🎓 Shake It Up: 5 Active Learning Strategies Your Students Will Love

What’s Inside This Week:

• The Big Picture: 5 Easy to Use Hands-On Learning Activities

• Classroom Hack: Enhance your Classroom’s Organization

• Connecting the Dots: Links to my Favorite Educational Highlights from this Week

Happy Tuesday,

I hope your week is off to a great start. In this weeks Thinking Cap, we’re taking a closer look at easy ways to drive student engagement: active learning strategies. As teachers, we should remember that learning isn’t just about listening, it’s also about interacting, doing, and discovery.

Continue reading below to get an in depth explanation of some of my favorite active learning strategies and easy tips for how to use them.

-Brandon

🏆 5 Active Learning Techniques for Great Student Engagement

This week I wanted to include activities that I thought would be the easiest to implement and try in your classroom.

I handpicked activities that are not only straightforward to integrate into your lesson plans, but also require no additional materials or prep.

1. Jigsaw Activity

• What it is

  The Jigsaw Activity divides the class into groups, with each group being responsible for becoming “experts” on a specific part of the lesson topic.

  The class is then re-organized into new groups so that each new group has one member from each “expert” group that is responsible for sharing and teaching their information with the new group.

• Why it’s great

  This method cultivates a learning community reliant on collaboration and accountability. It ensures that each student plays an essential role in the learning process and reinforces the idea that every member's understanding is vital to the group's overall success.

2. Gallery Walk

• What it is

  A Gallery Walk sets up stations (like an art gallery) around the classroom, each displaying a different concept, question, or piece of student work. Students walk through the gallery, engaging with the material, and often leave verbal feedback or written reflections.

• Why it’s great

  It turns learning into an active exploration, gets students physically moving, and sparks curiosity. This technique also allows students to absorb ideas at their own pace and offers a tactile and visual dimension to the learning experience.

3. Peer Teaching

• What it is

  Peer Teaching invites students to take the reins and instruct each other on the course material. My favorite way to do this is with review packets and by making it a competition between groups to see which “teacher’s” group can get the most correct.

• Why it’s great

  The act of teaching reinforces the student's own learning and understanding. Furthermore, it allows students to communicate in a language that is often more relatable to their peers, potentially clarifying concepts that were previously muddy.

4. Think-Pair-Share

• What it is

  This three-step collaborative learning strategy has students first think independently about a question or challenge, then discuss their ideas with a partner, and finally share their insights with the class. It’s probably the most commonly used Active Learning Technique in classes today.

• Why it’s great

  Think-Pair-Share can energize a classroom and create an inclusive learning environment. It allows for individual reflection, cooperative discussion, and broad sharing which caters to different learning styles and promotes communication skills.

5. Role Playing

• What it is

  Role Playing engages students in a dramatization of a real-world scenario related to the lesson. Students act out roles in scripted or unscripted scenes, engaging in debates, decision making, and conflict resolution.

  This one is the trickiest. I’ve written math “plays” before where students act out problems at a crime scene or a grocery store that are math word problems. It is a fun way to break up the monotony of certain topics.

• Why it’s great

  It’s a powerful way to bring abstract concepts to life and encourage students to think critically about real-life applications of their lessons.

✏️ Steal this Classroom Hack:

• File Storage Boxes

• Hanging File Folders

• Plastic Desktop Organizers

• 6 Cube Storage Cabinet

👍 Why I love this hack:

What I love about this organizational setup is how it boosts students' independence and makes their daily routines and procedures much smoother.

Each file folder is clearly labeled so students can quickly grab an extra handout, missing assignments, or supplemental activities. The folders inside are easy for the students to find and use.

I’ve used a set up like this in my classroom for many years and I think it’s a great way to take one thing off of a teachers plate and teach your students how to be more independent and responsible for their own education.

✅ Have a classroom hack that you would like to share? 

Reply to this email and let me know what awesome hack you’ve created. (I can even include it in next weeks newsletter - with a shout out, of course!)

📚 Highlights from this Week:

• Cornell’s Active Learning: A more detailed summary of the Benefits and How to Get Started with Active Learning (Link)

• What Great Teachers Do Differently: This best-seller identifies 19 key traits that distinguish exceptional teachers, adding fresh insights on the importance of relationships, learning environments, and adaptable classroom management styles to inspire educators of all levels to make a meaningful impact on their students. (Link)

• Mathcation: Use code 5Dollars on a Monthly Membership to get your first month for just $5! (Link)

Thank you for reading The Thinking Cap!

Please share this email if you got something out of it.

Send me a reply if you have something to share with me and I will respond to you. (Seriously, I read and respond to all my replies)

As a participate in the Amazon Services LLC Associate Program, this post may contain affiliate links. As an Amazon Influencer, I earn from qualifying purchases.