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my journal, my final thoughts

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greetings from Elena...we are waiting for you in Italy

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greetings from Elena...we are waiting for you in Italy

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Knowing Spanish flag through TEDEdLesson

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Interact with your audience using real-time voting. No installations or downloads required - and it’s free!

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Providing feedback that moves learning forward

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Facts about Butterflies for Kids | Classroom Learning Video

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All Posts

Written by Justin Raudys

Category

Teaching Strategies

Teaching Tools

As a teacher, one of your biggest challenges is to plan lessons that inspire your students to stay actively involved in the learning process.

But you've probably noticed that traditional, teacher-centered learning plans aren't always conducive to achieving that inspiration.

That's where active learning strategies come into play. You can use them to empower, engage, and stimulate a classroom by putting students at the center of the learning process.

Get inspired by these 8 strategies that will help students talk more openly, think more creatively and -- ultimately -- become more engaged in the process of learning.

This article is accompanied by a downloadable list of active learning strategies to keep at your desk for quick reference.

Active Learning Strategies

1. Reciprocal questioning

Use reciprocal questioning to encourage an open dialogue in which students take on the role of the teacher and create their own questions about a topic, reading section, or lesson.

After covering a topic of your choice in class -- or after assigning a reading selection -- divide the class into pairs or small groups and have students come up with a few questions for discussion with the rest of the class. To facilitate the process, you can provide students with "question stems," which provide a foundation for a question but still require students to think critically about a lesson, text, or other section of material by completing the query. Consider the examples below.
Comprehension Question Stems
Describe x in your own words. What does y mean? Why is z important? How could x be used to y?
Connector Question Stems
Explain how x and why z. In what ways are x and y similar? In what ways are x and y different? How does x tie in with that we learned before?

Use these question stems to anchor and explore concepts in course material, helping students investigate a range of new topics and points of view associated with your lesson.

Much like student-generated test questions -- a type of of experiential learning activity -- reciprocal questioning involves students in the learning process to help build their comprehension of course material.

Reciprocal questioning can be particularly useful when:

Preparing for tests or exams

Introducing a new topic or section of course content

Discussing reading or writing materials in greater detail

2. Three step interviews

A cooperative learning strategy, the three step interview encourages students to develop active listening skills by quizzing one another, sharing their thoughts, and taking notes.

To use the three step interview process, divide students into groups of three, and assign three roles: interviewer, interviewee, and notetaker.

After also assigning a theme or topic of discussion, have students participate in a five to 10 minute interview to discuss what they found to be the key information relating to the topic.

After each interview, have students rotate roles. Depending on factors including the grade level of your students and their experience with the strategy, you may adjust the length of the time for each interview.
One interpretation of the three-step interview process. Feel free to experiment with the duration and number of students involved in these steps. Image courtesy: Kagan Publishing
Before using the strategy, you may find it useful to have students explore the types of questions reporters ask in interviews and at what point in an interview they ask them. You may also want to provide recording sheets to use when they are assigned the "reporter" role.

The three-step interview confers benefits including:

Helping students learn and apply different questioning strategies

Strengthening students' connection with course material in a creative and engaging way

Producing a sense of accountability, with students working together to complete a task and grasp a lesson

3. The pause procedure

Use the pause procedure to intersperse strategic pauses into your class lectures and enhance student understanding of teaching materials.

To use the pause procedure, arrange for pauses of two to three minutes between every 10 to 15 minutes of lecture time.

During these brief breaks, encourage students to discuss or rework their notes in pairs to clarify key points covered, raise questions, and solve problems posed by the instructor.

Alternatively, students can work together to write a paragraph that connects or highlights key ideas set out in their partner's notes.

A 2014 study concluded that breaking a lecture into brief pauses can increase student attention and learning outcomes. The pause procedure, the study determined, is "a good active learning strategy which helps students review their notes, reflect on them, discuss and explain the key ideas with their partners."

The use of the pause procedure involves a minimal amount of extra time, but can confer significant benefits in comparison to lectures that continue without breaks.

4. The muddiest point technique

The muddiest point technique involves asking students to write notes on the most unclear or most confusing element of a given homework assignment, lecture, or class discussion.

Asking students to write down what they find to be the least clear is a powerful exercise because it compels them to grade or rate their own knowledge of a topic.

In short, the exercise helps students reflect on the lesson and identify concepts needing further examination or study.
Example of a "muddiest point" handout to issue to students. Image source: TeachersPayTeachers.
From your perspective, the activity can serve as an insightful source of feedback.

For example, if more than a quarter of the class mentions the same "muddiest point," you may wish to schedule a further time to discuss that topic, or create a new lesson plan or assignment to tackle it.

5. The devil's advocate approach

The devil's advocate approach asks one or more students to take the opposing side of a predominant argument or point of view being discussed during a lesson.

Once you have completed an assignment or lesson plan, select a topic that is suitable for discussion and debate. The topic should serve as an appropriate subject for providing arguments from both sides.

The activity is flexible and should be tailored to suit your students' grade level. In its simplest form, divide the class into two sections and coordinate a class-wide debate based on a selected topic. Alternatively, you may have students annotate reading texts and respond to contentions by creating counterarguments. Then, have students debate the proposals discussed during a mock town hall meeting.

While this approach can be used across a number of grade levels and subjects, consider this list of thematic claims used as primers for a devil's advocate activity in a secondary ELA class.
Image source: Bespoke Classroom.
This approach can help cultivate active learning in the classroom by encouraging students to:

Think more critically, challenging participants to expand their understanding of the perspectives surrounding an issue and to view it through a different lens

Become more engaged, fostering involvement by drawing out opinions to explore the complexity of an issue being studied

Produce a deeper understanding of topics or issues, using rigorous analysis to collectively clarify, probe, and pose alternatives to problems being discussed

According to a study published in the Journal of Theory, Research and Action in Urban Education, the devil's advocate approach can help students become "more familiar with a...topic and its multifaceted viewpoints." The same study concludes that a classroom using this strategy can:

6. Peer teaching activities

A flexible and multi-faceted approach to active learning, peer instruction encompasses a range of scenarios where students instruct skills or explain concepts to classmates.

Some popular options include:

Reading buddies - A cooperative learning strategy that pairs two students who work together to read an assigned text.

Cross-age peer tutoring - A peer learning strategy involving students in different grades, wherein which one student instructs another on the material in which the first student is advanced and the second student is a novice.

Role play - A group of students is split into smaller groups and given a specific task to complete, like in small group work. However, in addition to working on a specific task, the members of each group are asked to play a certain "role". Unlike in traditional role-play, all members of one group play the same role, not individually assigned roles.

Peer teaching activities help boost vital skills and behaviors including student interaction, accountability, group processing.

7. Game-based learning platforms

Game-based learning platforms and depth and differentiation to the educational process and allow students to work with their instructors to achieve their learning objectives.

Eric Sheninger, a principal, author, and Senior Fellow at the International Center for Leadership in Education (ICLE), writes passionately about the use of technology as an active learning tool. In his article " Shifting From Passive to Active Learning," he writes:

Math games and websites are at the forefront of delivering active learning through technology. One example is Prodigy, a platform that constantly adjusts questions to tackle student trouble spots and delivers math problems with words, charts pictures, and numbers. Better yet, educational content is free to access and aligned with curricula for grades 1 to 8 teachers.

Create and sign into your free teacher account.
8. Rotating chair group discussions

Rotating chair group discussions encourage students to actively listen to selected speakers who follow a pattern of guiding class discussion and summarizing previous points. Students lead and stimulate class discussion as they "rotate" roles, repeatedly selecting the following speaker.

To use this strategy effectively, ensure that students adhere to the following pattern:

When a student wishes to participate, they must raise their hand

The student who is speaking calls on the next speaker, ideally someone who has not yet contributed

The student who has been called upon briefly summarizes what the previous student said before developing the idea further

This process can be repeated across a variety of topics, with your guidance to stay on track and help stuck students.

The benefits of rotating chair group discussions are not only limited to the speakers. Knowing that they may be called upon to summarize the previous topic, all students are engaged in attentive listening, frequently jotting down notes and ideas to stay on track in the spaces between speaking.

Moreover, students are put into a scenario where they learn from their colleagues' ideas, sparking new considerations of material in an active and engaging way.

This strategy is rewarding for students because it encourages powerful and direct engagement with course material.

The Teacher's Role in the Active Learning Classroom

While active learning places an emphasis on the student's role in the learning experience, there is no doubt that the success of any active learning strategy starts with the thought and planning of a conscientious instructor.

"Overall," a 2011 study found, "teachers play an influential role in increasing students' situational interest in the active-learning classroom," while factors like a teacher's social connection with students and subject matter expertise "significantly influence the level of students' situational interest in the active learning classroom."

And, critically, the benefits of active learning go both ways, helping teachers as well as students.

As active learning advocate James Ballencia writes,

As many of the techniques above are open-ended, the active learning strategies underpinning them may differentiate for different types of learners. Be sure to consider how you can differentiate instruction while still enjoying the benefits of these active learning strategies.

Active Learning Techniques: Key Questions

To help the success of these strategies, put yourself in your students' position and imagine how they might experience it. This will help you get a feel for the lesson.

When applying any of these strategies for your course, be sure to ask yourself:

Will this be engaging and exciting for my students?

Can this activity deploy formative assessment strategies?

Is the student placed at the center of this learning strategy?

Will this encourage my students to discuss a topic with one another?

Am I giving students the opportunity to reflect on the learning process?

Is this activity getting my students to think deeply and critically about a topic or lesson or is it simply a comprehension exercise?

Making Space for Active Learning Strategies

While all of the active learning strategies outlined above can be deployed in traditional, lecture-oriented classrooms, the physical arrangement of your room and the number of students in the class can make some of them difficult to perform easily.

While a flexible seating classroom arrangement may ease this challenge, such a solution is not always possible. Plan these exercises with the limitations of your physical space carefully, being mindful of the environmental constraints posed by the unique arrangements of some of the strategies above.

Final Thoughts on Active Learning Strategies

Active learning plainly puts the focus on the learner: what the learner does, what the learner thinks, and how the learner behaves.

But, crucially, active learning doesn't simply happen with a few simple instructions: it occurs in the classroom where the teacher is committed to a learning environment that makes active learning possible.

Ultimately, these active learning strategies will help build understanding rather than memorization of facts, giving students the confidence to apply learning to different problems and contexts and achieve greater autonomy over their learning.

And, after all, that's exactly makes active learning "active": putting students at the center of the learning process as they take the initiative to learn.

Downloadable List of the 8 Active Learning Strategies
Click here to download the list of strategies to print and keep at your desk.
Create or log in to your teacher account on Prodigy -- a game-based learning platform that assesses student progress and performance as they play. Aligned with a growing list of curricula across the world, over 800,000 teachers and 30 million students have signed up to Prodigy Math Game.

Comprehension Question Stems Connector Question Stems

The Muddiest Point: Sample Phrasing What have you found to be the muddiest point so far in this assignment? What topic do you find to be the least clear?

Image source: Bespoke Classroom.

"provide students with multiple perspectives, and challenge students with tough questions. In such a classroom, students will become more engaged and students' critical thinking and writing skills will be enriched."

Some popular options include:

It is really about how students use devices to create artifacts of learning that demonstrate conceptual mastery through relevant application and evaluation...Give kids challenging problems to solve that have more than one right answer and let them use technology to show that they understand. This is the epitome of active learning...

With the goal of teaching mindful learners who actively pursue knowledge, teachers become more actively engaged in how they teach the curriculum and how they develop each student's learning potential. They mix and match a variety of ... tactics to ensure that students not only learn more, better, and faster -- they also learn smarter.

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8 Active Learning Strategies and Examples [+ Downloadable List]

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All Posts Written by Justin Raudys Category Teaching Strategies Teaching Tools As a teacher, one of your biggest challenges is to plan lessons that inspire your students to stay actively involved in the learning process. But you've probably noticed that traditional, teacher-centered learning plans aren't always conducive to achieving that inspiration.

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MAKING A DIFFERENCE! The lesson aims : -to create awareness and new patterns of behaviour towards the environment - to talk about pollution, deforestation, endangered species, green house effect and the impact on our daily lives and environment

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Here you can find all the tools we used along the course :-)

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Here you can find all the tools we used along the course :-)

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Here you can find all the tools we’ve used along the week :-)

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A padlet for the staff, related to the extracurricular activities week. Each day, teachers are required to upload pictures, videos, audio bits or youtube videos about the activities held either in or outside school.

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Another great tool you can add to your lessons!

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Another great tool you can add to your lessons!

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What To Do Under Quarantine?

You'll have to take our word for it that the wheel landed on Phone an old friend. Your browser cannot display the wheel of choices. Please upgrade to a newer browser that supports HTML5 (most new ones do). Wheel Decide would normally show a wheel right here with choices that you can set (lunch, games, dinner, anything!). You can spin it to get a random decision. Make your own wheel of dinner, wheel of fortune, wheel of lunch, wheel of whatever you want now!

What's Wheel Decide?

Wheel Decide is a free online spinner tool that allows you to create your own digital wheels for decision making, prize giveaways, raffles, games, and more. Browse through our wheels and spin to randomize your life and make the decisions that have no wrong answers.

Decision Making

Let the wheel decide. Save your energy for the big decisions

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Can't decide? Wheel Decide for you! Set your own custom choices and then spin the wheel to make the random decision of lunch, movie, or anything! Make your own wheel of dinner or whatever now!

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A great site with videos, quotes and many more to get inspiration for your lessons!

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Welcome | The Foundation for a Better Life

See our new PSAs featuring amazing music like "Kindness" by Steven Curtis Chapman, "Roar" by Katy Perry, "Brave" by Sara Bareilles, "Kind and Generous" by Natalie Merchant, "Count On Me" by Bruno Mars, and "I Won't Let Go" by Rascal Flatts.

Kindness

Featuring "Kindness" by Steven Curtis Chapman

Roar

Featuring "Roar" by Katy Perry

Three Pointer

Featuring "Brave" by Sara Bareilles

Gratitude

Featuring "Kind and Generous" by Natalie Merchant

Loyalty

Featuring "Count On Me" by Bruno Mars

Haircut

Featuring "I Won't Let Go" by Rascal Flatts

See Our Full PSA Collection

Media Companies: Our PSAs are available for nationwide broadcast as part of our ongoing promotion of positive human values. We also offer out-of-home and radio PSAs as well. Visit passiton-media.com for more info.

New Pass It On® Billboard Campaign

We are excited to share our new billboards with a collection of timely and inspiring messages.

See New Billboards

DAILY INSPIRATION

Get our daily inspirational quote & value idea in your inbox each weekday! Enter your email below to subscribe. It's free!

FOUNDED IN 2000

We started over twenty years ago to promote positive role models and remind people of the values we all share. We don't sell anything or accept monetary donations.

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ZERO POLITICAL OR RELIGIOUS AFFILIATIONS

We are not affiliated with any religious group nor do we have any political affiliation (either formally or informally). We exist solely to create & share uplifting messages that hopefully inspire everyone.

COUNTRIES / TERRITORIES

Our billboards and television ads promoting universally positive values have appeared all over the world and in several languages.

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Welcome to the website of the Foundation for a Better Life. The values we live by are worth more when we #PassItOn.

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Great videos for children & you also have the tool itself for you to explore :-)

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gonoodle "go noodle" "brain breaks in the classroom" "brain break dance" "brain break songs" "brain breaks just dance" "movement break" "classroom movement b...

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Welcome To GoNoodle! GoNoodle gets kids moving to be their strongest, bravest, silliest, smartest, bestest selves. Join the party and get ready for a fun-filled day of dancing, stretching, running, jumping, deep breathing, and wiggling with GoNoodle. We post new videos every Sunday, Monday, and Thursdays!

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Here you can find Online educational games :-)

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Here you can find Online educational games :-)

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ABCya! • ABCya! • Learning Games and Apps for Kids

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Educational games for grades PreK through 6 that will keep kids engaged and having fun. Topics include math, reading, typing, just-for-fun logic games… and more!

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Good tool to create quick, differentiated activities!

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Good tool to create quick, differentiated activities!

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Fast and easy to use tools for creating quizzes and formative assessments in a flash.

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A great tool to help writing or speaking!

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A great tool to help writing or speaking!

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Insights Explore insights from TED-Ed community

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Gustavo Dudamel ~ Danzón No. 2 (Marquez) ~ Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar

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Insights Explore insights from TED-Ed community

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My city and hometown in Ireland! Askeaton, Co.Limerick :)

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Limerick is in the south west of Ireland. It is where I grew up :)

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Visit our country!

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Best Group ever!

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When teaching a grammar lesson, we can use the QR code in the and to solve some grammar issues.
With literary text, we can use QR code in order to understand and interpretate the text

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In our school the reception is very crowded, because the parents ask for talking with teachers....but we have a good solution: QR code lets us to inform parents about interview time

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-Class Novel- Audio review. This would be very beneficial for the less able pupils who find reading and writing difficult.
-Spelling and Tables challenges.
-PE activities. Scan QR code to see the different exercises to complete.
-Art activities.
-Drama. For example, charades.

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Times tables challenges (maths)
Easter egg hunt (fun)
PE activities
Audio voice over on traditional posters for SESE subjects
Assessment games like what is the Irish for 'food' etc.
Novel reviews (english)
Art - How to link videos - mystery drawings etc.
Drama - links to scenarios they have to complete in groups, everyone has to guess what is happening
Music - audio clips of different instruments and children have to guess what is playing

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missing home a little

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Sat Strejnicu, Prahova, Romania

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fantastic atmosphere

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having a nice course

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yuhuu

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Nice climate, nice people, nice food, good red wine...taxi? drivers don't like taxes

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That's a perfect morning!

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hello message

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u

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wow

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Green Week schedule

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How much do you remembre about each other's shared information on session? :-)

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Take a look at the video. Then sign in for the tool and create your first Padlet :-)

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Check on Tricider to remember how it works :-)

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tricider - online voting and decision making

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Some extra help to explore Google Slides :-)

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interesting interdisciplinary approaches to increase the flexibility of the didactic intervention. these approaches combined with digital platforms allow pupils to achieve meaningful competences

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Uses for google slides in the classroom - Gráinne 

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Uses for google slides in the classroom - Gráinne 

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Groupwork
Introducing a topic (KWL chart)
Projects