play Jeopardy (Check out YouTube to learn how to use
PowerPoint make a jeopardy board). Sometimes, we have
an indoor snowball fight. Have students write down a
question or comment about the previous night’s homework. Wad it up. Throw it. Each student finds a snowball. Open it. Share questions. You can use this activity
for other things as well. I like it because it allows for
anonymous submission.
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room” is credited to Colorado high school chemistry
teachers, Jonathan Bergman and Aaron Sams who wrote
and published a book in 2007.
Google it, and you’ll see that many others (point
to 717,000) have also published and posted information
about flipping. In the flipped classroom, students study
course content outside of class and classroom time is spent
solving applying that knowledge.
7. Work in Groups
I have my students working in small groups nearly every day. This encourages the same type of collaboration experiences they will find in the real world. I usually have them work in groups of 3 or 4. Two is too few – if
one of them is shy or unprepared, it puts too much burden on the partner. Groups of more than 4 allow someone to hide.
To teach course content outside of class, you can
record your own lectures or use other great resources
such as McGraw Hill’s Connect, TED Talks
(www.ted.com), Khan Academy, and there’s always
YouTube.
In the flipped classroom, students who are absent
due to illness, busy schedules, or other commitments are
less likely to be left behind. Flipping helps students of all
abilities to succeed because slower
learners can pause, rewind, learn at
their own pace. Faster learners can
breeze through course content and
avoid boredom.
Once flipping has allowed you to engage your students
outside the classroom, now you
have to engage them in the classroom.
6. Strategically Structure Groups
“If I’m not having fun
teaching, I know my
students aren’t
having fun learning.”
- Lynda Ohs
I rarely let students select their
groups. If I do, they end up sitting
with the same students every class
period. I use many techniques to
structure groups.
Sometimes I use playing cards to
structure groups. I like this because
it allows many ways to mix students
up – all the aces together or AKQJ’s
together.
Sometimes I strategically
assign groups. When I teach how to correctly create a
PowerPoint presentation, I make the leader someone who
has done many PPTs. And I pair him or her with someone
who hasn’t done any.
9. Begin class with a 10 minute
warm up activity.
You don’t engage in hard exercise without warming up, right? Don’t expect your students to engage in
rigorous discussion without warming up. I try to keep
the warm up relevant to course content – but ultimately,
it’s about getting warmed up.
Late in the semester, after students know each
other pretty well, I let students act as team leaders and
they select their group members. A student can only be a
team leader once. Leaders select team members while the
rest of the class waits in the hall. I do this when the group
activity is somewhat competitive and I am offering a few
bonus points…which are highly coveted in my class. Because it is competitive, when they choose their team, they
don’t always choose their best buddies – they choose people they expect have studied the material. This technique
is excellent at distributing ability levels.
I use many different types of warm
ups. Sometimes we play the game BLURT which gives a
brief definition of a word and students BLURT it out
when they know it Sometimes we play the drawing game,
Pictionary. (You could have your students draw parts of a
cell, different kinds of angles, famous monuments, moments in history, bones in the body.) Sometimes we play
Guesstures (like charades). Sometimes we play the game
Apples to Apples. The idea is to get them excited to come to
class on time and quickly become engaged. It really works!
5. Employ hands-on, kinesthetic lessons.
You’ve likely heard the saying: "Tell me and I'll
forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I'll
understand." We know that knowledge learned via memorization is particularly susceptible to the use it or lose it
phenomenon. But Dr. Judy Willis, a neurologist and ad-
8. Follow the warm up with a 10 to 15 minute content
review.
I use many different methods of reviewing content. Sometimes we take a group quiz. Sometimes we
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