A selection from my own teaching and facilitation practice, organized by topic
Alice Cassidy
Note: there are more examples in a 2009 publication (see Publications and other Resources), and its continuously updated version found here:
Ways to get to know everyone at the start of a course:
Intro Survey: [Done out on the first day of class, even before handing out the course syllabus. As a hard copy handout, collected as students complete it. I use the responses to create a Human Bingo icebreaker for next class, and refer to some of the responses to kick off lessons and sections of the course that connect.]
Do not include your name. This will be returned to you for future use.
Given the following definition of ‘<course name or topic>’: “<provide definition here>”, respond to these questions:
- List one or two topics of interest to you that might fall into the above definition.
- What is a topic or issue currently in the media that relates to the above definition?
- What are one or two of your favourite outdoor activities?
- What are one or two other things that you enjoy in your life?
- What is one organization in the community might relate to human ecology?
- What do you hope to achieve from taking this course? (besides a high mark of course!)
- What will you contribute to this course?
- With a simple drawing inside the space below [it is a square of approximately 2” x 2”], illustrate what you are thinking about <topic of course>.]
Human bingo Icebreaker: Create a bingo sheet with equal sized squares in 5 rows and 5 columns (you can easily create this in Word using the table function, or if you contact me, I am happy to send you the template I designed). I usually have the middle square as a ‘wild card’. Note various attributes in the remaining squares, either by ‘guess-estimating’ things that might be true of some or many of your participants (speaks 2 or more languages, enjoys outdoor activities, has lived in a country other than Canada) or that you have determined in advance through some sort of survey (such as the Intro Survey described above) or needs assessment. Leave space in each square for them to print in one or two names.
Give each person a bingo sheet and explain how bingo works (that you win when you have a completed line, either horizontal, vertical or diagonal). Ask them to meet others in the class and print in one name (or two, if you make more time for this activity) of people who have that attribute. As soon as someone has a line, ask him or her to call out Bingo. You may want to give a small prize, and/or ask them to introduce the students that make up the winning line (or have them form a line so that others in the class get to know everyone.). You can do this as part of a class, or over several classes (for example, inviting them to get started on their bingo sheets as soon as they get to class; if you do this, you might want to have another small prize for the person who completes their full bingo sheet first. I had success with this over first three classes, asking students to get started on their Bingo as soon as they get to class.)
I have also designed bingo sheets that relate to a particular class, where people need to fill in definitions, or a question they have, or how they would research it, etc.. It works very well to keep learners actively focused on the material. If your lesson has 5 key points in it, you might want to have a square for each of the points, including only the first letter of the point. As you introduce each point, say, in the example from my course, B = biodiversity; L = life cycles, etc. and have students fill in the full word.
Personal Philosophy Statement: [Sent electronically to students, sometimes even before term has started. Students get credit for this, as one of several ‘in-class assignments’ that over the years has ranged from 3-6% of the grade, and works well to encourage students to attend as many or all classes as possible.]
Consider the following definition of ‘<course name or topic>’: “<provide definition here>”
Write your <Course Name or Topic> Personal Philosophy Statement: what do you believe to be important about <topic> and why? Don’t think too hard about it; write your first impressions. Aim for about 100 words.
This is intended to be your ‘before’ statement for comparison and reflection later in the course, when you will write your ‘after’ statement. Keep your own copy, so you can refer to it for the later assignment. You will get credit for completing this assignment (as an in-class assignment) by the deadline.
Email it to me at <my email address> using subject heading <course name> Statement. Include it in the body of the email (not an attachment), starting with your full name and preferred email address at the top, by <deadline>. (I will use your email address to create a list to share with the class.) We will incorporate excerpts of the Statements in selected classes, but unless you choose to share an excerpt from yours, authors will not be identified.
When remembering and recalling are the first steps:
Mnemonic: You could suggest this memory tool, usually for remembering things that are ordered, but not always, or have your students come up with their own. One example, to remember the order of musical keys: All good boys deserve fudge (AGBDF). HOMES helps to recall the names of the five great lakes (Heron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior). The order used in taxonomic classification (Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, (Sub-phylum), Class, (Sub-class), Order, Family, Genus, Species) could be recalled by reciting: “Dumb kids playing catch on freeway get squashed.” Of course NEWS stands for north, east, west, south. I sometimes create a mnemonic of the items I need to remember to buy at the grocery store, or the items to order on my pizza (BOO is one of my favourite: bacon, onions, olives), but if I also want mushrooms, BOOM it is!)
You can find lots more examples, including my preferred way to recall how many days are in each month using my knuckles, as well as examples organized by academic discipline at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic
Flash Cards: Have students create these individually, in small groups, or as a whole class. Students can use them in pairs during drills, or, depending on the size of your class, you might break students into groups and you use the flash cards to test their memorization skills in a bit of a contest-environment. Challenge the students to create some other sort of game to make best use of the flash cards.
Jeopardy-like game: This one might build on the flash card activity, using material in the flash cards, or stand-alone. Create a digital (e.g. PowerPoint) or low-tech (e.g. cardboard and paper) board with five categories. Under each category are five questions (or answers, like in the TV game show) related to the course and organized by point values. Students (perhaps in teams for some added competition) choose a question (or answer) and the first team to respond correctly gets the points. If they are wrong, points are subtracted. This game works really well for fact-based memory and recall, and the fast pace appeals to students.
Brainstorming recall: When students are required to recall a list of items (the longer the better), take a set amount of time during class and ask them to call out each item, while you, or perhaps a fellow student, notes them down on the board, flipchart or into a projected electronic document. Depending on the size of your class, you might break the class into groups and have simultaneous brainstorming recall going on, returning to the whole group afterwards to compare lists.
Quick snapper quiz: First make sure each student is ready with paper and pencil, and with rows or lines numbered on their page for the number of questions you will ask (no more than 20 is recommended). Call out questions that require easy one-two word answers. Students write down the answer to # 1, # 2 and so on. The idea is that you ask these questions quite quickly. If they don’t know one, they leave it blank so they are ready for next question. Remember: quickly is the key here. Once finished, you could ask students to fold their paper (with their name on it, or a symbol they will recognize if you prefer) then give it to the person next to them, then the next, then the next (so it is not obvious whose paper is whose). Now, you could do a number of things, such as: 1) go back through each question and have someone say what they think the answer is (maybe students who got it wrong now see the correct answer on the paper they are ‘marking’), and ask students to write in the correct answer for any that are not correct, or are blank on the paper they are marking; or 2) as you go back through each question you give the answer. Have students place a right or wrong on the paper they are marking, then pass them back until each student gets their test paper back. Another adaptation is that students do not pass their paper to anyone, but as you go through each question, ask who thinks they have the right answer, and they can self-mark.
Self-test: Depending on your discipline and the specific details that students need to memorize and recall, adapt this activity accordingly.
Example 1: I learned, through a combination of university courses, field practice and private study, how to identify the birds of North America. And, I could fairly accurately open the bird field guide to the place where the ducks, gulls, owls, sparrows, etc. were found. Then I went to Australia. There are groups of birds there that are not in North America: rollers, bee-eaters, parrots, barbets. For the first few birds I saw in the field, I found myself looking through the fat field guide, page by page, to see what kind of bird I was looking at: “Oh, that’s a kind of roller!” But, because I was interested and wanted to more quickly find the right pages, I got faster and better. Soon, I could say, “Oh, another bee-eater”, and open the book to the pages of bee-eaters for my final ID.
Example 2: I am facilitating an interactive workshop for teachers on instructional skills. Each participant will lead a short lesson, incorporating (in this particular model) six elements, then receive various kinds of feedback on it. When I am working one-on-one with the participant, getting their views on how the lesson went and how they used each of the six elements to encourage learning, I sure don’t want to have to have the list in front of me. I need to know those six elements. And of course, they make sense to me, but they were just a list of six items when I first heard of them. I saw the list many times each time I led this workshop, and also practiced and applied the model in my own lessons, until it became second nature.
Several ways to ‘hear all voices’ in class:
Think-pair (square) share: In the classic think-pair-share, you pose a question to the class, and ask people to think about a response on their own, then pair up and share with their neighbour. After a few minutes, ask for some examples to be shared. The beauty of this technique is that everyone is actively involved, and because each pair of students has shared responses, they are usually more likely to share them with the whole class than if you posed the question and asked for responses right away. A related technique that can be particularly useful in large classes is to do the above, but then ask each pair of students to connect with another pair and share. At this point, you can still ask for examples, or you could ask for a show of hands: “How many quartets had exactly the same response?” This can be a good way to make a point about complex real-world problems – there is not usually only one correct answer. Or you could use it to dispel misconceptions about the question, or to show the range of viewpoints possible. It depends on the topic and the specific question you pose.
Write on an index card: You can have people do this at the start, middle or end of a class. You might collect and use them in another activity. It invites total participation. It could be ‘I have a question’, where you stop the lesson at an appropriate place and have students pose a question they have now, as it relates to the topic. You could either collect them, sort by similarity and address some, or have students do that as a group activity, or shuffle them up and redistribute, asking for volunteers to read them out (of course that way you don’t see them ahead of time.)
Ask for a ‘ticket to class’: I have done this to ensure pre-readings or other preparation is done. One example is a newspaper article about Killer Whales and PCBs to prepare students (in this case who are not majoring in biology) to conduct scholarly research in the discipline. Along with this assigned pre-reading, I give each student a coloured slip of paper (1 of 3 colours). Each colour is a different question, such as ‘What words in the article would you use to find out more about the subject in a web search?’; ‘What would you do first to find a peer-reviewed journal article that relates to this article?’ Come to class with your answer. I have given the ‘tickets’ to a reference librarian, who is leading a computer session for the students to teach them about databases, google scholar, etc. The student answers on the tickets end up guiding the computer lab, showing the students that we are helping them using their own words, hence it is highly relevant to them.
Students left with skills they could use, in this case for their first research essay, due about a week or so after the computer session.
Other index card uses: Find out what your learners know, don’t know, or want to know. Or to ‘warm up’ or prepare people for what is coming next. For example, you could ask each person to write down his or her definition of a term that you will be addressing in an upcoming lesson. Collect the cards. Depending on class size, you don’t have to promise to read all of them, but perhaps a sample. When you get to the class or lesson that involves that term, you might give some examples from the index cards, or shuffle them up and hand them out. Once you put the term up, ask for a show of hands: “How many of you think what is written on the index card is correct?” and go on from there. This can be a great way to show people how close they were, or how completely incorrect they were (either way, promoting interest in the lesson that is about to start.)
Ways to build feedback into your course:
Across assignments: Students have an individual research essay assignment early in term, then a group research essay later in term. The criteria for each assignment are almost identical, though of course the essay topics were unique. The only difference in the feedback is that for the second assignment, a portion of the mark is for how well students incorporated the feedback suggested in the first assignment. I am happy to send you my templates if you would like to use or adapt them.
Peer- and self-assessment: For group assignments, ask students to complete and submit a confidential form wherein they assess how well they, and other members of their group met particular expectations (that are clearly noted in the assignment). Examples might include meeting deadlines, providing feedback, dividing up the workload, etc.. I found that even though I never used the information provided as part of the students’ grades, the fact that they were given these forms at the start of the project helped them to pre-empt the most common problems that can arise during group work.
One-minute paper or ‘muddiest point’ (a specific example of a one-minute paper, from Cross and Angelo): Good for receiving feedback on how a particular class went, what students got out of it, and/or, what they are struggling with. A one-minute paper may ask students “what is one thing you learned in class today” and/or “one thing I most want to explore more about is…”. ‘Muddiest point’ may ask “for you, what is the least clear part of today’s class?”. Depending on the size of the class, do not promise to read all of the responses, but say you will look through and see what trends arise. Be sure to address something from these in the next class. This can be a good way to encourage students to come to class on time as well: “I shall address the most common ‘muddiest point’ at the very start of next class.”
Human Statue: This activity can take as little as one minute and can be done ‘on the fly’, such as when interest seems to be waning, or there seems to be a good time to ask everyone ‘how’s it going?’. It works like an energizer too. Start by asking people to “show me how you are feeling, or what you are thinking”. Tell them they may stand or sit and they don’t have to take part. On count of 3, freeze in the form of a statue. In debriefing the activity, do one or all of the following: Ask participants to look at other statues. You describe some of them (pondering, thankful, confused). Ask if one or two people will describe what their statue means. Thank everyone for taking part.
Group work:
Jigsaw, an example of Cooperative Learning: [Here we want participants to first read something on their own, then discuss that reading with others who read the same thing, then form new groups where each person is the 'expert' on reading. They inform and are informed by others.]
What we tell people: We have distributed three different brief readings, each on a different coloured sheet of paper.
(5 min) People with the same coloured sheets of paper get together (make groups of about 6 in size, or adjust depending on the number of people in the room; a minimum group size of 3 is recommended.)
Please read your reading (tell them how much time for this), then discuss it in your group who have read the same article or excerpt. You are in your ‘Expert Group’.
Discuss how this technique might be applied to yours (or any teaching and learning situation)
(10 min) Number off in this group (1-3 if <= 18, 1-6 if > 18). All 1s go together, all 2s, and all 3s. You are now in your ‘Base Group’. Teach the others in your group what you read about. Leave time for each ‘expert’ to share his or her main points. (Give time)
You can also do this with one reading, where you have divided it into sections, with each group being responsible for certain parts. Once the discussion starts, the whole article makes sense to everyone, but no one person has to read the whole thing (but I invite them to do so after class time; and it will make more sense to them having done this in-class activity.)
Other ways to have total involvement:
‘Pass it on’: This is an activity that can work very well in a large room with fixed seats (as well as any size group or classroom) Ask each person to take out a half-sheet of paper or give them an index card that they can pass around the room. Ask them to note down something that relates to what you have been doing in the class (be sure to let them know that whatever they write will be shared). It can be something that they do, think or believe or it can be a fact you presented, or it can be a question they want to ask others. Give them 1-2 minutes, then ask them to fold it in half, and pass it along X number of spaces (enough that it is not obvious who wrote what). They then open it, and either add a comment, or a question, or edit it (depends on what you asked them to do). You can vary the number of passes, depending on time; in the end, it has to come back to the person who wrote it. You can then either move on, or ask people to say what they got out of the edits. It has a nice component of quiet writing and reflection, but is also very active, and can link to small group or whole class discussions.
Throw a snowball: Everyone is involved. Contributions are shared. It’s quick and fun. And it can give you information too (if you collect all of them afterwards.). To do it, have everyone prepared with a half-sheet of loose paper. Ask them to print (legibly) their response to your posed question on the sheet (and tell them it will be shared with others). Now, ask them to crumple it into a loose ‘snowball’, gently toss it into the group, then pick one up and read it. You could ask for 1-2 examples to be read out loud, or you could collect them all, type up and share with the class.
Way to invite students to connect the course to current events:
What’s news? Design in-class activities where students connect current events and issues to course material. I do this as a ‘flexible assignment’ choice whereby students can speak to the class about this briefly (2-5 minutes), or they can build it into a short lesson (12-15 minutes) that they teach the class (after having me okay their draft lesson plan). I also encourage students to connect current events and issues into their learning portfolio final assignments (see the publication below that describes this). Finally, I bring current events to class to introduce a new topic; the article can be factual, controversial, or opinion (or sometimes all three at once!).
