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20 interac ve teaching ac vi es for

in the interac ve classroom
by Ruben Knapen — Jun 13, 2018

Interac ve teaching is all about instruc ng the students in a way they are
ac vely involved with their learning process. There are different ways to
create an involvement like this. Most of the me it’s through

teacher-student interac on
student-student interac on
the use of audio, visuals, video
hands-on demonstra ons and exercises

You encourage your students to be ac ve members of your class, thinking

on their own, using their brains, resul ng in long-term memory reten on.
Not only the students' knowledge will improve, but their interest,
strength, knowledge, team spirit and freedom of expression will increase
as well.

In this blog post, I will talk about the use of interac ve methods for
teaching, encouraging more dedica on towards the lesson material. We
will see some interac ve teaching tools, interac ve teaching ideas, and
interac ve teaching games.
Not only will I talk about the use of interac ve methods of teaching, but
I’ll also give you some examples of methods used in the present
classroom as well.

Ready? Here are some of the most effec ve ways to engage your pupils!

3 Effec ve interac ve teaching strategies to

encourage speech
Share in your classroom
First, I want to put some ac vi es in the spotlight. The following
interac ve student ac vi es are three of the most effec ve ways to
encourage more speech in your classroom.

1. Think, pair and share

Set a problem or a ques on around a certain topic, and pair
up your students. Give each pair of students enough me so
they can reach a proper conclusion, and permit the kids to
share their conclusion in their voice. This way your students
will be engaged, communica ng, and remember more of the class than
ever before.

2. Brainstorming
Interac ve brainstorming is mostly performed in group
sessions. The process is useful for genera ng crea ve
thoughts and ideas. Brainstorming helps students learn to
work together, and above all, learn from each other. You’ll be
surprised by all the great ideas they come up with! Check out these 8 fun
brainstorming apps you can use in your classroom, or use BookWidgets'
Mindmap widget to structure thinking.

3. Buzz session
Par cipants come together in session groups that focus on a
single topic. Within each group, every student contributes
thoughts and ideas. Encourage discussion and collabora on
among the students within each group. Everyone should
learn from each other’s input and experiences. As a teacher, you could
give your students some keywords to spark the conversa on.

Of course, there are many other interac ve teaching ideas as well. I split
up the ac vi es in different categories:

Individual student ac vi es
Student pair ac vi es
Student group ac vi es
Interac ve game ac vi es

Individual student ac vi es
4. Exit slips
These are best used at the end of the class session. You’ll ask
the students to write for one minute on a specific ques on.
It might be generalized to “what was the most important thing
you learned today”. Then, you can decide if you are going to
open up a conversa on about it in your next class. You can ask them if
they s ll remember what they wrote down. Need a digital exit slip
template? Try this one from BookWidgets and learn more about the
possibili es of an exit slip.

5. Misconcep on check
Share
 Discover students' misconcep ons. See if students can
iden fy what is the correct answer when given a false fact.
It’s useful when going over a previous lesson. It encourages
students to think deeply and wager all the possibili es.

6. Circle the ques ons

Make a worksheet or a survey that has a list of ques ons
(make them specific) about your topic, and ask students to
circle (or check) the ones they don’t know the answers to.
Then, let them turn in the paper.

Create corners concerning different ques ons that were circled. Let your
students work on the extra exercises and explana on in the corners,
individually. As your students will all have circled different ques ons, you
have to give each student a different and personalized order to visit the
corners.

7. Ask the winner

Ask students to silently solve a problem on the board. A er
revealing the answer, instruct those who got it right to raise
their hands (and keep them raised). Then, all other students
have to talk to someone with a raised hand to be er
understand the ques on and how to solve it next me.

Student pair ac vi es
8. Pair-share-repeat
A er a Think-pair-share experience, which I’ve wri en about
in the first interac ve learning lesson idea, you can also ask
students to find a new partner and share the wisdom of the
old partnership to this new partner.

9. Teacher and student

Let students brainstorm the main points of the last lesson.
Then, pair up your students and assign them 2 roles. One of
them is the teacher, and the other the student. The teacher’s
job is to sketch the main points, while the student’s job is to
cross off points on his list as they are men oned and come up with 2 to 3
points that the teacher missed.

10. Wisdom from another

A er an individual brainstorm or crea ve ac vity, pair
students to share their results. Then, call for volunteers who
found their partner’s work to be interes ng or exemplary.
Students are o en more willing to share the work of fellow
students publicly than their work. Of course, you can always encourage
sharing their objec ves as well.

11. Forced debate

Share
Let students debate in pairs. Students must defend the opposite side of
their personal opinion. It encourages them to step away from
their own beliefs and teaches them to look through a
different colored glass once in a while.

Varia on: one half of the class takes one posi on, the other half takes the
other posi on. Students line up and face each other. Each student may
only speak once so that all students on both sides can engage the issue.

12. Op mist/Pessimist
In pairs, students take opposite emo onal sides of a case
study, statement, or topic. Encourage them to be empathic
and truly “live” the case study. You’ll discover some good
solu on proposals and your students will learn some
excep onal social skills.

13. Peer review wri ng task

To assist students with a wri ng assignment, encourage them
to exchange dra s with a partner. The partner reads the
essay and writes a three-paragraph response: the first
paragraph outlines the strengths of the essay, the second
paragraph discusses the essay’s problems, and the third paragraph is a
descrip on of what the partner would focus on in revision if it were her
essay. Students can learn a lot from each other and themselves as well!
Here are 10 more crea ve self-assessment ideas.

Student group ac vi es
14. Board rota on
This interac ve learning strategy is even more interac ve
than others! Divide your class into different groups of
students and assign them to each of the boards you’ve set
up in the room. Assign one topic/ques on per board. A er
each group writes an answer, they rotate to the next board. Here, they
write their answer below the first answer of the previous group. Let them
go around the room un l all the groups have covered all the boards. Not
that many boards in your classroom? Try using tablets and BookWidgets'
interac ve whiteboard.

15. Pick the Winner

Divide the class into groups and let them work on the same
topic/problem. Let them record an answer/strategy on paper
or digitally. Then, ask the groups to switch with a nearby
group and let them evaluate their answer. A er a few
minutes, allow each set of groups to merge and ask them to select the
best answer from the two choices, which will be presented to the
complete class.

16. Movie Applica on

Share
In groups, students discuss examples of movies that made use of a
concept or event discussed in class, trying to iden fy at least
one way the movie makers got it right, and one way they got
it wrong. Think about movies showing historical facts,
geographical facts, biographies of famous people, …

Interac ve game ac vi es
Create an interac ve classroom full of interac ve learning games. Games
are so much fun for students since it doesn’t feel like learning. With
BookWidgets, you can make interac ve learning games like crossword
puzzles, pair matching games, bingo games, jigsaw puzzles, memory
games, and many more in minutes (and there’s a Google Classroom
integra on as well).

17. Crossword puzzle

The crossword game is perfect to use as repe on ac vity.
Choose a list of words and their descrip on, and
BookWidgets creates an interac ve crossword for you. The
crossword game transforms these boring lessons into a fun
experience. Here you can read more about how to create them and for
which topics you can use them (not only for teaching languages)!

18. Scrabble
Use the chapter (or course) tle as the pool of le ers from
which to make words (e.g., mitochondrial DNA), and allow
teams to brainstorm as many words relevant to the topic as
possible. You can also actually play scrabble and ask students
to form words from the newly learned vocabulary.

19. Who/what am I?
Tape a term or name on the back of each student. You can
also tape it on their forehead. Each student walks around the
room, asking “yes or no” ques ons to the other students in
an effort to guess the term. Of course, the term has
something to do with your lesson topic.

20. Bingo
Bingo is a fun game that can be used for all sorts of
exercises: language exercises, introductory games, math
exercises, etc. Take a look at this blog post with all the
different bingo possibili es here. You’ll be surprised about
how many interac ve lesson ac vi es you can do with just one game.

Want to create a bingo game yourself? You can start for free right here:

Create a Bingo Game

Wrap up
Share
That’s it! Like in any list, you could add many other interac ve teaching
ideas. I could go on for quite a while myself. But what about you? Tell me
about your crea ve, interac ve classroom ideas by adding them to this
Padlet board below. This way, we can build out this ar cle with many
more great ideas!

One more thing… Don’t forget to share! ;)

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LUCIE RENARD  +  362D

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Interactive teaching activities

Tell me about your creative, interactive classroom ideas with the focus on
INTERACTIVE. Don't forget to mention the number in your title!
3. Buzz sessionParticipants come together in session
groups that focus on a single topic. Within each group,
every student contributes thoughts and ideas.
Encourage discussion and collaboration among the
students within each group. Everyone should learn from
one another’s input and experiences. As a teacher, you
could give your students some keywords to spark the
conversation.

Anonymous 2d
3. Buzz sessionParticipants come together in session groups that focus on a single topic. Within each group,
t d t t ib t th ht d id E di i d ll b ti th t d t

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