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For current themes around teaching and learning in the digital age.

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What do you need to do to quickly develop critical thinking? What teaching methods to use? These questions will appear in the head after the desire to improve the quality of decisions made. The approach to training your thinking is complex and time-consuming. For this reason, many give up halfway.

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Gemma Hudson

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Resources | Global Digital Citizen Foundation

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The Global Digital Citizen Foundation resources list has got something for every teacher, administrator, and student living in the digital age.

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1. Research shows that learners will understand, recall and enjoy these methods more.
2. As the teacher, you have done all the hard work in preparing the class. In the lesson, the learners should be doing the hard work, rather than listening passively.
3. Making your learners more active will tell you (and them) how much they know, or don't, about the subject, allowing you to pitch the lesson more accurately.

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We learn by doing. Research shows that active learning is much better recalled, enjoyed and understood. Active methods require us to 'make our own meaning' , that is, develop our own conceptualisations of what we are learning. During this process we physically make neural connections in our brain, the process we call learning. Passive methods such as listening do not require us to make these neural connections or conceptualisations. Active methods also:

Give the learner feedback on their incomplete understandings and encourage them fix this, for example by helping each other.

Give the teacher feedback on which learners understand, and who needs help

Develop thinking skills such as analysis problem solving, and evaluation

Help learners to use their learning in realistic and useful ways, and see its importance and relevance

Are more fun!

Give the teacher a bit of a rest

Good students may create meaning from passive methods, but weak students do not. Both types of student improve their learning enormously when they are required to use it.

When active methods are compared with traditional methods in careful control group and experimental group comparisons, active methods produce much better achievement. This is true even though the control group (traditional didactic methods) has the same teaching time as the experimental (active learning) group. This is also true at every academic level. For more on this download Active Learning Works: the evidence

Why not experiment with some newish active methods?

Teaching without talking: Here are 25 ways of teaching without talking, that require students to make their own meanings.
Download this here. There is a short videocast by Geoff on this here.

Formative Teaching: These are relatively new active methods that provide the learner and the teacher with feedback.

Visual and Kinesthetic methods: All students benefit from variety, why not try these methods from one chapter of Teaching Today.

How can I encourage my teaching team to use more active methods?

Try the Active Scheme of Work and the supported Experiments pages.

Play this game with your team

There are very many more methods to try in my book - 'Teaching Today: a practical guide' Geoff Petty, 5th Ed (2014) published by Oxford University Press, pages 133 to 343 deal specifically with teaching methods.

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Geoff Petty author of Teaching Today and Evidence Based Teaching. Teaching methods. Active Learning. Teaching skills, creativity, self assessment and Professional Development. Improving the use of the creative process. Evidence Based teaching of creativity.

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1. Set learners some key questions at the start of the lesson.

2. Ask them to attempt these (this can be done individually, in pairs, or teams).

3. At the end of the session they attempt the quiz again - hopefully they and you will see some progress!

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1. In the workshop, pair up learners to show each other their work at the mid-point and/or end of a session.

2. Invite learner A to share something that they're proud of and something that they still need to work on.

3. Invite learner B to give feedback: something positive they notice and something to improve on.

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In the workshop, ask learners to peer assess each other's work by asking them to decide if they would pay for the work done. If not - sort it out!

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There are lots of variations on this activity, which involves learners writing a question or answer on a piece of paper and throwing it to another learner to answer, or extend.

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The purpose of the snowball fight strategy is to predict, summarize, justify, and think critically. Teachers can adapt the strategy to their own purposes.

First,have students write the answer to a poignant content-related question on a piece of paper. Students then crumple their paper into a "snowball." Then, students throw their "snowballs" across the room and retrieve one that is not their own. Students then open the "snowball" and respond in some way to the content of the "snowball." Finally, you can ask the next question, and allow the students to write the next answer on the paper they have and repeat the process.

Modify the process to meet your classroom needs.

The Snowball Fight activity enforces writing, responding to text, critical thinking, justifying, and collaboration. The anonymity of the activity encourages students to respond even if they are unsure of the "right" answer.

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The purpose of the snowball fight strategy is to predict, summarize, justify, and think critically. Teachers can adapt the strategy to their own purposes. First,have students write the answer to a poignant content-related question on a piece of paper. Students then crumple their paper into a "snowball."

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Market Place (from Paul Ginnis' Teacher's Toolkit book - copies  in the LRC) 

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Market Place (from Paul Ginnis' Teacher's Toolkit book - copies  in the LRC) 

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1. Learners in groups are given some, but not all, the information on the topic.
2. They become "experts on their topic and can create a poster summarising the info.
3. "Shoppers" from each group then go and gather information from the other groups.
4. Shoppers return to the original group and teach them the new content.
5. All learners complete a quiz based on the entire content.

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This post is the first in a series of many that is open to every teacher who would like to share their BEST lesson (or many great lessons) with the global teaching community. Through careful and flexible lesson planning, how do you encourage students to actively learn in whatever pedagogical guise you design?

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A completely learner-centred way of building technical terminology.

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You can use all three of these strategies, or mix and match:

1. At the beginning of a lesson, ask learners to write down what they would like to know about today's topic.

2. At the mid-point, ask them whether their question has been answered and get them, in pairs, to write (an) other question(s) to test (an)other learner(s) on the content so far. Learners can then take it in turns to fire questions at each other. A bean bag or soft toy can be used here.

3. At the end of a lesson, ask the learners in small groups to design a quiz to test their peers. They can then compete in teams to answer as many questions as possible correctly.

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1. Give learners in pairs a copy of one or more of the Power point slides from the lesson. They learn the content in preparation to teach their peers.
2. Regroup to create two groups with one "expert" from the pairs in each group.
3. Learners take it in turns to share their knowledge.
4. Monitor carefully and highlight any errors at the end.
5. Follow up with a test based on the content.

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Use the title of each slide as a prompt. This works best if the title is a question. Show learners the title only and ask them to predict in pairs what the content of the slide will be. They can then listen and check as you introduce the points.