying depth and complexity

legitimate: asked because you want to hear students' thoughts and opinions, not because you're fishing for a correct answer.

When students answer a question, engage with their response. Even if it's incorrect or misinformed, recognize their effort and use it to refine the question further (e.g. "you're on the right track, but could we also think about...").

8. Allow for think time

It's gratifying to see hands shoot up as soon as you ask a question, but letting your students think it over has two benefits. It leads to more considered responses that drive engaging discussions, and it also makes the conversation accessible to those who don't have an instant answer.

After you ask a question, insist on a twenty-second pause and give students an opportunity to extend their standard responses further. For example, you might ask "See if you can explain how you came to your answer, too". You'll receive better answers and start to notice some new hands going up.

7. Shake things up

Predictability is safe, but it can get boring. Mix up your staple teaching strategies with new and novel activities from time to time. Talk to other teachers for ideas. In addition to engagement, you'll also be giving your students an example of what it means to take a risk and try something new.

Experimenting with some new parts of the teacher toolkit also makes it easier to differentiate your instruction. A new activity or delivery method might be the trick to engaging that student who has been a tough nut to crack all year.

6. Give brain breaks

Periodically give students a breather with brain breaks. These are short activities that allow students to stretch their legs before returning to work feeling focused. You can find a list of 20 brain breaks at Mind Bloom.

Meritopia in Mathletics is gamified learning at its best and keeps students engaged! When students earn enough points in Mathletics, they get the perfect brain break in Meritopia by discovering new lands and unlocking characters.

5. Be personable

Relationships and rapport are pillars of lasting engagement, and you can't have either without being personable. This means getting to know your students and letting them get to know you.

While enthusiasm for the learning content might ebb and flow, your smile, laughter, and conversation will engage students every time they walk through your classroom door.

4. Encourage friendly competition

Use in-class games, quizzes, or gamified learning programs to engage students with friendly competition. For example, Live Mathletics (a feature in Mathletics) allows students to test their mathematical skills by competing in 60-second quizzes against peers in their class or around the globe in real time.

"Friendly" is the keyword here. Make sure competitive activities are low stakes and put the emphasis on learning instead of winning.

3. Start lessons with introductory hooks

Engage students from the outset of your lesson with an introductory hook. This could be anything that piques interest, establishes relevance, or inspires curiosity in the subject of the lesson, for example:

a personal anecdote connected to the subject

a brain teaser or challenge question

a historical example

a multimedia source.

Keep your hooks short and segue them directly into an overview of the learning goal. It's an effective opening that engages while setting students up for the main instructional component.

2. Laugh together

Weaving humour throughout your lesson lightens the mood and makes for a more fun experience. Laugh with your students, and don't be afraid to let them laugh at you from time to time!

1. Gamify learning

Games are the most powerful source of engagement for students outside of class, and they're equally effective at driving engagement in learning. Transform activities into games by including levels of difficulty, rewards, and competitive elements. You can read more about gamifying learning here.

You don't have to invest hours in creating rules and drawing up game boards, either. Gamified learning programs can do the work for you. The learning programs in the 3P suite, for example, provide a host of student-friendly games for mathematics, literacy, and science. All you have to do is select the appropriate curriculum and grant your students access.

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20 Student Engagement Strategies for a Captivating Classroom

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Here's our list of the best student engagement strategies to help you create an engaging classroom and better connect with students.

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Effective strategies to engage students in learning

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Interactive Classroom Activities | Sheridan Center | Brown University

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Students learn through their participation in the attainment of knowledge by gathering information and processing it by solving problems and articulating what they have discovered. Each activity below provides students with opportunities to deepen their learning by applying concepts and articulatin…

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Interactive teaching is all about instructing the students 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 students to be active members of your class, thinking on their own, using their brains, resulting in long-term memory retention. Not only the students' knowledge will improve, but their interest, strength, knowledge, team spirit and freedom of expression will increase as well.

In this blog post, I will talk about the use of interactive methods for teaching, encouraging more dedication towards the lesson material. We will see some interactive teaching tools, interactive teaching ideas, and interactive teaching games.
Not only will I talk about the use of interactive methods of teaching, but I'll also give you some examples of methods used in the present classroom as well.

Ready? Let's find out some interactive classroom activities to engage your pupils!

3 Effective interactive teaching strategies to encourage speech in your classroom

First, I want to put some activities in the spotlight. The following interactive student 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 students. Give each pair of students enough time so they can reach a proper conclusion, and permit the kids to share their conclusion in their voice. This way your students 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 students 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 students within each group. Everyone should learn from each other's input and experiences. As a teacher, you could give your students some keywords to spark the conversation.

Of course, there are many other interactive teaching ideas as well. I split up the activities in 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 students 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. Need a digital exit slip template? Try this one from BookWidgets and learn more about the possibilities of an exit slip. Looking for inspiration? Check this out! You will find 60 examples of digital exit tickets.

5. Misconception check

Discover students' misconceptions. See if students can identify what is the correct answer when given a false fact. It's useful when going over a previous lesson. It encourages students 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 students 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 students work on the extra exercises and explanation in the corners, individually. As your students will all have circled different questions, you have to give each student a different and personalized order to visit the corners.

7. Ask the winner

Ask students 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 students 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 students to find a new partner and share the wisdom of the old partnership to this new partner.

9. Teacher and student

Let students brainstorm the main points of the last lesson. Then, pair up your students and assign them 2 roles. One of them is the teacher, and the other the student. The teacher's job is to sketch the main points, while the student's job is to cross off points on his list as they are mentioned and come up with 2 to 3 points that the teacher missed.

10. Wisdom from another

After an individual brainstorm or creative activity, pair students to share their results. Then, call for volunteers who found their partner's work to be interesting or exemplary. Students are often more willing to share the work of fellow students publicly than their work. Of course, you can always encourage sharing their objectives as well.

11. Forced debate

Let students debate in pairs. Students 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 colored glass once in a while.

Variation: one half of the class takes one position, the other half takes the other position. Students line up and face each other. Each student may only speak once so that all students on both sides can engage the issue.

12. Optimist/Pessimist

In pairs, students 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 students will learn some exceptional social skills.

13. Peer review writing task

To assist students 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. Students can learn a lot from each other and themselves as well! Here are 10 more creative self-assessment ideas.

Student group activities

14. Board rotation

This interactive learning strategy is even more interactive than others! Divide your class into different groups of students 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, students 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 students 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. Here you can read more about how to create them and for which topics you can use them (not only for teaching languages)!

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 students to form words from the newly learned vocabulary.

19. Who/what am I?

Tape a term or name on the back of each student. You can also tape it on their forehead. Each student walks around the room, asking "yes or no" questions to the other students 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. Take a look at this blog post with all the different bingo possibilities here. You'll be surprised about how many interactive lesson activities you can do with just one game.

Want to create a bingo game yourself? You can start for free right here:

Wrap up

That's it! Like in any list, you could add many other interactive lesson ideas. I could go on for quite a while myself. But what about you? Share your creative, interactive classroom ideas in our Facebook Group. This way, we can build out this article with many more great ideas!

One more thing... Don't forget to follow us on Twitter! 😉

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20 interactive teaching activities for in the interactive classroom

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Interactive teaching is all about instructing the students in a way they are actively involved with their learning process. There are different ways to create an involvement like this.

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Formative assessment is the piece of the teaching puzzle that allows us to quickly (and hopefully, accurately) gauge how well our students are understanding the material we've taught. From there, we make the important decisions about where our lesson will go next. Do we need to reteach, or are our students ready to progress? Do some students need additional practice? And which students need to be pushed to achieve the next level?

The best formative assessments will not only answer these questions but will also engage students in their own learning. With that in mind, here are 25 formative assessment techniques that will have your students looking forward to showing you what they know.

1. Doodle Notes

Have students doodle/draw a pic of their understanding instead of writing it. Studies have shown it has numerous beneficial effects on student learning.

2. Same Idea, New Situation

Ask your students to apply the concepts they've learned to a completely different situation. For example, students could apply the steps of the scientific method to figuring out how to beat an opposing soccer team. They observe data (the other team's plays), form theories (they always rely on two main players), test theories while collecting more data (block those players and see what happens), and draw conclusions (see if that worked).

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3. Tripwire

Tripwires are things that catch people off guard and mess them up. Ask your students to list what they believe are the three misunderstandings about the topic that are most likely to mess up a peer. By asking students to think about the key understandings from this angle, we can get an excellent view of how well they comprehend the topic.

4. Two Truths and a Lie

No longer just a get-to-know-you game or icebreaker, this well-known activity also makes a great formative assessment. Ask students to list two things that are true or accurate about the learning and one idea that sounds like it might be accurate, but isn't. You'll be able to assess each student's understanding when they turn in their responses, and going over them with your class the following day makes an excellent review activity.

5. Popsicle Sticks

Formative assessment doesn't need to be complicated or time-consuming to be meaningful and engaging. Have each student put their name on a popsicle stick in a jar or box on your desk. Let them know you'll be pulling popsicle sticks to see who will be answering questions about the lesson. Knowing their name could be pulled makes students who might let peers do the talking focus on the learning. It dispels notions of favoritism and identifies learning gaps. And, most importantly, provides real-time feedback teachers can use in their lesson planning.

6. Explain it to a Famous Person

Ask the student to explain the day's lesson to someone famous in an analogy that would make sense to that person. For example, the Revolutionary War was fought between the colonies and Great Britain. The colonies wanted to be independent and, after winning the war, renamed themselves the United States of America, just like when Prince left his record label and had to change his name to an unpronounceable symbol in order to break contractual obligations (I'm dating myself with this example, aren't I?).

7. Traffic Light

Printing on post-it notes is actually pretty simple and fun! Slap a clip-art picture of a traffic light on there and you have a perfect formative assessment tool that students can complete when time is short at the end of class.

8. 30-Second Share

Challenge students to explain what the lesson they learned was all about to a peer, a small group, or the entire class in 30 seconds. At first, you might want to start at 15-seconds and build their stamina. But by encouraging students to explain everything they can for a set and relatively short amount of time, you'll be building their confidence and public speaking skills at the same time as you get a good grasp on how much they've remembered about the lesson.

9. Venn Diagrams

An oldie but a goodie. Have your student compare the topic you just introduced to a tangential topic you taught in the past. This way, you're getting a formative assessment on how well they understand the new topic and they're getting a review of an older topic as well!

10. Poll Them

Polls are a great way to quickly assess student understanding. You can do this in person, or you can use apps like Poll Everywhere, Socrative, or Mentimeter to make free polls students can answer using their phones or computers.

11. S.O.S. Summaries

A great, quick formative assessment idea that can be used at any point throughout a lesson is the S.O.S. summary. The teacher presents the students with a statement (S). Then, asks the students to give their opinion (O) about the statement. Finally, the students are asked to support (S) their opinion with evidence from the lesson. For example, a teacher might say to the students, "Complete an S.O.S. on this statement: The Industrial Revolution produced only positive effects on society."

S.O.S. can be used at the start of a lesson to assess prior knowledge or at the end of a unit or lesson to determine if students' opinions have changed or if their support has grown stronger with the new information they've learned.

12. FOUR-Corners

This activity can be used with questions or opinions. Before asking the question/making the statement, establish each corner of the room as a different potential opinion or answer. After giving the prompt, each student goes to the corner that best represents their answer. Based on classroom discussion, students can then move from corner to corner, adjusting their answer or opinion.

13. Jigsaw Learning

Perfect when teaching complicated subjects or topics with many different parts. In this formative assessment, teachers break a large body of information into smaller sections. Each section is then assigned to a different small group. That small group is in charge of learning about their section and becoming the class experts. Then, one by one, each section teaches the others about their part of the whole. As the teacher listens to each section being taught, they can use the lesson as a method of formative assessment.

14. Anonymous Pop-Quiz

All the formative assessment power of a pop-quiz with none of the unnecessary pressure or embarrassment. To use this tool, simply quiz your students on the essential information you want to ensure they understand. Instruct each student NOT to put their name on their paper.

Once the assessment is complete, redistribute the quizzes in a way that ensures no one knows whose quiz they have in front of them. Have the students correct the quizzes and share out which answers most students got wrong and which answers everyone seemed to understand the most. You'll know right away how well the class as a whole understands the topic without embarrassing any students individually.

15. One-Minute Write-Up

At the end of a lesson, give students one minute to write as much as they can about what they learned through the lesson or unit. If needed, provide some guiding questions to get them started.

What was the most important learning from today, and why?

Did anything surprise you? If so, what?

What was the most confusing part of the lesson, and why?

What is something that will likely appear on a test or quiz, and why?

Challenge them to write as much as they can and to write for all of the 60-seconds. To make it a bit more engaging, consider letting students do this with a partner.

Students love to watch videos and, because of this, we end up showing a lot of short video clips. While they're engaging, it's often tough to determine if our students are getting the information we hoped they would get out of watching them. EdPuzzle solves this problem. The free app allows you to link to a video and add questions that stop the video at times you determine. So you can show your students the video of the Dust Bowl, but stop at various points to ask them what they think life might have been like during this time. You can ask them to make comparisons between what they watch and the characters they're reading about in class. All of this information is then available for you to view and use for formative assessment.

17. Historical Post Cards

Ask students to take on the role of one historical figure you've been learning about in class. Have them write a postcard/email/tweet (as long as it's short) to another historical figure discussing and describing a political event.

18. 3x Summaries

Have students write a 75-100 word summary of a lesson independently. Then, in pairs, have them rewrite it using only 35-50 words. Finally, have them work with a small group to rewrite it one last time. This time, they may use only 10-15 words. Discuss what different groups decided was the most essential information and why they chose to omit certain information. The conversation about what they left out is just as useful as seeing what they left in.

19. Roses and Thorns

Ask students to write or share out two things they really liked/understood about a topic (the roses) and something they didn't like/didn't understand (the thorn).

20. Thumbs Up, Down, or in the Middle

Sometimes things stick around because they just work. Asking students to give you a thumbs up if they understand, thumbs down if they don't, or thumbs somewhere in the middle if they are so-so about it, is probably one of the fastest formative assessments around. It's also very easy to keep track of if you're the teacher standing in the front of the room. Just make sure that you follow up with the thumbs down or thumbs in the middle folks to help them with any confusion.

21. Word Clouds

Ask your students to provide you with the three most essential words or ideas from a lesson and plug them into a word cloud generator. You'll quickly have an excellent formative assessment that shows you what they thought was most worthy of remembering. If it doesn't line up with what you think was most important, you know what you need to reteach.

22. Curation

Ask students to gather a bunch of examples that correctly demonstrate the concept you taught. So if you're studying rhetorical strategies, have students send you screenshots of ads that demonstrate them. Not only will you be able to tell immediately who understood the lesson and who didn't, but you'll also have a bunch of great examples and non-examples ready to go for those students who need additional practice.

23. Dry Erase Boards

Another time-tested method of formative assessment that teachers often overlook is individual dry erase boards. They really are an awesome and fast way to see where each student's level of understanding is at any given point.

24. Think-Pair-Shares

Like so many teacher tools, this one can get stale if overused. But, if used as a method to encourage all students to find their voice and share their learning, it's perfect for formative assessment. To ensure its effectiveness, ask a question of the class. Have every student write down their own answer. Pair students up with a classmate and give them time to share and discuss their answers. After pairs have had a chance to discuss, have them share out with a larger group or the class as a whole. Circulate, listening to groups who have students you know might be more likely to struggle with the current topic. Collect the papers for extra accountability.

25. Self-Directed

This one can intimidate some students at first, but it can be incredibly powerful to let students themselves choose how they want to demonstrate learning. You can support students by giving them managed choice, but let them decide if they want to show you they understood the essential parts of your lesson by drawing a picture, writing a paragraph, creating a pop quiz, or even writing song lyrics. This shows you're putting them in charge of their own learning.

What's your go-to method of formative assessment? Tell us in the comments.

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25 Formative Assessment Options Your Students Will Actually Enjoy

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Formative assessment is a vital tool in lesson planning and teaching. Check out this list of ways to get students to show you what they know.

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Formative assessment-discovering what students know while they're still in the process of learning it-can be tricky. Designing just the right assessment can feel high stakes-for teachers, not students-because we're using it to figure out what comes next. Are we ready to move on? Do our students need a different path into the concepts? Or, more likely, which students are ready to move on and which need a different path?

When it comes to figuring out what our students really know, we have to look at more than one kind of information. A single data point-no matter how well designed the quiz, presentation, or problem behind it-isn't enough information to help us plan the next step in our instruction.

Add to that the fact that different learning tasks are best measured in different ways, and we can see why we need a variety of formative assessment tools we can deploy quickly, seamlessly, and in a low-stakes way-all while not creating an unmanageable workload. That's why it's important to keep it simple: Formative assessments generally just need to be checked, not graded, as the point is to get a basic read on the progress of individuals, or the class as a whole.

7 Approaches to Formative Assessment

1. Entry and exit slips: Those marginal minutes at the beginning and end of class can provide some great opportunities to find out what kids remember. Start the class off with a quick question about the previous day's work while students are getting settled-you can ask differentiated questions written out on chart paper or projected on the board, for example.

A quick way to see the big picture if you use paper exit tickets is to sort the papers into three piles: Students got the point; they sort of got it; and they didn't get it. The size of the stacks is your clue about what to do next.

No matter the tool, the key to keeping students engaged in the process of just-walked-in or almost-out-the-door formative assessment is the questions. Ask students to write for one minute on the most meaningful thing they learned. You can try prompts like:

What are three things you learned, two things you're still curious about, and one thing you don't understand?

How would you have done things differently today, if you had the choice?

What I found interesting about this work was...

Right now I'm feeling...

Today was hard because...

Or skip the words completely and have students draw or circle emojis to represent their assessment of their understanding.

2. Low-stakes quizzes and polls: If you want to find out whether your students really know as much as you think they know, polls and quizzes created with Socrative or Quizlet or in-class games and tools like Quizalize, Kahoot, FlipQuiz, Gimkit, Plickers, and Flippity can help you get a better sense of how much they really understand. (Grading quizzes but assigning low point values is a great way to make sure students really try: The quizzes matter, but an individual low score can't kill a student's grade.) Kids in many classes are always logged in to these tools, so formative assessments can be done very quickly. Teachers can see each kid's response, and determine both individually and in aggregate how students are doing.

Because you can design the questions yourself, you determine the level of complexity. Ask questions at the bottom of Bloom's taxonomy and you'll get insight into what facts, vocabulary terms, or processes kids remember. Ask more complicated questions ("What advice do you think Katniss Everdeen would offer Scout Finch if the two of them were talking at the end of chapter 3?"), and you'll get more sophisticated insights.

3. Dipsticks: So-called alternative formative assessments are meant to be as easy and quick as checking the oil in your car, so they're sometimes referred to as dipsticks. These can be things like asking students to:

write a letter explaining a key idea to a friend,

draw a sketch to visually represent new knowledge, or

do a think, pair, share exercise with a partner.

Your own observations of students at work in class can provide valuable data as well, but they can be tricky to keep track of. Taking quick notes on a tablet or smartphone, or using a copy of your roster, is one approach. A focused observation form is more formal and can help you narrow your note-taking focus as you watch students work.

4. Interview assessments: If you want to dig a little deeper into students' understanding of content, try discussion-based assessment methods. Casual chats with students in the classroom can help them feel at ease even as you get a sense of what they know, and you may find that five-minute interview assessments work really well. Five minutes per student would take quite a bit of time, but you don't have to talk to every student about every project or lesson.

You can also shift some of this work to students using a peer-feedback process called TAG feedback (Tell your peer something they did well, Ask a thoughtful question, Give a positive suggestion). When you have students share the feedback they have for a peer, you gain insight into both students' learning.

For more introverted students-or for more private assessments-use Flipgrid, Explain Everything, or Seesaw to have students record their answers to prompts and demonstrate what they can do.

5. Methods that incorporate art: Consider using visual art or photography or videography as an assessment tool. Whether students draw, create a collage, or sculpt, you may find that the assessment helps them synthesize their learning. Or think beyond the visual and have kids act out their understanding of the content. They can create a dance to model cell mitosis or act out stories like Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" to explore the subtext.

6. Misconceptions and errors: Sometimes it's helpful to see if students understand why something is incorrect or why a concept is hard. Ask students to explain the " muddiest point" in the lesson-the place where things got confusing or particularly difficult or where they still lack clarity. Or do a misconception check: Present students with a common misunderstanding and ask them to apply previous knowledge to correct the mistake, or ask them to decide if a statement contains any mistakes at all, and then discuss their answers.

You can use sticky notes to get a quick insight into what areas your kids think they need to work on. Ask them to pick their own trouble spot from three or four areas where you think the class as a whole needs work, and write those areas in separate columns on a whiteboard. Have you students answer on a sticky note and then put the note in the correct column-you can see the results at a glance.

Several self-assessments let the teacher see what every kid thinks very quickly. For example, you can use colored stacking cups that allow kids to flag that they're all set (green cup), working through some confusion (yellow), or really confused and in need of help (red).

Similar strategies involve using participation cards for discussions (each student has three cards-"I agree," "I disagree," and "I don't know how to respond") and thumbs-up responses (instead of raising a hand, students hold a fist at their belly and put their thumb up when they're ready to contribute). Students can instead use six hand gestures to silently signal that they agree, disagree, have something to add, and more. All of these strategies give teachers an unobtrusive way to see what students are thinking.

No matter which tools you select, make time to do your own reflection to ensure that you're only assessing the content and not getting lost in the assessment fog. If a tool is too complicated, is not reliable or accessible, or takes up a disproportionate amount of time, it's OK to put it aside and try something different.

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7 Smart, Fast Ways to Do Formative Assessment

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Within these methods you'll find close to 40 tools and tricks for finding out what your students know while they're still learning.

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A few years ago, I came across "10 assessments you can perform in 90 seconds" by TeachThought and really enjoyed the formative assessment strategies they outlined. Using formative assessment strategies in class during instruction-or "simple assessments," as they call them-is easy and provides the instant feedback teachers need to identify which learners need more help and adjust their instruction and lesson plans accordingly. Visit the blog above to get more detail on the following techniques:

1. New Clothes

2. Dos and Don'ts

3. Three Common Misunderstandings

4. Yes/No Chart

5. Three Questions

6. Explain What Matters

7. Big Picture

8. Venn Diagram

9. Draw It

10. Self-Directed Response

Combining these 10 with 10 others we've blogged about in the past gives teachers 20 great formative assessment strategies for checking on student learning. Be sure to click through to learn more about these formative assessment strategies.

Want more? Here are seven more strategies you can use to elicit evidence of student learning.

1. Entrance Tickets. We've blogged about and explained the Exit Ticket, so why not have an Entrance Ticket? Here, the teacher asks a question at the start of a lesson, and students write their responses on index cards or strips of paper. Answers are used to assess initial understanding of something to be discussed in that day's lesson or as a short summary of understanding of the previous day's lesson. The teacher designs the lesson around the fact that information on student learning will be coming in at the start of the lesson and can be used to improve the teaching and learning in that lesson. Be sure to write the question so it is easily interpreted and analyzed, allows time for you and/or the students to analyze the responses, and leaves space for you to adjust the lesson, if needed.

2. Keep the Question Going. With this formative assessment strategy, you'll ask one student a question and then ask another student if that answer seems reasonable or correct. Then, ask a third student for an explanation of why there is an agreement or not. This helps keep all the students engaged because they must be prepared to either agree or disagree with the answers given and provide explanations.

3. 30-Second Share. With this strategy, students take a turn to report something learned in a lesson for up to 30 seconds each. Connections to the learning targets or success criteria are what you'll be looking for in the language used by the student. Make this a routine at the end of a lesson so all students have the opportunity to participate, share insights, and clarify what was learned.

4. Parking Lot. This is an underused strategy for students and one that can surface questions before learning, as well as during and after. This tool also offers an anonymous place for questions that may be directly related to the content or tangential to the current topic and provide insight into student thinking. Simply save a spot on your whiteboard to write down ideas or questions that aren't completely relevant in the moment but should be revisited later.

5. One-Minute Paper. This might be considered a type of exit ticket as it is typically done near the end of the day. Ask your students, either individually or with a partner, to respond in writing to a single prompt. Typical prompts include:

Most important learning from the day and why

Most surprising concept and why

Most confusing topic and why

Something I think might appear on a test or quiz and why

3-2-1. At the end of the learning, this strategy provides students a way to summarize or even question what they just learned. Three prompts are provided for students to respond to:

3 things you didn't know before

2 things that surprised you about the topic

1 thing you want to start doing with what you've learned

Assessment Reflection. This strategy is a post-assessment reflection completed individually first and then shared in a small group. After an assessment, the teacher provides a list of questions so learners can reflect on their assessment experience. During group discussion, ideas are collected as new information to support students to better prepare for and engage in future assessments. Consider the following or similar questions. You might also use strategies such as Plus, Minus, Interesting, or Plus/Delta.

How engaged were you with this assessment? Why?

What did you feel most confident about? Why?

What did you do that led to your success or confidence?

What was the most difficult part of this assessment? Why?

What would you do differently next time?

What was the most confusing? Why?

What do you know about the topic that the assessment didn't allow you to show?

Dig in

All 27 of these formative assessment strategies are simple to administer and free or inexpensive to use. They'll provide you with the evidence of student learning you need to make lesson plan adjustments and keep learning on target and moving forward. They'll also give your students valuable information so they can adjust their learning tactics and know where to focus their energies.

If you're not quite sure where to get started, the following discussion questions can help.

Questions for teachers

How do you use formative assessment data to inform instructional decisions?

How can formative assessment strategies foster a learning environment of collaboration and engagement?

How do formative assessment strategies elicit evidence of student learning?

What is one strategy you could try tomorrow and why?

How do you use formative assessment data to drive school-wide instructional academic decisions?

How can you model formative assessment strategies in staff meetings, PLCs, and meetings with teachers?

What are three formative assessment strategies you could bring to your teachers and staff? Why do you feel these would be most effective at your school?

Get more formative assessment tips and tricks in our e-book "Making it work: How formative assessment can supercharge your practice."

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27 Easy Formative Assessment Strategies for Gathering Evidence of Student Learning

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All 27 of these formative assessment strategies are simple to administer and free or inexpensive to use. They provide the teacher with the evidence of student learning needed to make lesson plan adjustments and keep learning on target and moving forward.

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Assessment activities should be quick, enjoyable, and versatile. That's because formative assessment is best when it's ongoing and consistent.

Teachers use it in their classrooms to provide critical feedback to students. It helps them to monitor and modify their instruction methods and lesson plans to improve learning outcomes. That's why we must use a variety of assessment activities and change them up frequently to stimulate both students and themselves.

Formative assessment is an assessment that's both for learning and as learning. This continual cycle of feedback and improvement makes learning useful and effective. Try these assessment activities with your students and see the results for yourself.

These are awesome formative assessments that we like because they're creative, low-tech, fun, and best of all, engaging for students. They're easy for a teacher to implement on an ongoing basis anytime.

15 Formative Assessment Activities You'll Love Using

1. Peer Quizzes: Students can write their own questions about the content and then quiz each other. They would also spend time going through the incorrect answers with each other to heighten their understanding.

2. 5x5 Journal: Journaling has been proven to be one of the best reflection tools around for learning. Have students journal about the five most interesting ideas they discover during a lesson. Next, they identify five things that resonate with them about each one and explain why.

3. Past Postcards: Have students adopt the personality of a historical figure and write a postcard to another historical figure from the same era. They can discuss a significant event from history that has just occurred.

4. Cool Collages: Ask students to make a collage or poster from magazine photos for demonstrating their understanding of a concept. They can use standard art materials or use apps designed for drawing.

5. Talk it Out: Students can host their own talk show and discuss the important points of any lesson. They write their own questions and answers, and can even play characters of their own creation.

6. Daring Doodles: Challenge students to use a drawing rather than words to show understanding of a concept. This is the perfect exercise for those kids who have difficulty speaking out in class.

7. Exploration Table: At the end of class, each student answers the following questions presented to them on index cards:

What did we do in class?

Why did we do it?

What did I learn today?

How can I apply it?

What questions do I have about it?

8. 3-2-1: Have students write or talk about 3 things they learned, 2 things they still want to learn, and 1 question they have. These values are interchangeable and can be used in different combinations, or with different questions altogether.

9. Four Corners: This is a great way to encourage dynamic movement while learning multiple-choice questions. Designate each corner of the classroom to represent A, B, C, and D. Students go to the corner that they believe corresponds with the correct answer.

10. Traffic Cards: Students create index cards with a large green marker circle on one side and red on the other. If they are following along and understanding the lesson, the green side of their card is upright and visible to you. When they do not understand something and need clarification, they flip the card to show you the red side. Here is an alternative method that can be downloaded for free and printed on coloured card stock for quick use.

11. Twitter Board: Students summarize what was learned in a lesson using 140 characters. Pin small strips of paper to a poster or cork board to resemble a Twitter feed.

12. Top Ten Lists: Students can write out their ten most important takeaways from a lesson plan or a class discussion. Encourage them to create lists that are humorous and fun.

13. Roll the Dice: Put a 6-sided dice at each desk. At the end of class, each student rolls and briefly answers aloud a question based on the number rolled:

1. I want to remember ...

2. Something I learned today

3. One word to sum up what I learned

4. Something I already knew

5. I'm still confused about ...

6. An "aha" moment that I had today

14. Enthusiasm Example Chart: Students rank what they learned that day and how much they enjoyed the lessons. They then elaborate on a Post-It, offering details about what they found helpful to them in having a successful learning day. They can also share what prevented them from having a fulfilling day. Compile the data and discuss it in class the next day.

15. Quick Quotable: Have students create two columns on a piece of paper. On one side have them write 5 or 6 of their most favourite quotes from people they admire. In the adjoining column, have them write their own interpretation of the what the quote means to them and why it appeals to them. If they're feeling good about it, have them consider what makes a great quote as they write their own about ideas that are important to them.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness. Originally published Oct 31, 2019, updated September 29, 2021

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15 Assessment Activities That Are Fast, Fun, and Formative

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Assessment activities should be quick, enjoyable, and versatile. That's because formative assessment is best when it's ongoing and consistent. Teachers use it in their classrooms to provide critical feedback to students. It helps them to monitor and modify their instruction methods and lesson plans to improve learning outcomes.

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Formative Assessment | Engage, Expand and Encompass Through Technology | Engage Expand & Encompass Through Technology

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Formative assessment encompasses all those activities undertaken by teachers, and/or by their students, which provide information to be used as feedback to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged. Such assessment becomes formative assessment when the evidence is actually used to adapt the teaching to meet student needs.

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Educators want to improve their instruction to elevate student learning and understanding.

But it can be challenging to teach a lesson or unit that ensures you're reaching a variety of comprehension levels.

This is when formative assessments come into play.

You can use these evaluations to gather information about student needs, progress and comprehension, informing how you teach a skill or topic while doing so.

But to be effective and efficient, formative assessments should align with the content you're covering and your students' learning styles.

For example, if your students don't hesitate to ask questions and share opinions, an assessment rooted in open discussion may be appropriate. It might not work for a reserved group.

Find formative assessment ideas that are best for your students and teaching style

These examples of formative assessments can easily be integrated into your lesson plans. They can also be set up at the end of class without much prep needed as traditional testing. Plus, get a downloadable PDF to keep at your desk for quick reference at the end of the list!

1. Prodigy Math and Prodigy English

Keep making the most of one-to-one device use by using Prodigy to gauge students' math or English skills. Covering over 1,500 math skills from 1st grade to 8th grade level, Prodigy makes assessments fun and effortless to deliver.

When they start the curriculum-aligned online game, they dive into a diagnostic test that identifies their strengths and skill deficits to pinpoint their levels of understanding. You can then deliver individualized in-game assignments, which generate progress and performance reports.

With these formative assessment features, it's worthwhile to try Prodigy's free teacher tools. See how to use Prodigy for formative assessments!

See how it works

2. Four corners

Encourage physical activity while gauging general student comprehension through this aptly-named exercise. To plan, put a list of multiple choice questions together. Each should have four answers.

Gather students in the middle of the room, reading each question and its possible answers aloud. Students then move to the corner that represents what they believe is the correct answer. For example, the top-left room corner can be option A, the bottom-left can be B and so on.

Depending on how students move, you should gain an understanding of class comprehension.

While this can be a fun activity, be mindful of students following or choosing the same corner as their friends. Consider following up with another formative assessment type to best gauge their comprehension.

3. Three summaries

Challenge students to think critically by giving them this processing and review activity.

To check their understanding of a new idea, concept or content piece, ask them to write three summaries. The first should be 10 to 15 words. The second is 30 to 50 words. The third is 75 to 100 words.

By asking students to vary the lengths of their summaries, they'll have to remember different details as they refine their understandings.

After, collect the summaries to see where knowledge gaps are.

4. Hand it in, pass it out

Run this short exercise to build topic comprehension.

It starts by posing a question with an objective answer that's explainable in a few sentences. Without writing their names down, students should answer the question on plain sheets of paper.

As they hand the papers in to you, quickly distribute them back to students at random. Explain what the correct answer is, so that they can grade the paper they've received. In doing so, they'll improve their understanding of the topic.

Conclude the exercise by taking a poll to measure how many papers had the right response.

5. Self-evaluation

Allow students to evaluate their own work, encouraging them to learn their own strengths and weaknesses.

Giving students time to formally review their own written assessments is an easy way of doing so. After completing the assessment, give each student access to an expanded rubric that details expectations. They should grade themselves accordingly.

You can also ask them to hand in their completed rubrics, letting you note concerns that students may have about their own knowledge and comprehension.

6. Partner quiz

Develop peer teaching skills in your class by running partner quizzes, which also allow students to assess themselves.

To launch a partner quiz, pair students together and provide an open question to tackle. As they work to solve it, encourage them to give each other corrective feedback - identifying mistakes and explaining how to reach proper solutions.

Once the pair has answered the question, each student can independently work on a question related to the same concept.

You can collect responses to wrap up the exercise.

7. Highlighter

Assess student understanding of a text-based resource through this solo and small-group exercise.

Each student should read the same written passage or resource, highlighting sentences that stick out as important or interesting. Once everyone is done, divide the class into groups of three or four.

Within their group, each student must share the sentences he or she highlighted. Each group should be able to pinpoint the text's main idea or theme in doing so, submitting an explanation so you can determine general comprehension levels.

8. Transfer the concept

Help students grasp a new concept by having them apply it to a different area.

Let's say you've recently taught how to identify protagonists and antagonists in novels. After determining students have a strong command of the concept, watch a clip from a show, movie or perhaps shorter media such as advertisements.

Individually, have them write down who the protagonists and antagonists are to ensure their understanding isn't confined to one medium.

9. Think-pair-share

Oversee a think-pair-share exercise to deliver three content-processing activities in one, easily assessing student understanding during the last stage.

As the name of this differentiated instruction strategy implies, start by asking each student to think about a specific topic or answer a given question. Next, pair students together to discuss their findings.

Finally, each pair should share their thoughts with the class and accept questions from classmates.

10. Jigsaw

Launch a jigsaw activity to teach accountability to each student while checking for understanding of a specific topic.

A mainstay part of cooperative learning, the method consists of dividing a task into subtasks and assigning one to each student in a small group. Group members then work to become "experts" about the information within their subtasks.

For example, if the group is investigating multiplication, one group member may be in charge of learning more about the multiplication of negative integers. Each student returns to their group after this investigation process, sharing new knowledge.

For assessment purposes, you can require each group to write a short report about the overarching topic you assigned.

11. Stop and go

Allow students to give you real-time feedback as you teach with "stop and go" cards.

Purchasable or assignable as an art task, they're two-sided cards - one green and one red. As you deliver a lesson, students should hold the green side toward you if they understand everything.

If something's unclear, encourage them to turn the red side forward. When you see red, stop and clarify - or expand upon - your points until you see green again.

This should help you quickly assess if students are processing content as you deliver it.

12. Virtual classroom

If you're teaching virtually or have access to one-to-one devices in your classroom, these formative assessment tools can help you ask students questions interactively, while teaching!

Capitalize on one-to-one device use, if possible, by automatically sending questions to students as you're teaching.

With online platforms or apps such as Socrative, Google Forms and Kahoot!, you can write questions that correspond with your lessons, pre-scheduling them or sending them to students on-the-spot.

Because they quickly and privately respond using devices, you shouldn't have trouble eliciting answers from those who don't typically raise their hands.

And since you can send questions at any time using these platforms, they work for quizzes, activities, entry and exit slips and many other forms of formative assessments.

13. Illustrations

Assess young students' reading comprehension, or listening, skills by delivering this interdisciplinary formative assessment.

The activity, Illustrations, starts by either reading a story passage out loud or having students read it individually. Irrespective of who reads, each student must draw the content depicted in the passage.

If the passage already has an accompanying illustration, you can show it to students afterward. This way, they can see how close they were.

14. Letters through time

Organize this creative writing assignment to gauge comprehension in history class.

Students assume the role of a specific historical figure, relevant to course content, and pair with a classmate from the same setting.

Each student in the duo must write a series of letters to one another. These letters should discuss an event or isolated time period that's historically significant.

As well as acting as a formative assessment, the exercise can effectively prepare students for essays, reports, long-answer tests and other summative assessments.

15. Entry and exit tickets

Gather information about how well students processed your most recent lesson by giving them five minutes to write an entry or exit ticket.

As a formative assessment, entry tickets should ask students to reflect on a specific class or exercise from the previous day. Exit tickets should involve students summarizing what they've just learned.

Either way, you'll receive small products that let you easily see how well students processed and retained key content, indicating knowledge gaps.

You can even use Prodigy assignments as entry or exit tickets, by assigning students specific skills and receiving real-time data to determine student understanding.

16. Two roses and a thorn

Determine content for your next class by concluding a lesson, presentation or chapter reading with two Roses and a Thorn -- a quick-to-deliver type of exit ticket and reflection exercise.

Each student must note two topics or concepts he or she enjoyed learning about, and another they didn't like or still have questions about. They must hand in their responses before leaving class.

If students share the same difficulties or dislikes, it may indicate a need to re-explore a topic or shift your approach to teaching it.

17. Countdown

Deliver this activity if Two Roses and a Thorn doesn't provide enough insight, or you feel your students need a deeper exercise.

Best used to end the day, Countdown requires students to create three distinct lists.

They must state and explain (a) three ideas or concepts they learned, (b) two ideas or concepts that surprised them and (c) one thing they intend to start doing based on what they learned.

Collective responses should indicate if students generally grasped a day's material.

18. One-minute papers

Inject variety into your end-of-day reflection exercises by asking students to complete one-minute papers.

A solo writing task, you don't have to take one-minute papers literally. Students can have a bit more time as they work to answer a brief question about the lesson.

It should be an open question, which allows you to easily assess understanding.

For example, you can ask students about (a) the lesson's confusing areas, (b) any unaddressed queries they have or (c) what question from the lesson they think may appear on an upcoming test.

20. Roll the die

Put a spin on reflection-based assessments by asking students to vocalize instead of write them, quickly taking notes as they speak.

To end class, start the activity by placing a die at each student's desk. Each die face represents the beginning of a sentence that must be completed.

Displaying or projecting them at the front of class, these sentences should be along the lines of: "I learned today that ..." or "I'm still confused about ..."

Since there are six options and likely many more students in your class, you'll hear a range of answers as students roll dice one after another, completing the corresponding sentences aloud.

As a result, you should get a grasp of what students do and don't understand about the day's lessons.

21. Clickers in the classroom

Clickers, also known as student response systems, are small, handheld devices that let students answer to questions in real-time. This is an interactive formative assessment strategy that can provide instant feedback on student comprehension and help you adjust your teaching accordingly.

To begin, prepare a set of multiple-choice or true/false questions on the content you're teaching. As you present each question, give the students a short period of time to use their clickers to submit their answers. The response system then collates the responses and displays the results, giving you a clear view of the overall understanding of the class.

Using clickers in the classroom can be especially useful at engaging students who may be hesitant or nervous to participate in open discussions or answer questions aloud. It also offers a quick and efficient way to understand individual student and class comprehension, ensuring you're meeting the needs of all learners.

Wrapping up

These formative assessment activities differ, but all deliver the same underlying benefits.

Students should grow cognizant of their learning needs, styles, strengths and areas of improvement. You should improve your general understanding of student learning, and identify problem areas to address before summative assessments.

As a likely result, they'll be better equipped to self-assess and you'll deliver more engaging, targeted lessons.
Or create your teacher account on Prodigy - an engaging game-based learning platform that assesses student progress and performance as they play.
Create your free account

Level up your assessments with Prodigy

Prodigy's engaging assessments can help you effectively address the diverse comprehension levels in your classroom. With features like Placement Tests, Assignments, and Standardized Test Preparation, Prodigy makes it easy to tailor assessments to individual student needs. Simply set the content or students you want to evaluate, have them play Prodigy and once they're done, you'll get automatically graded data and insights in your dashboard.
And the best bit? It's fun for students! See how it works

Create your free account

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Top 21 Formative Assessment Examples for Teachers That Are Fun and Fast

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Explore 21 of the most fun and fast formative assessment examples teachers can use to increase student learning.

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Formative assessments are crucial for educators to understand their students' grasp of concepts and skills as they work their way through lessons. With this understanding, educators can better direct learners to spend more time practicing and gaining mastery of topics with which they struggle.

The following free assessment tools are some of the best ones for gauging student progress at any point in the curriculum. And in this time of pandemic-disrupted learning, it's critical that all work well for in-person, remote, or blended classes.

Best Free Formative Assessment Tools and Apps

► Assessing Students in Online and Virtual Classrooms

► 20 Sites for Creating Quizzes

► The Challenges of Special Needs Assessments During Remote and Hybrid Learning

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Best Free Formative Assessment Tools and Apps

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The best free formative assessment tools can help teachers track student progress and personalize learning.

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There is no shortage of formative assessment strategies, techniques, and tools available to teachers who use formative instructional practice in their classrooms. Here is an extensive list of 75 digital tools, apps, and platforms that can help you and your students use formative assessment to elicit evidence of learning. We didn't just add any old tool to this list. Here are the criteria we used for those that made the cut:

Supports formative instructional strategies and ways to activate learners to be resources for themselves and peers

Is free or awful close to it (under $10 per year, where possible)

Allows both students and teachers to take the activator role when possible (sometimes teachers need to get things started)

Before you dig into the tools, I encourage you to spend some time thinking about exactly what you want to accomplish with your students. "How to pick the right digital tool: Start with your learning goal" by Erin Beard can help you wrap your head around goals and guide you in choosing the best tool for the task. "27 easy formative assessment strategies for gathering evidence of student learning" can help you decide what strategies work best for you and your students.

Record audio and video

Create quizzes, polls, and surveys

1. Crowdsignal Lets you create online polls, quizzes, and questions. Students can use smartphones, tablets, and computers to provide their answers, and information can be culled for reports.

2. Edulastic Allows you to make standards-aligned assessments and get instant feedback.

3. FreeOnlineSurveys Helps you create surveys, quizzes, forms, and polls.

4. Gimkit Lets you write real-time quizzes. And it was designed by a high school student!

5. Kahoot! A game-based classroom response system that lets you create quizzes using internet content.

6. MicroPoll Helps you create polls, embed them into websites, and analyze responses.

7. Naiku Lets you write quizzes students can answer using their mobile devices.

8. Obsurvey Designed to make surveys, polls, and questionnaires.

9. Poll Everywhere Lets you create a feedback poll or ask questions and see results in real time. Allows students to respond in various ways. With open-ended questions, you can capture data and spin up tag clouds to aggregate responses.

10. Poll Maker Offers unique features, like allowing multiple answers to one question.

11. ProProfs Helps you make quizzes, polls, and surveys.

12. Quia Lets you create games, quizzes, surveys, and more. Access a database of existing quizzes from other educators.

13. Quizalize Helps you create quizzes and homework.

14. Quizizz Guides you through designing quizzes and lets you include students in the quiz-writing process.

15. Quizlet Lets you make flashcards, tests, quizzes, and study games that are mobile friendly.

16. Survey Hero Designed to build questionnaires and surveys.

17. SurveyMonkey Helpful for online polls and surveys.

18. SurveyPlanet Also helpful for online polls and surveys.

19. Triventy Lets you create quizzes students take in real time using individual devices.

20. Yacapaca Helps you write and assign quizzes.

21. Zoho Survey Allows you to make mobile-friendly surveys and see results in real time.

Brainstorm, mind map, and collaborate

Present, engage, and inspire

Generate word or tag clouds

1. EdWordle Generates word clouds from any entered text to help aggregate responses and facilitate discussion. Word clouds are pictures composed of a cloud of smaller words that form a clue to the topic.

2. Tagxedo Allows you to examine student consensus and facilitate dialogues.

3. Wordables Helps you elicit evidence of learning or determine background knowledge about a topic.

4. WordArt Includes a feature that allows the user to make each word an active link to connect to websites, including YouTube.

Get real-time feedback

Foster family communication

1. Remind Lets you text students and stay in touch with families.

2. Seesaw Helps you improve family communication and makes formative assessment easy, while students can use the platform to document their learning.

3. Voxer Lets you send recordings so families can hear how their students are doing, students can chat about their work, and you can provide feedback.

Strengthen teacher-to-student or student-to-student communication

Keep the conversation going with live chats

1. Yo Teach A backchannel site great for keeping the conversation going with students.

2. Chatzy Supports live, online chats in a private setting.

Create and store documents or assignments

1. Google Forms A Google Drive app that allows you to create documents students can collaborate on in real time using smartphones, tablets, and laptops.

2. Piazza Lets you upload lectures, assignments, and homework; pose and respond to student questions; and poll students about class content. This tool is better suited for older students as it mimics post-secondary class instructional formats.

Learn more

There are several resources for learning more about formative assessment and responsive instruction strategies. Consider our formative practices workshops, where school and district teams can gain a better understanding of the role formative practice plays in instruction and the four foundational practices to use in the classroom. Or for a quick start, download our eBook "Making it work: How formative assessment can supercharge your practice."

Jump in, try new tools and methods, and have fun!

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75 digital tools and apps teachers can use to support formative assessment in the classroom

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We've compiled an extensive list of 75 digital tools that can help teachers use formative assessment to elicit evidence of student learning.

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Top Tech Tools for Formative Assessment | Common Sense Education

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Find the right formative assessment tools for your classroom. These digital tools range from discussion (e.g., Piazza, TodaysMeet) to quizzing, polling, and student responses (e.g., Kahoot, Formative) to interactive lessons and videos (e.g., Nearpod, Flipgrid).

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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The Ultimate List: 50 Strategies For Differentiated Instruction

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Here are 50 strategies for differentiated instruction to better meet the needs of your diverse, evolving learners.

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Cite this guide: Brame, C. (2013). Flipping the classroom. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved [todaysdate] from http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/flipping-the-classroom/.

"Flipping the classroom" has become something of a buzzword in the last several years, driven in part by high profile publications in The New York Times (Fitzpatrick, 2012); The Chronicle of Higher Education (Berrett, 2012); and (Mazur, 2009); In essence, "flipping the classroom" means that students gain first exposure to new material outside of class, usually via reading or lecture videos, and then use class time to do the harder work of assimilating that knowledge, perhaps through problem-solving, discussion, or debates.

In terms of Bloom's revised taxonomy (2001), this means that students are doing the lower levels of cognitive work (gaining knowledge and comprehension) outside of class, and focusing on the higher forms of cognitive work (application, analysis, synthesis, and/or evaluation) in class, where they have the support of their peers and instructor. This model contrasts from the traditional model in which "first exposure" occurs via lecture in class, with students assimilating knowledge through homework; thus the term "flipped classroom."

What is it?

Flipped Classroom

The flipped classroom approach has been used for years in some disciplines, notably within the humanities. Barbara Walvoord and Virginia Johnson Anderson promoted the use of this approach in their book Effective Grading (1998). They propose a model in which students gain first-exposure learning prior to class and focus on the processing part of learning (synthesizing, analyzing, problem-solving, etc.) in class.

To ensure that students do the preparation necessary for productive class time, Walvoord and Anderson propose an assignment-based model in which students produce work (writing, problems, etc.) prior to class. The students receive productive feedback through the processing activities that occur during class, reducing the need for the instructor to provide extensive written feedback on the students' work. Walvoord and Anderson describe examples of how this approach has been implemented in history, physics, and biology classes, suggesting its broad applicability.

Inverted Classroom

Maureen Lage, Glenn Platt, and Michael Treglia described a similar approach as the inverted classroom, and reported its application in an introductory economics course in 2000. Lage, Platt, and Treglia initiated their experiment in response to the observation that the traditional lecture format is incompatible with some learning styles. ¹ To make their course more compatible with their students' varied learning styles, they designed an inverted classroom in which they provided students with a variety of tools to gain first exposure to material outside of class: textbook readings, lecture videos, Powerpoint presentations with voice-over, and printable Powerpoint slides.

To help ensure student preparation for class, students were expected to complete worksheets that were periodically but randomly collected and graded. Class time was then spent on activities that encouraged students to process and apply economics principles, ranging from mini-lectures in response to student questions to economic experiments to small group discussions of application problems. Both student and instructor response to the approach was positive, with instructors noting that students appeared more motivated than when the course was taught in a traditional format.

Peer Instruction

Eric Mazur and Catherine Crouch describe a modified form of the flipped classroom that they term peer instruction (2001). Like the approaches described by Walvoord and Anderson and Lage, Platt, and Treglia, the peer instruction (PI) model requires that students gain first exposure prior to class, and uses assignments (in this case, quizzes) to help ensure that students come to class prepared. Class time is structured around alternating mini-lectures and conceptual questions. Importantly, the conceptual questions are not posed informally and answered by student volunteers as in traditional lectures; instead, all students must answer the conceptual question, often via "clickers", or handheld personal response systems, that allow students to answer anonymously and that allow the instructor to see (and display) the class data immediately. If a large fraction of the class (usually between 30 and 65%) answers incorrectly, then students reconsider the question in small groups while instructors circulate to promote productive discussions. After discussion, students answer the conceptual question again. The instructor provides feedback, explaining the correct answer and following up with related questions if appropriate. The cycle is then repeated with another topic, with each cycle typically taking 13-15 minutes.

Does it work?

Mazur and colleagues have published results suggesting that the PI method results in significant learning gains when compared to traditional instruction (2001). In 1998, Richard Hake gathered data on 2084 students in 14 introductory physics courses taught by traditional methods (defined by the instructor as relying primarily on passive student lectures and algorithmic problem exams), allowing him to define an average gain for students in such courses using pre/post-test data. Hake then compared these results to those seen with interactive engagement methods, defined as "heads-on (always) and hands-on (usually) activities which yield immediate feedback through discussion with peers and/or instructors" (Hake p. 65) for 4458 students in 48 courses. He found that students taught with interactive engagement methods exhibited learning gains almost two standard deviations higher than those observed in the traditional courses (0.48 +/- 0.14 vs. 0.23 +/- 0.04). Assessment of classes taught by the PI method provides evidence of even greater learning gains, with students in PI courses exhibiting learning gains ranging from 0.49 to 0.74 over eight years of assessment at Harvard University (Crouch and Mazur, 2001). Interestingly, two introductory physics classes taught by traditional methods during the assessment period at Harvard show much lower learning gains (0.25 in a calculus-based course in 1990 and 0.40 in an algebra-based course in 1999).

Carl Wieman and colleagues have also published evidence that flipping the classroom can produce significant learning gains (Deslauriers et al., 2011). Wieman and colleagues compared two sections of a large-enrollment physics class. The classes were both taught via interactive lecture methods for the majority of the semester and showed no significant differences prior to the experiment. During the twelfth week of the semester, one section was "flipped," with first exposure to new material occurring prior to class via reading assignments and quizzes, and class time devoted to small group discussion of clicker questions and questions that required written responses. Although class discussion was supported by targeted instructor feedback, no formal lecture was included in the experimental group. The control section was encouraged to read the same assignments prior to class and answered most of the same clicker questions for summative assessment but were not intentionally engaged in active learning exercises during class. During the experiment, student engagement increased in the experimental section (from 45 +/- 5% to 85 +/- 5% as assessed by four trained observers) but did not change in the control section. At the end of the experimental week, students completed a multiple choice test, resulting in an average score of 41 +/- 1% in the control classroom and 74 +/- 1% in the "flipped" classroom, with an effect size of 2.5 standard deviations. Although the authors did not address retention of the gains over time, this dramatic increase in student learning supports the use of the flipped classroom model.

Theoretical basis

How People Learn, the seminal work from John Bransford, Ann Brown, and Rodney Cocking, reports three key findings about the science of learning, two of which help explain the success of the flipped classroom. Bransford and colleagues assert that

"To develop competence in an area of inquiry, students must: a) have a deep foundation of factual knowledge, b) understand facts and ideas in the context of a conceptual framework, and c) organize knowledge in ways that facilitate retrieval and application" (p. 16).

By providing an opportunity for students to use their new factual knowledge while they have access to immediate feedback from peers and the instructor, the flipped classroom helps students learn to correct misconceptions and organize their new knowledge such that it is more accessible for future use. Furthermore, the immediate feedback that occurs in the flipped classroom also helps students recognize and think about their own growing understanding, thereby supporting Bransford and colleagues' third major conclusion:

"A 'metacognitive' approach to instruction can help students learn to take control of their own learning by defining learning goals and monitoring their progress in achieving them" (p. 18).

Although students' thinking about their own learning is not an inherent part of the flipped classroom, the higher cognitive functions associated with class activities, accompanied by the ongoing peer/instructor interaction that typically accompanies them, can readily lead to the metacognition associated with deep learning.

What are the key elements of the flipped classroom?

1. Provide an opportunity for students to gain first exposure prior to class.

The mechanism used for first exposure can vary, from simple textbook readings to lecture videos to podcasts or screencasts. For example, Grand Valley State University math professor Robert Talbert provides screencasts on class topics on his YouTube channel, while Vanderbilt computer science professor Doug Fisher provides his students video lectures prior to class (see an example here). These videos can be created by the instructor or found online from YouTube, the Khan Academy, MIT's OpenCourseWare, Coursera, or other similar sources. The pre-class exposure doesn't have to be high-tech, however; in the Deslauriers, Schelew, and Wieman study described above, students simply completed pre-class reading assignments.

2. Provide an incentive for students to prepare for class.

In all the examples cited above, students completed a task associated with their preparation....and that task was associated with points. The assignment can vary; the examples above used tasks that ranged from online quizzes to worksheets to short writing assignments, but in each case the task provided an incentive for students to come to class prepared by speaking the common language of undergraduates: points. In many cases, grading for completion rather than effort can be sufficient, particularly if class activities will provide students with the kind of feedback that grading for accuracy usually provides.

3. Provide a mechanism to assess student understanding.

The pre-class assignments that students complete as evidence of their preparation can also help both the instructor and the student assess understanding. Pre-class online quizzes can allow the instructor to practice Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT; Novak et al., 1999), which basically means that the instructor tailors class activities to focus on the elements with which students are struggling. If automatically graded, the quizzes can also help students pinpoint areas where they need help. Pre-class worksheets can also help focus student attention on areas with which they're struggling, and can be a departure point for class activities, while pre-class writing assignments help students clarify their thinking about a subject, thereby producing richer in-class discussions. Importantly, much of the feedback students need is provided in class, reducing the need for instructors to provide extensive commentary outside of class (Walvoord and Anderson, 1998). In addition, many of the activities used during class time (e.g., clicker questions or debates) can serve as informal checks of student understanding.

4. Provide in-class activities that focus on higher level cognitive activities.

If the students gained basic knowledge outside of class, then they need to spend class time to promote deeper learning. Again, the activity will depend on the learning goals of the class and the culture of the discipline. For example, Lage, Platt, and Treglia described experiments students did in class to illustrate economic principles (2000), while Mazur and colleagues focused on student discussion of conceptual "clicker" questions and quantitative problems focused on physical principles (2001). In other contexts, students may spend time in class engaged in debates, data analysis, or synthesis activities. The key is that students are using class time to deepen their understanding and increase their skills at using their new knowledge.

Where can I learn more?

CFT Director Derek Bruff has a good blog post on flipping the classroom with some great embedded references. Find it here: http://derekbruff.org/?p=901.

References

Berrett D (2012). How 'flipping' the classroom can improve the traditional lecture. The Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb. 19, 2012.

Anderson LW and Krathwohl D (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: a revision of Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives. New York: Longman.

Bransford JD, Brown AL, and Cocking RR (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

Crouch CH and Mazur E (2001). Peer instruction: Ten years of experience and results. American Journal of Physics 69: 970-977.

DesLauriers L, Schelew E, and Wieman C (2011). Improved learning in a large-enrollment physics class. Science 332: 862-864.

Fitzpatrick M (2012). Classroom lectures go digital. The New York Times, June 24, 2012.

Hake R (1998). Interactive-engagement versus traditional methods: A six-thousand-student survey of mechanics test data for introductory physics courses. American Journal of Physics 66: 64-74.

Lage MJ, Platt GJ, and Treglia M (2000). Inverting the classroom: A gateway to creating an inclusive learning environment. The Journal of Economic Education 31: 30-43.

Mazur E (2009). Farewell, Lecture? Science 323: 50-51.

Novak G, Patterson ET, Gavrin AD, and Christian W (1999). Just-in-Time Teaching: Blending Active Learning with Web Technology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Pashler H, McDaniel M, Rohrer D, and Bjork R (2008). Learning styles: Concepts and evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest 9: 103-119.

Walvoord BE, and Anderson VJ (1998). Effective grading: A tool for learning and assessment. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Footnote:
¹ Although there is widespread belief that matching students' preferred "learning styles" to instructional formats promotes learning, a 2008 review by Pashler and colleagues finds no evidence that this strategy promotes learning.
Cite this guide:
Brame, C., (2013). Flipping the classroom. Retrieved [todaysdate] from http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/flipping-the-classroom/.
Brame, C., (2013). Flipping the classroom. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved [todaysdate] from http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/flipping-the-classroom/.

This teaching guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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by Cynthia J. Brame Print Version Cite this guide: Brame, C. (2013). Flipping the classroom. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved [todaysdate] from http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/flipping-the-classroom/. "Flipping the classroom" has become something of a buzzword in the last several years, driven in part by high profile publications in The New York Times (Fitzpatrick, 2012); The Chronicle...

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Just as everyone has a unique fingerprint, every student has an individual learning style. Chances are, not all of your students grasp a subject in the same way or share the same level of ability. So how can you better deliver your lessons to reach everyone in class? Consider differentiated instruction-a method you may have heard about but haven't explored, which is why you're here. In this article, learn exactly what it means, how it works, and the pros and cons.

Definition of differentiated instruction

Carol Ann Tomlinson is a leader in the area of differentiated learning and professor of educational leadership, foundations, and policy at the University of Virginia. Tomlinson describes differentiated instruction as factoring students' individual learning styles and levels of readiness first before designing a lesson plan. Research on the effectiveness of differentiation shows this method benefits a wide range of students, from those with learning disabilities to those who are considered high ability.

Differentiating instruction may mean teaching the same material to all students using a variety of instructional strategies, or it may require the teacher to deliver lessons at varying levels of difficulty based on the ability of each student.

Teachers who practice differentiation in the classroom may:

Design lessons based on students' learning styles.

Group students by shared interest, topic, or ability for assignments.

Assess students' learning using formative assessment.

Manage the classroom to create a safe and supportive environment.

Continually assess and adjust lesson content to meet students' needs.

History of differentiated instruction

The roots of differentiated instruction go all the way back to the days of the one-room schoolhouse, where one teacher had students of all ages in one classroom. As the educational system transitioned to grading schools, it was assumed that children of the same age learned similarly. However in 1912, achievement tests were introduced, and the scores revealed the gaps in student's abilities within grade levels.

In 1975, Congress passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), ensuring that children with disabilities had equal access to public education. To reach this student population, many educators used differentiated instruction strategies. Then came the passage of No Child Left Behind in 2000, which further encouraged differentiated and skill-based instruction-and that's because it works. Research by educator Leslie Owen Wilson supports differentiating instruction within the classroom, finding that lecture is the least effective instructional strategy, with only 5 to 10 percent retention after 24 hours. Engaging in a discussion, practicing after exposure to content, and teaching others are much more effective ways to ensure learning retention.

Four ways to differentiate instruction

According to Tomlinson, teachers can differentiate instruction through four ways: 1) content, 2) process, 3) product, and 4) learning environment.

1. Content

As you already know, fundamental lesson content should cover the standards of learning set by the school district or state educational standards. But some students in your class may be completely unfamiliar with the concepts in a lesson, some students may have partial mastery, and some students may already be familiar with the content before the lesson begins.

What you could do is differentiate the content by designing activities for groups of students that cover various levels of Bloom's Taxonomy (a classification of levels of intellectual behavior going from lower-order thinking skills to higher-order thinking skills). The six levels are: remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating.

Students who are unfamiliar with a lesson could be required to complete tasks on the lower levels: remembering and understanding. Students with some mastery could be asked to apply and analyze the content, and students who have high levels of mastery could be asked to complete tasks in the areas of evaluating and creating.

Examples of differentiating activities:

Match vocabulary words to definitions.

Read a passage of text and answer related questions.

Think of a situation that happened to a character in the story and a different outcome.

Differentiate fact from opinion in the story.

Identify an author's position and provide evidence to support this viewpoint.

Create a PowerPoint presentation summarizing the lesson.

2. Process

Each student has a preferred learning style, and successful differentiation includes delivering the material to each style: visual, auditory and kinesthetic, and through words. This process-related method also addresses the fact that not all students require the same amount of support from the teacher, and students could choose to work in pairs, small groups, or individually. And while some students may benefit from one-on-one interaction with you or the classroom aide, others may be able to progress by themselves. Teachers can enhance student learning by offering support based on individual needs.

Examples of differentiating the process:

Provide textbooks for visual and word learners.

Allow auditory learners to listen to audio books.

Give kinesthetic learners the opportunity to complete an interactive assignment online.

3. Product

The product is what the student creates at the end of the lesson to demonstrate the mastery of the content. This can be in the form of tests, projects, reports, or other activities. You could assign students to complete activities that show mastery of an educational concept in a way the student prefers, based on learning style.

Examples of differentiating the end product:

Read and write learners write a book report.

Visual learners create a graphic organizer of the story.

Auditory learners give an oral report.

Kinesthetic learners build a diorama illustrating the story.

4. Learning environment

The conditions for optimal learning include both physical and psychological elements. A flexible classroom layout is key, incorporating various types of furniture and arrangements to support both individual and group work. Psychologically speaking, teachers should use classroom management techniques that support a safe and supportive learning environment.

Examples of differentiating the environment:

Break some students into reading groups to discuss the assignment.

Allow students to read individually if preferred.

Create quiet spaces where there are no distractions.

Pros and cons of differentiated instruction

The benefits of differentiation in the classroom are often accompanied by the drawback of an ever-increasing workload. Here are a few factors to keep in mind:

Pros

Research shows differentiated instruction is effective for high-ability students as well as students with mild to severe disabilities.

When students are given more options on how they can learn material, they take on more responsibility for their own learning.

Students appear to be more engaged in learning, and there are reportedly fewer discipline problems in classrooms where teachers provide differentiated lessons.

Cons

Differentiated instruction requires more work during lesson planning, and many teachers struggle to find the extra time in their schedule.

The learning curve can be steep and some schools lack professional development resources.

Critics argue there isn't enough research to support the benefits of differentiated instruction outweighing the added prep time.

Differentiated instruction strategies

What differentiated instructional strategies can you use in your classroom? There are a set of methods that can be tailored and used across the different subjects. According to Kathy Perez (2019) and the Access Center those strategies are tiered assignments, choice boards, compacting, interest centers/groups, flexible grouping, and learning contracts. Tiered assignments are designed to teach the same skill but have the students create a different product to display their knowledge based on their comprehension skills. Choice boards allow students to choose what activity they would like to work on for a skill that the teacher chooses. On the board are usually options for the different learning styles; kinesthetic, visual, auditory, and tactile. Compacting allows the teacher to help students reach the next level in their learning when they have already mastered what is being taught to the class. To compact the teacher assesses the student's level of knowledge, creates a plan for what they need to learn, excuses them from studying what they already know, and creates free time for them to practice an accelerated skill.

Interest centers or groups are a way to provide autonomy in student learning. Flexible grouping allows the groups to be more fluid based on the activity or topic. Finally, learning contracts are made between a student and teacher, laying out the teacher's expectations for the necessary skills to be demonstrated and the assignments required components with the student putting down the methods they would like to use to complete the assignment. These contracts can allow students to use their preferred learning style, work at an ideal pace and encourages independence and planning skills. The following are strategies for some of the core subject based on these methods.

Differentiated instruction strategies for math

Provide students with a choice board. They could have the options to learn about probability by playing a game with a peer, watching a video, reading the textbook, or working out problems on a worksheet.

Teach mini lessons to individuals or groups of students who didn't grasp the concept you were teaching during the large group lesson. This also lends time for compacting activities for those who have mastered the subject.

Use manipulatives, especially with students that have more difficulty grasping a concept.

Have students that have already mastered the subject matter create notes for students that are still learning.

For students that have mastered the lesson being taught, require them to give in-depth, step-by-step explanation of their solution process, while not being rigid about the process with students who are still learning the basics of a concept if they arrive at the correct answer.

Differentiated instruction strategies for science

Emma McCrea (2019) suggests setting up "Help Stations," where peers assist each other. Those that have more knowledge of the subject will be able to teach those that are struggling as an extension activity and those that are struggling will receive.

Set up a "question and answer" session during which learners can ask the teacher or their peers questions, in order to fill in knowledge gaps before attempting the experiment.

Create a visual word wall. Use pictures and corresponding labels to help students remember terms.

Set up interest centers. When learning about dinosaurs you might have an "excavation" center, a reading center, a dinosaur art project that focuses on their anatomy, and a video center.

Provide content learning in various formats such as showing a video about dinosaurs, handing out a worksheet with pictures of dinosaurs and labels, and providing a fill-in-the-blank work sheet with interesting dinosaur facts.

Differentiated instruction strategies for ELL

ASCD (2012) writes that all teachers need to become language teachers so that the content they are teaching the classroom can be conveyed to the students whose first language is not English.

Start by providing the information in the language that the student speaks then pairing it with a limited amount of the corresponding vocabulary in English.

Although ELL need a limited amount of new vocabulary to memorize, they need to be exposed to as much of the English language as possible. This means that when teaching, the teacher needs to focus on verbs and adjectives related to the topic as well.

Group work is important. This way they are exposed to more of the language. They should, however, be grouped with other ELL if possible as well as given tasks within the group that are within their reach such as drawing or researching.

Differentiated instruction strategies for reading

Tiered assignments can be used in reading to allow the students to show what they have learned at a level that suites them. One student might create a visual story board while another student might write a book report.

Reading groups can pick a book based on interest or be assigned based on reading level

Erin Lynch (2020) suggest that teachers scaffold instruction by giving clear explicit explanations with visuals. Verbally and visually explain the topic. Use anchor charts, drawings, diagrams, and reference guides to foster a clearer understanding. If applicable, provide a video clip for students to watch.

Utilize flexible grouping. Students might be in one group for phonics based on their assessed level but choose to be in another group for reading because they are more interested in that book.

Differentiated instruction strategies for writing

Hold writing conferences with your students either individually or in small groups. Talk with them throughout the writing process starting with their topic and moving through grammar, composition, and editing.

Allow students to choose their writing topics. When the topic is of interest, they will likely put more effort into the assignment and therefore learn more.

Keep track of and assess student's writing progress continually throughout the year. You can do this using a journal or a checklist. This will allow you to give individualized instruction.

Hand out graphic organizers to help students outline their writing. Try fill-in-the-blank notes that guide the students through each step of the writing process for those who need additional assistance.

For primary grades give out lined paper instead of a journal. You can also give out differing amounts of lines based on ability level. For those who are excelling at writing give them more lines or pages to encourage them to write more. For those that are still in the beginning stages of writing, give them less lines so that they do not feel overwhelmed.

Differentiated instruction strategies for special education

Use a multi-sensory approach. Get all five senses involved in your lessons, including taste and smell!

Use flexible grouping to create partnerships and teach students how to work collaboratively on tasks. Create partnerships where the students are of equal ability, partnerships where once the student will be challenged by their partner and another time they will be pushing and challenging their partner.

Assistive technology is often an important component of differential instruction in special education. Provide the students that need them with screen readers, personal tablets for communication, and voice recognition software.

The article Differentiation & LR Information for SAS Teachers suggests teachers be flexible when giving assessments "Posters, models, performances, and drawings can show what they have learned in a way that reflects their personal strengths". You can test for knowledge using rubrics instead of multiple-choice questions, or even build a portfolio of student work. You could also have them answer questions orally.

Utilize explicit modeling. Whether its notetaking, problem solving in math, or making a sandwich in home living, special needs students often require a step-by-step guide to make connections.

References and resources

Books & Videos about differentiated instruction by Carol Ann Tomlinson and others

The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners, 2nd Edition

Leading and Managing a Differentiated Classroom - Carol Ann Tomlinson and Marcia B. Imbeau

The Differentiated School: Making Revolutionary Changes in Teaching and Learning - Carol Ann Tomlinson, Kay Brimijoin, and Lane Narvaez

Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design: Connecting Content and Kids - Carol Ann Tomlinson and Jay McTighe

Differentiation in Practice Grades K-5: A Resource Guide for Differentiating Curriculum - Carol Ann Tomlinson and Caroline Cunningham Eidson

Differentiation in Practice Grades 5-9: A Resource Guide for Differentiating Curriculum - Carol Ann Tomlinson and Caroline Cunningham Eidson

Differentiation in Practice Grades 9-12: A Resource Guide for Differentiating Curriculum - Carol Ann Tomlinson and Cindy A. Strickland

Fulfilling the Promise of the Differentiated Classroom: Strategies and Tools for Responsive Teaching - Carol Ann Tomlinson

Leadership for Differentiating Schools and Classrooms - Carol Ann Tomlinson and Susan Demirsky Allan

How to Differentiate Instruction in Academically Diverse Classrooms, 3rd Edition by Carol Ann Tomlinson

Assessment and Student Success in a Differentiated Classroom by Carol Ann Tomlinson and Tonya R. Moon

How To Differentiate Instruction In Mixed Ability Classrooms 2nd Edition - Carol Ann Tomlinson

How to Differentiate Instruction in Academically Diverse Classrooms 3rd Edition by Carol Ann Tomlinson

Assessment and Student Success in a Differentiated Classroom Paperback - Carol Ann Tomlinson, Tonya R. Moon

Leading and Managing a Differentiated Classroom (Professional Development) 1st Edition - Carol Ann Tomlinson, Marcia B. Imbeau

The Differentiated School: Making Revolutionary Changes in Teaching and Learning 1st Edition by Carol Ann Tomlinson, Kay Brimijoin, Lane Narvaez

Differentiation and the Brain: How Neuroscience Supports the Learner-Friendly Classroom - David A. Sousa, Carol Ann Tomlinson

Leading for Differentiation: Growing Teachers Who Grow Kids - Carol Ann Tomlinson, Michael Murphy

An Educator's Guide to Differentiating Instruction. 10th Edition - Carol Ann Tomlinson, James M. Cooper

A Differentiated Approach to the Common Core: How do I help a broad range of learners succeed with a challenging curriculum? - Carol Ann Tomlinson, Marcia B. Imbeau

Managing a Differentiated Classroom: A Practical Guide - Carol Tomlinson, Marcia Imbeau

Differentiating Instruction for Mixed-Ability Classrooms: An ASCD Professional Inquiry Kit Pck Edition - Carol Ann Tomlinson

Using Differentiated Classroom Assessment to Enhance Student Learning (Student Assessment for Educators) 1st Edition - Tonya R. Moon, Catherine M. Brighton, Carol A. Tomlinson

The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners 1st Edition - Carol Ann Tomlinson

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Differentiated Instruction: Examples & Classroom Strategies | Resilient Educator

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Differentiated instruction benefits a wide range of students, from those with learning disabilities to those who are considered high ability. Read about classroom tips and strategies for implementation.

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20 Differentiated Instruction Strategies and Examples [+ Downloadable List]

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As students with diverse learning styles fill the classroom, many teachers don't always have the time, or spend additional hours to plan lessons that use differentiated instruction (DI) to suit students' unique aptitudes.

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Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997). Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life. New York: Basic Books.

Danielson, C. (1996). Enhancing Professional Practice: A Framework for Teaching. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. ED 403 245.

Sternberg, R. J., Torff, B., & Grigorenko, E. L. (1998). Teaching triarchically improves student achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 90(3), 374-384. EJ 576 492.

Tomlinson, C. (1995). How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixed-ability Classrooms. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. ED 386 301.

Tomlinson, C. (1999). The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of all Learners. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. ED 429 944.

Vygotsky, L. (1986). Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Winebrenner, S. (1992). Teaching Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom. Minneapolis, MN: Free Spirit.

Winebrenner, S. (1996). Teaching kids with Learning Difficulties in the Regular Classroom. Minneapolis, MN: Free Spirit. ED 396 502.

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Differentiation means tailoring instruction to meet individual needs. Whether teachers differentiate content, process, products, or the learning environment, the use of ongoing assessment and flexible grouping makes this a successful approach to instruction.

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Differentiated instruction in the classroom is a teaching strategy that involves varying lessons to meet the needs of all students.
You can differentiate a lesson in four main ways:

1. Varying Content: changing up what is taught.

2. Varying Process: changing up how it is taught.

3. Varying Assessment: changing up how it is assessed.

4. Varying Learning Environments: changing up the context of learning.

Below are 31 examples of differentiation in the classroom.

Examples of Differentiated Instruction

Varying the Content

Differentiation of content involves varying what is taught.

Examples include:

1. Providing students with different fiction books to critique depending on their interests.

2. Letting each student choose their own time in history to explore in order to meet the same history outcome in the curriculum.

3. Letting each student choose their own person to study for black history month.

4. Having students choose an 'elective' topic to study in high school so they can specialize before college.

Some people will also differentiate content by actually changing the difficulty level. This should be approached with caution as at times this can lead to lowering expectations. At other times it is appropriate for helping advanced students to progress while giving appropriate difficulty level support to intermediary students:

5. Separating students into low, medium and high ability groups for mathematics and giving each group a different level of content to study.

6. Giving a student an easier book to read than other students.

7. Letting advanced students steam ahead to do independent study while the teacher works on remedial tasks with lower and intermediate level students.

8. Providing weekly spelling or vocabulary lists at a student's ideal.

Varying the Learning Process

Differentiation of the process involves varying how content is taught.

Examples include:

9. Teaching the same underlying understandings or skills, but presenting it with different levels of complexity to each ability group.

10. Turning written material into a podcast so it can be presented through both auditory and visual learning modalities.

11. Letting students learn according to their preferred learning style, such as letting them choose between watching videos, reading books, and being told a story.

12. Mixing up learning modalities within the same lesson so students have more entry points to understanding the content. Let them learn through tactile, visual, audio, and kinesthetic methods.

13. Having extra study groups to re-teach content in an new or more guided manner for struggling learners, or to provided extended lessons for advanced learners.

14. Coming up with an individualized plan for each student so they can choose which tasks to tackle first, second and last - while they will all cover every task by the end of the unit. This can allow advanced students to steam ahead.

15. Flipped learning, where the core 'group content' is introduced via videos during homework time, and individualized active learning occurs in class. This gives the teacher additional time to spend one-on-one with their students.

16. Allowing advanced students to work alone, while using manipulatives (hands-on props) for students who need them.

17. Varying how much time you give students to complete a task depending on your assessment of their ability level. This can help them to challenge themselves to become more efficient at a task.

18. Allowing some students to progress after they have demonstrated mastery, while holding others back for more classes until they are ready to proceed.

19. Delivering content in culturally appropriate ways, and letting all students learn through their preferred cultural paradigm.

Varying Assessment

Differentiation of assessment involves changing how to test to see whether a student has achieved the task.

Examples include:

20. Letting students choose how to present their work, such as through a video, performance, essay or poster.

21. Using different assessment outcomes or assessment rubrics depending on a student's ability level.

22. Giving students a choice of whether to present their work as a group or individually.

23. Changing up when the assessment can be presented in order to ensure a student is ready before they are assessed.

Varying the Learning Environment

Differentiation of learning environments involves changing up the context in which we learn.

Examples include:

24. Developing workstations in the classroom which each has a different environment. A mixed classroom layout can be used here to encourage this sort of learning.

25. Creating quiet spaces for students with sensory processing disorders or who are vulnerable to sensory overload (such as students with autism).

26. Providing research stations and study desks where students can access computers in order to do independent research during a lesson.

27. Getting two classrooms with two different sets of rules around talking, and letting students choose which room to study in.

28. Letting students choose between studying online or in-person.

29. Providing standing and seating desks for students with different needs.

30. Allowing kinesthetic learners to learn outside or frequently do exercise to let off excess steam.

31. Placing posters and prompts on walls strategically near students who need them the most.

Final Thoughts

I hope these examples of differentiation in the classroom have helped get you thinking about some differentiation ideas for your own lesson plans.

If you need to find scholarly information on differentiation, check out my full guide on differentiated instruction. In that article, you'll find:

Scholarly Definitions of the Concept

Explanation

Pros and Cons

Good luck with your teaching!

- Prof. Chris.

References

All references are in APA style:

Dixon, F. A., Yssel, N., McConnell, J. M., & Hardin, T. (2014). Different instruction, professional development, and teacher efficacy. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 37(2), 111-127.

Tomlinson, C. A. (1995). How to differentiate instruction in mixed ability classrooms. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Tomlinson, C. A. (1999). The differentiated classroom: responding to the needs of all students. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Tomlinson, C. A. (2000). What is different instruction? In: Callahan, C. M., & Hertberg-Davis, H. L. (Eds.). (2012). Fundamentals of gifted education: Considering multiple perspectives. (pp. 287-300). London: Routledge.

Watts‐Taffe, S., Laster, B. P., Broach, L., Marinak, B., McDonald Connor, C., & Walker‐Dalhouse, D. (2012). Differentiated instruction: Making informed teacher decisions. The Reading Teacher, 66(4), 303-314.

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31 Examples of Differentiated Instruction (2023)

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Differentiation in the classroom is a teaching strategy that involves varying lessons to meet all students' needs. You can differentiate lessons in 4 ways.

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How To Help Students Not Just ‘Pay Attention’ But Take Control Of Learning

by Terry Heick

Agreeing on how to best establish what a learner understands isn’t simple — if for no other reason then understanding itself isn’t simple.

The difference between gamification and game-based learning is important: the former uses encouragement mechanics to promote engagement, while the latter uses video games as core sources of learning material or cognitive action) is one response.

By embedding diverse achievements into activities and assessments, learning progress can be refracted infinitely. These systems would be able to more flexibly respond to unique learner pathways and abilities, and would further serve as encouragement mechanics — instead of one carrot stick, there are hundreds. And not just carrots, but every fruit and vegetable imaginable.

But video games have even more to offer formal learning systems. Lots more. While what actually constitutes a video game is changing with emerging technologies, in these digital playgrounds progress is usually iterative and requires players to demonstrate proficiency in certain areas.

To be able to do this before moving on to that.

How Games Have Mastered Cognitive Engagement

There are tropes in video game mechanics that players almost universally dislike, including ‘training’ sessions, where players must prove to the video game that they can perform a basic function before moving on. Turn left, turn right, jump, pick up an object, open a map, etc.

Unskippable cut scenes that aren’t meaningful or integral to the game itself are also not fun.

A lack of player choice–games where developers lead you down a single path and offer the appearance of choice without offering any agency of note? Not ‘engaging.’

A game that’s too difficult or too easy? Not at all engaging.

A game where the mechanics themselves aren’t engaging–the actions and behaviors that players can actually control–isn’t fun because what you’re doing isn’t engaging. You’re just operating the functions of a pre-determined system that doesn’t need you, wasn’t created for you, doesn’t require specific genius or talent you might have, and looks and sounds and plays the same for every single player regardless of their abilities, background, goals, interests, etc. Sound familiar?

While something like a basic proving ground doesn’t sound bad in theory, it stifles fun because it destroys the players’ own sense of pace, interest, and curiosity. It is a stern reminder that you are playing a game, that the game is in control and you’re only along for the ride, which dissolves immersion as well.

Not much different than school, then.

Most game designers have learned, however. Mandatory training sessions and even unskippable cut scenes — breaks in play that force players to watch videos that may or may not be integral to the game — are less frequent than they were two years ago. They’ve also evolved unlocking. By performing tasks — as minor as opening a treasure chest, or as significant as completing a level — new “things” are unlocked: new areas, new weapons, new characters, new abilities, and so on.

These mechanics serve to encourage the player because to move forward, items need to be checked off — in a manner that is not only visible, but that rewards play, experimentation, and curiosity. And in contrast to the aforementioned mandatory training session, they are incremental, intermittent, often voluntary and reward players immediately.

Climb a mountain or slay a robot enemy? Bam. Shiny new item as a reward, proceeding level unlocked, game completion percentage blinks on the screen. Immediate feedback and visible progress.

Takeaways For Learning

So what’s this have to do with school? A lot, actually.

While there is no single way ‘school is,’ there are general patterns that reward compliance, thoroughness, and punctuality while stifling learner-centeredness, abstraction, and play. What would happen if a student engagement was required to unlock the next assignment in a project-based learning environment? In light of student engagement demonstrating irregular progress rates — especially in middle school — holding a student engagement back because they are struggling with an idea doesn’t make sense.

So video games don’t do that.

While the player ‘struggles’ — i.e., build fluency with a skill or idea — game designers let the player continue to play. To learn. To have skills modeled. To be inspired. Game designers learned to give the game back to the players so they could unlock their own experiences — and inspire the game designers to boot with their ideas.

See also 10 Strategies To Make Learning Feel More Like A Game

Making Them vs Letting Them

Essentially the matter at hand here is personalized learning. Allowing users to proceed at their own pace, to play with ideas and content, and to gain a variety of achievements beyond those educators insist upon. Learning is very much a game. It has rules, rewards, and should be amendable to suit the goals and natural gifts of the learner.

Video games have been forced to change from their linear, closed-ended approach because they are essentially small businesses, and in any business that isn’t ‘making money,’ there is no guarantee of future games.

But for learning environments, the potential loss is much greater.

And so they must at least match this kind of evolution by putting students first, and adapting the game to them. One way of doing so is offering diverse pathways through content to unlock, and offering equally diverse rewards for said unlocking.

1. Design lessons that ‘can’t work’ without student engagement.

2. Design learning experiences so that students see visible progress on a daily basis.

3. Make objectives clear, and offer student engagement multiple ways to accomplish them.

4. Give students the tools to design and build something you hadn’t even considered/never would’ve thought of.

5. Design with iteration in mind: one skill builds on the next, and students need it all to succeed.

6. Use project-based learning where students design the entire process from brainstorming to publishing.

7. Give students malleable learning tools and resources that they can customize, or ‘upgrade’ to fit their approach to learning.

8. Make learning both collaborative and competitive.

9. Consider challenge-based learning and place-based education, where students solve problems important to them, in communities that are watching.

10. Gamify your classroom in a way that focuses not on standards, data, or ‘proficiency,’ but personal progress meaningful to the student.

These approaches, while vague, can help you get the jump on learning engagement in your classroom that parallels the stuff that captivates them so completely on all those digital screens.

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10 Student Engagement Strategies That Empower Learners

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One student engagement strategy is to offer diverse pathways through content--pathways students would have to ‘unlock’ to progress.

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Resources to use and share

These tools make the same 5 questions accessible for different people and moments. Sign up for updates (a few times a year) and follow on Twitter.

Everything here is free. Please use and share. Just attribute, email or tweet your experiences, and ask others to do the same. Thanks to people who shared stories and ideas!

Use the <> buttons at the top right of each row to see more!

All videos have optional captions in YouTube.

Short intros and longer workshops from Ela Ben-Ur

Short stories people contributed from homes, schools, workplaces, and communities (in that order)

Kim, Manuel, and I recap our SXSW EDU 2023 session (social-emotional learning + visual thinking + Innovators' Compass) on the LinkedUp podcast (this YouTube video has links to all video and podcast platforms in the notes).

In this November 2022 podcast, I joined Michael and Donna Dawson sharing their incredible program, Innovators for Purpose (iFp), with host Kyle Wagner. iFp equips teens with Innovators' Compass and many other tools to create positive impact in the world.

In this fun May 2022 interview, Colin Hunter, CEO of PotentialSquared, asks me about human-centered leadership.

In this September 2020 interview for the Massachusetts Computer-Using Educators (MASSCUE) podcast, Brandon Hall is an engaging interviewer-and a great sport, as he jumps into a compass about a challenge the golf team he coaches was experiencing.

Mike Marotta interviews Hillary Goldthwait-Fowles just after a July 2019 workshop they've done together on Inclusive Technology and Universal Design For Learning using Innovators' Compass, in conjunction with the SETT framework. Transcript here.

Dawan Stanford, Director of Design Thinking at Elon University and I talk about making Design Thinking accessible in March 2018.

Bogata-based educator Chris Davis got curious at the end of SXSW Edu in March 2017 about the background of design thinking and my work, and asked me to sit and chat with him for his podcast. Note: the sound dramatically improves at 16:08.

Recorded in August 2015 for their Results May Vary podcast about what would happen if we used Design Thinking in our daily lives, Tracy Deluca and Chris Waugh ask great questions about the development of the compass. While it has evolved considerably since, the discussion is great and the core questions still hold.

By Ela Ben-Ur
I'm honored to have the last chapter "Developing Portable, Powerful Design Thinking: The Innovators' Compass" in the book Taking Design Thinking To School edited by Shelley Goldman and Zaza Kabayadondo of Stanford University's Research in Education and Design Lab (Routledge, November 2016). I can't post it here, but will happily send you a copy.

Short blog post with practical tips, written for the design collaboration platform Mural.co (online sticky notes!), which offers the Compass as one of its framework templates (along with Business Model Canvass, Empathy Maps, and others).

In response to Nicola Chin's thoughtful questions, including: Tell me about your passion project? Who's shoulders are you standing on? Your greatest learning? Challenge? Fear? Risk? Fun? How are you organizing people for this project?

HIGH SCHOOLandCOLLEGECourse descriptions & CURRICULA

More details and materials around Compass-based courses: Caroline Meeks' high school app design course; my design-your-life course at Olin College; and my with-an-older-adult course with anthropologist Caitrin Lynch at Olin College (for which Olin has made an incredible curriculum-share site).

Written with my daughters during COVID lockdown! The Unsticker Sisters and the Battle of the Bricks storybook (the start of a series!) and 5 Questions That Get Us Unstuck. Available as PDFs and video readalouds.

By Others:
Tara Martin's wonderful book about using our human technology to educate includes a chapter about how she adapted and used the Compass to understand and support educators when she began as an administrator. She's also blogged and tweeted about it extensively. Thank you for educating from the heart, Tara, and enabling people to do so-including with Innovators' Compass!􀁧􀁑􀁅

Naomi writes about using Innovators' Compass to as a leader to "navigate my visionary roadmap and overcome the hiccups, bumps, and struggles that are thrown at me unexpectedly."

The authors celebrate the Design Thinking Academy at Grand Valley State University (GVSU), director David Coffey, and their use of Innovators' Compass to for "creative problem solving in 'high impact activities' that contribute to social, civic, and business innovation."

I'm honored and grateful that Tom VanderArk and Justin Aglio posted this lovely, short overview in Education Week and Getting Smart-sharing the Compass with many new educators!

David Coffey writes about using the Compass in the Design Thinking Academy he leads at Grand Valley State University to enable student change-makers on campus and in the community. One event-a workshop with the university President to envision the future of the university-is captured by the school newspaper here, and its outcomes here.

Stacie Hagenbaugh's "life design" work with Smith College students is profiled, including her use of an adapted Innovators' Compass. While we wish they kept her careful attribution, it's a lovely piece.

Jessica mentions Innovators' Compass-and looking for new who, what, when, where, or how in our career-in part 5: Think Iteratively.

"A collection of the most important tools and strategies to help volunteers catalyze and facilitate community building, empowerment, and action." Garrett uses Compass as a tool, and to organize other tools, in Human-Centered Design (primarily), Asset-Based Community Development, Human-Centered Design, and Facilitation. Reach out to him for the full guide or to discuss his experiences. More from him and volunteers in videos above.

Anne-Marie Dorning wrote about Innovators' Compass and its impact at SXSW EDU for the Olin College news channel.

Tanya calls out Innovators' Compass as one of the main takeaways in the Adobe Spark/Flipgrid Student Voice Summit, for building a culture of empathy.

Student teams in Emily Norton's program use Innovators' Compass to discover and prototype ideas for improving life at Smith College ranging from student self-care kits to a speaker series about life after Smith.

Dan's Medium piece highlighting a project he did with his English students using the Compass that bridged English and Engineering to design for characters' needs in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird.

Erin Quinn's medium piece about working with a class to use the Compass, alongside other wonderful tools, to design their own, inclusive, culture.

Psychologist and administrator Ari Yares wrote about the Compass to help his family co-design a way through the chaos of family mornings and lunch packing.

Assistive technology coach Hillary Goldthwait-Fowles shares her and other educators' experiences with the Compass, along with the experiences of participants she helped co-facilitate at the Bates College May Conference 2018.

Trang Trem was part of a 1-week version of an Innovators' Compass-based course at Olin, which Caitrin Lynch and I recreated for students and professors at Fulbright University Vietnam. Her writing about the experience in Fulbright's blog deeply inspired us.

The mission of this work is for it to be able to pass from person to person, without training.

That said, a little contact goes a long way when we're learning and deepening anything new. Please reach out about pay-what-you can webinars and coaching, or in-person workshops and speaking-which are what pay for all the no-cost resources I make available.

INNOVATORS' COMPASS® is a registered trademark and service mark owned by Ela Ben-Ur. The content of this website is protected by copyright.

Many years have gone into the tools shown here so people can use them to make a difference. These tools are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License . You may use, copy, and modify the tools for your own use and not for resale, provided that you:

1. Label them with " InnovatorsCompass.org " -beside and of similar size to any other label, inseparable from the graphic. If using Innovators' Compass verbally, give this full attribution right away.

Do this every time you use/show/share/adapt these materials in any way, and note if it's an adaptation. When you share the original unmodified tools, keep or reproduce my copyright notice and trademark, INNOVATORS' COMPASS®, on each copy.

2. Share back your uses and experiences either by tweet to #innovatorscompass or email to ela@innovatorscompass.org for me and perhaps others to learn from.

3. Remind others to do the two things above.

Please use these tools to make anything better, including the work you are paid to do-just do the 3 things above. If you're considering being paid specifically for teaching/using this tool, please reach out and talk to me.

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All-free graphics, apps, videos, podcasts, and writing to make Innovators' Compass accessible for every person and moment.