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Want to learn about the Six Bricks play based activities? 

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Want to learn about the Six Bricks play based activities? 

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All these activities can be modified and used for any discipline and any grade; just think a little more!

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Use these while planning your lessons

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Aha! Graphic organisers, you will fall in love with!

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Aha! Graphic organisers, you will fall in love with!

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These are amazing indeed!

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This is an amazing resource for you!

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Dotmocracy

Size: Entire class

Time: Unrestricted

Activity

Pointers:

This is a great activity to use after brainstorming to assess the interests of the class and focus on one of the issues students highlighted in greater depth later on during the class.

For more facilitation strategies, see http://dotmocracy.org/ opens in new window

Snowball

Size: Entire class

Time: 30-40 minutes, or longer depending on discussion

Activity

1. Present an idea, question, or issue to students. Each student first thinks about the idea/question/issue for one minute, with the goal of generating at least three reactions, comments, answers, etc.

2. Two students then come together with their lists and try to come up with three things they agree on.

3. The pairs of students then join with another pair, and try to come up with three things they agree on. Repeat for as many iterations as desired.

4. Eventually, bring the class together as a group to hear what the students have decided are the three most important issues, questions, ideas relevant to the topic discussed.

Example

In an international relations class, ask students "What are the key traits of a good mediator?" Most groups will identify neutrality as one of the key trait in Western cultures, providing a bridge to a discussion of differences in the role of mediators in the Middle East, where mediators' role is to take sides and support the weaker party in a dispute.

Pointers:

For some issues, it may be difficult to reach consensus on the "three most important issues"

This discussion model can be time-consuming.

Fishbowl

Size: Entire class

Time: Unrestricted

Activity

The group observing will either observe the process, the content, or both depending on the desired outcome. After the activity, you can have groups give feedback to each other, either on a group to group basis, individually, or in pairs. If you feel that the learners are not ready for public feedback, ask them to provide feedback to each other in pairs or in writing.

Pointers:

For some issues, it may be difficult to reach consensus on the "three most important issues".

This discussion model can be time-consuming.

Think-Pair-Share

Size: Individual and pairs

Time: 1 class

Pointers:

This activity encourages students to think about answers on their own first before talking with other students.

Avoid asking simple/recall type questions: this activity works best when students are challenged to think through a more complex or complicated idea.

The benefits of the 3 step process are two-fold: first, students are generally more comfortable presenting ideas to a group with the support of a partner; second, students' ideas have become more refined through this three-step process.

Adaptable for Online Learning? This could be done by breaking students into small chat rooms, or pairing students up to message with each other, then having their group post their points to a larger discussion board.

Think Aloud

Size: Pairs

Time: 1 class

Activity

1. Choose 2-3 paragraphs of new text for students to read.

2. Students work in pairs (student A gets text 1, and student B gets text 2).

3. One student reads a passage of text aloud, and while reading they stop frequently to "think" aloud. The reader stops after every few sentences, and reflects on what they have read. (This process is awkward, and weird for most. Let students know this, and that it is ok!)

4. Model this activity very briefly for students with a sample text.

5. Once student A finishes their text, student B then performs their think aloud. Give students 15-20 minutes to perform this part of the activity.

6. Bring the class back together as a group. Go over each of the texts, then perform a think aloud as a class, asking students to contribute what they were thinking about at each point.

7. Finally, conclude class with a "Meta-moment": ask students what they thought of the activity, and what they will take away to their next reading. (This can take the form of a 1-minute paper!)

Pointers:

Think aloud is frequently used in text based disciplines such as English, Comparative Literature or History. At the end of this activity, students will have developed their ability to engage in a close reading of the text, and will be able to explain their thinking process.

An analogy that helps students understand the process is comparing it to math: Much like a mathematician must show their work when solving an equation, so must a student in the Arts & Humanities when explaining their thinking and reasoning process.

Adaptable for Online Learning? In the online environment, students can annotate the text instead and add comments.
Additional Resources

Calder, L. and Carlson, S. "Using "Think Alouds" to Evaluate Deep Understanding opens in new window ..

Ericsson, K. and Simon, H. Protocol Analysis; Verbal Reports as Data. (Revised edition). MIT Press, 1993.

Ericsson, K. and Simon, H. "How to Study Thinking in Everyday Life: Contrasting Think-Aloud Protocols with Descriptions and Explanations of Thinking opens in new window ." Mind, Culture, & Activity, 1998: 176-186.

Wade, S. "Using Think Alouds to Assess Comprehension opens in new window ." The Reading Teacher, 1990: 442-451.

Weimer, M. "Think Alouds Shed Light on How Students Grapple with Content opens in new window ." 2012.

Wineburg, S. Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past. Temple University Press, 2001. Ch 3 & 4.

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Dotmocracy Size: Entire class Time: Unrestricted Pointers: This is a great activity to use after brainstorming to assess the interests of the class and focus on one of the issues students highlighted in greater depth later on during the class.

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Grab new ideas here!

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STEM Resources | STEM activities, infographics, printables | MIND

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MIND Research Institute offers a variety of helpful resources such as games, activities, printables, and more from us and similar organizations.

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Some inspiring resources here!

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MIND has created free instructional resources to support schools and families. Here you’ll find workbooks and resources to inspire mathematical thinking.

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A toddler scoops up mud, loving the way it squishes between his fingers. As he brings the wet, cool clump to his lips his caretaker warns, "No! That's gross!" He puts it in his mouth anyway and a moment later his face wrinkles, he starts crying and spitting out the dirt.
Humans learn through this same basic process throughout life -- not by being told, but by doing. We're hardwired to learn by interacting with the world around us and then perceiving the results. Neuroscientists call this simple yet powerful system the perception-action cycle.

What is the Perception-Action Cycle?

Neuroscientists describe human learning through the perception-action cycle.

Our brain makes sense of the world around us by creating and testing hypotheses about the way the world works.

When presented with new situations, our brain makes predictions based on past experiences, takes action based on those hypotheses, perceives the results and adjusts its hypotheses.

All goal directed behavior is performed within the broad context of the perception-action cycle, which is grounded on a basic biological principle: the circular cybernetic flow of cognitive information that links the organism to its environment.
- Joaquín M. Fuster, Physiology of Executive Functions: The Perception-Action Cycle

In general, the posterior brain areas handle sensory perception such as seeing and hearing, while the more frontal brain regions are in charge of motor skills, planning and decision-making. The front and back of the brain work together, with information flowing between them.

Before we make a decision or take action, the prefrontal cortex is involved in considering both the information it is receiving from the back of the brain (perceptions), as well as stored memories or experiences that relate to it. The prefrontal cortex helps make a prediction of what will happen and initiates the appropriate body movement.

As the brain perceives the result of the action made by the body, it either reinforces the brain's existing neural networks of understanding about how the world works, or begins to create new ones.

The perception-action cycle is this continuous flow of information and action between the brain and the world around it. On and on it goes: sense, predict, act, adjust. Sense, predict, act, adjust.
The perception-action cycle is a feedback loop helping us build an understanding of how the world works.
For example, if you see a cup, you know what it is and what to do with it, even if you've never seen that exact cup before. And you don't even have to think about it, because your brain has already built circuitry dedicated to its understanding of cups.

In fact, you have a rich network of understanding, what Piaget called schemas, about cups. Your brain also has associated movements connected to those schemas - you automatically reach for a coffee mug differently than a wine glass. And you don't have to think about that, either.

Knowledge like this that gets encoded in our brain through the perception-action cycle is extremely powerful and easy to retrieve. And that's what makes the perception-action cycle so valuable: it is the natural, auto matic way we make sense of the world around us, and decide how to live in that world.

The Importance of Movement

Movement is key to triggering the perception-action cycle: a person must take physical action to change the world around them, and then observe the result of that action.

One of the reasons scientists believe motor processes help learners retain information is that movements provide additional cues with which to retrieve knowledge.

Seeing, hearing, and acting on information all activate different neural pathways in the brain. As a result, the learner has multiple avenues their brain can then use to retrieve the information later - even in situations like tests that don't involve movement.

Consider this example . Researchers showed both trained dancers and non-dancers the same dance video, measuring the brain activity of both groups. They found greater activity in the brain regions responsible for movement among the dancers than the non-dancers who watched the same video.

Why? The dancers had made great use of the perception-action cycle through their dance training, encoding the information required to perform dance moves. When they viewed the dance video, their brain accessed that information even though they weren't moving.

The Perception-action Cycle in School

When we understand how important the perception-action cycle is to learning, it's clear that we need to put it to use in school.

Manipulatives that allow students to get hands-on with the content they are learning are one straight forward way to kick the the perception-action cycle into gear. For example, exploring subtraction with counting cubes can help students develop a conceptual understanding of basic arithmetic.

But the perception-action cycle is also critical to learning with visual and symbolic representations of actions. Research shows that using mental pictures to imagine how a 3D object looks when rotated, or using motions to simulate new vocabulary words, engages the perception-action cycle and improves student learning.

In fact, scientists have found that even small movements like pointing to numbers in an equation - or interactive touchscreens like iPads - provide opportunities to invoke the perception-action cycle that results in deeper learning.

Much like a toddler and a puddle of mud, we learn best when we - literally- get our hands dirty and interact with the world.

Sources and Further Reading:

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What the Perception-Action Cycle Tells Us About How the Brain Learns

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A toddler scoops up mud, loving the way it squishes between his fingers. As he brings the wet, cool clump to his lips his caretaker warns, "No! That's gross!" He puts it in his mouth anyway and a moment later his face wrinkles, he starts crying and spitting out the dirt.

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In 2003 I thought I was an awesome teacher. After a year or so at an urban high school in Los Angeles I was finally being let loose on an Algebra 2 class. This was going to be fantastic. These were the kids who really got math, the ones who would hang on to my every word, and learn at my slightest suggestion. A few weeks into the semester I vividly remember deriving the equation of an ellipse on the board, and then excitedly turning around to see my students awestruck reaction to this beautiful mathematical brilliance... or not! Most of them had their heads down on their desks and were actually asleep.

This, and I'm sad to say many similar experiences, finally caused me to radically change the way I taught math as a classroom teacher. I ceased to be a deliverer of passive learning experiences and became a designer and facilitator of active ones, where my students became the drivers of their own understanding of the math concepts . Not an easy transition, but the difference in outcomes for my students was pretty extreme over time: not only did their engagement level in my classes radically improve, but so did their standardized test scores!

Technology Alone Isn't the Answer

Success in the classroom led me to explore ways to utilize technology to work with students at an even greater scale. I recorded videos of me solving math problems and put them online, I used adaptive quizzes to target online math textbook materials to the students that needed them, and I gave my students online badges and points as they completed my courses. And test scores went... down! I realised I was doing it all wrong again! No picture better captures how badly I was using technology than this:

Drawn by the French artist Villemard in 1910, it's a vision of what learning might look like in the year 2000, and it's eerily prescient: The teacher puts the books into the machine, which then grinds them up and pipes them directly into the heads of the kids, presumably in perfect "personalized" chunks so that each student receives exactly the information they need when they need it based upon some adaptive quiz... sound familiar?

If I was guilty of using technology to replicate my awful passive teaching methodology from my Algebra 2 class, then it has to be said, I was not alone. My course design echoes the vast majority of technology-based learning materials in use in schools across the country today, and, it has to be said, most schools' criteria when evaluating technology is a checklist of factors that only exacerbates this problem: "Is it adaptive?", "It is a personalized learning system?", "Does it cover all the standards?" No one asks "What does active learning look like in this system?"

Active Learning is Deeper Learning

Five years ago, I finally found genuine technology-based active learning while visiting a middle school in South Central Los Angeles and saw a classroom full of students playing ST Math . Students were playing game-based learning activities, figuring out challenging puzzles and were all deeply engaged in these materials designed with the neuroscience of learning at the fore.

In an active learning environment, students learn by doing, activating the brain's perception-action cycle. MIND's team of brain researchers, mathematicians, and content designers have simulated this process in the virtual environment of the ST Math animated puzzles: Students use their perception to analyze the initial state of a game/puzzle, they make a prediction about what will happen, then they take some action in the game and observe the outcome as immediate informative feedback. Then students adjust their thinking and try again until they figure it out. This is active learning, active problem solving and the foundation students need to succeed in today's world.

Watch this presentation to see the active learning process in ST Math:
Nigel Nisbet, Vice President of Content Creation, leads a team of content specialists in building engaging, interactive and visual games that teach all students how math really works.

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Active vs. Passive: The Science of Learning

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In 2003 I thought I was an awesome teacher. After a year or so at an urban high school in Los Angeles I was finally being let loose on an Algebra 2 class. This was going to be fantastic.

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What keeps instructors from implementing active learning more often?

Unfortunately, sometimes implementing active learning activities can feel like a hassle. It takes more preparation work for teachers to plan active learning exercises when compared to traditional lecture formats, which isn't always something limited time allows for. Moreover, the activities themselves take more class time, constraining teachers to compromise on other study materials. The lack of support, materials, and budget, as well as class size, are just a few of the constraints which make it difficult to realistically implement some active learning strategies. Finally, many instructors who have done well as lecturers so far might just not be inclined to redesign their current curriculum or reassess their teaching styles [4] [5].

Within online learning environments, active learning implementation is even more challenging for instructors due to the lack of physical interaction.

The biggest issue concerns student engagement and retention while studying remotely. In a face-to-face classroom, physical contacts are readily available and are therefore often taken for granted. Online teaching, however, can require more effort from educators due to the absence of these physical interactions. Students turning off their zoom video, or keeping silent during online discussions are some common scenarios when teaching online.

Aside from lack of interactivity, technical overload remains a barrier in facilitating active learning. It can be overwhelming for both teachers and students to get familiar with different online platforms and teaching tools. Not to mention internet connection, unavailability of learning infrastructure, or geographical differences, which can also greatly hinder teachers from effectively issuing active learning.

Each of these obstacles or barriers however, can be successfully overcome through careful planning, and with the help of pedagogical technology.

What are the most common active learning strategies?

There are a number of learning activities and strategies that can be used to exercise active learning. In other words, "The active learning strategies comprise different activities that share the common elements of involving learners in doing things and thinking about the things they are doing." [7]

Considering this definition, what should we categorize as active learning methods? Several researchers have proposed a list of active learning strategies to be used by instructors in higher education contexts, which are:

1. Collaborative learning
2. Discussion activities: group discussion, case study, and brainstorming
3. Role play
4. Games involving simulation of imaginary situations
5. Problem-based learning
6. Projects (individual or group)
7. Peer teaching
8. Debates
9. Short demonstrations followed by class discussion, etc

These activities have been proven effective in producing successful and competent learning environments. However, it is important that instructors make sure the active learning strategies selected align with the course learning objectives. Remember, the goal of active learning is not simply for students to do things, but to also think about what they are doing. As you learn more about these strategies, consider how effective each would be in promoting the learning you desire from your students.

As listed, discussion can be an effective strategy to promote active learning. Indeed, if the objectives of a course are to sharpen students' critical thinking, promote long-term retention of information or to use logic to evaluate other's position, then a discussion can be preferable to a lecture [1]. ‍

"If the objectives of a course are to promote long-term retention of information, [...] then a discussion is preferable to lecture." - Wilbert McKeachie, Teaching and Learning in the College Classroom. A Review of the Research Literature

Several additional strategies promoting active learning have been similarly shown to benefit students' attitudes and achievements - for example, visual-based instruction, in-class writing, and peer teaching. In short, there are many alternatives to traditional classrooms that teachers can readily add to their repertoire of instructional skills.

Here are some questions to think about when selecting an active learning strategy:

1. Which skill(s) should my students be able to demonstrate by the end of our online class session?
2. Which active learning strategy will allow my students to practice this skill?
3. When will my students encounter and engage with information and ideas?
4. When will they reflect on what they've learned?

Any of these active learning components can be done before, during, or after the online class session.

While inserting new teaching methods may be challenging, a plethora of digital learning tools can make life simpler for professors, for example helping them reflect on their pedagogical approach, and making their teaching more inclusive. It should be remembered however, that when incorporating technology-based activities, teachers should still be able to deliver engaging stories and anecdotes, and organize fun activities that they have tested and relied upon in the classroom that come from their own irreplaceable experience.

At FeedbackFruits, we center active learning and interaction in the development of each of our solutions. Our suite of pedagogical tools put the student in the driver's seat of their own learning trajectory, to actively involve them in their learning - from Peer Review, where students review each other's work and give each other feedback, as opposed to just waiting for their teachers to do so, to Interactive Study Materials, where teachers activate students through discussion prompts, questions, and the opportunity for sharing perspectives and engaging in a dialogue with their peers.

Conclusion and takeaways

Using active learning strategies does not require abandoning the lecture format, or downplaying the importance of a teacher-student relationship. Rather, adding even small active learning strategies can make a big difference in student learning and engagement. These activities give students time to check their understanding of recent material, practice a skill, or highlight gaps in their knowledge.

An excellent first step for teachers toward implementing active learning strategies is to select the strategies that one can feel comfortable with. It is equally important, however, that faculty developers, academic administrators, educational researchers, and higher education staff, in general, recognize the need to provide follow-up to, and support for, teachers' efforts to change. After all, teaching is, and always will be, a team effort.

Read more on our What is ...? series:

What exactly is collaborative learning?

What is team-based learning?

What is course design and why it can make the difference between learning and yawning in class?

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What is active learning and how to optimize it in online learning?

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Unfortunately, sometimes implementing active learning activities can feel like a hassle. It takes more preparation work for teachers to plan active learning exercises when compared to traditional lecture formats, which isn't always something limited time allows for. Moreover, the activities themselves take more class time, constraining teachers to compromise on other study materials.

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Traditional teaching styles typically rely on students learning class material passively, which encompasses listening to lectures and taking notes. However, research examining effective pedagogy tends to support teaching styles that are geared more towards students learning actively (e.g., by engaging students in problem solving; Michel, Cater, & Varela, 2009; Wingfield & Black, 2005).