Are you wondering what examples of active learning strategies are out there? Let me tell you about my favorite 7! It’s so important to have a grasp of these examples of active learning strategies if you want your students to learn in a fun and engaging way. They will like learning that way better, and you will enjoy teaching better as well. I’ve got just the ideas for active learning for you!
What are active learning strategies? If you’ve ever found your lessons to be boring, or that they were just not cutting it for students to really understand what you wanted them to, then that was probably because they weren’t actively learning. The definition of active learning is ‘an approach to instruction that involves actively engaging students with the course material through discussions, problem solving, case studies, role plays and other methods’. There are several strategies that I’d like to highlight in this post. Here is my active learning strategies list!
Examples of active learning strategies you will love
Class Discussion
One of the examples of active learning strategies is the class discussion. By having a class discussion, you make every student active and alert and in charge of their learning, because they have to participate in the activity. Have a plenary discussion on any given topic (it’s good to provide students with a statement or a question) and have students respond to each other. Discussion asks of learners to think critically on the subject matter and use logic to evaluate their and others’ opinions. It’s a great way to get them talking, both in an in-person setting and online.
Small Group Discussion
Another one of the active learning techniques I use is the small group discussion. This is one of my most used active learning strategies, because it’s quite easy to organize: Just tell students to start talking! This discussion setting gets more students talking for longer than the class discussion because there is more room in a small group. I personally love discussion cards for this active learning moment in the classroom. Discussion cards contain a set of questions for students to debate. Another way is the statement carousel, in which you print a set of statements or questions and stick them to the wall at different points in the classroom. Students must convene in small groups around a statement and discuss it. After a minute or so they rotate to the next statements, and this action is repeated until the groups have discussed all the statements.
Think-Pair-Share
This third example is one of the easiest active learning strategies to organize. I love the think-pair-share approach! You ask student a question or get them to solve a problem and they must take these steps: first, they must think on it individually; then they must pair up with another student and discuss their answers (possibly amend their original one); and last, they must share their answer with the whole class. This active learning method helps students become less insecure about telling the group their answer, because they will have already run it by someone, which is an excellent execution of active learning strategies if I ever saw one.
Expert Groups
Another one of my favorite active learning techniques is expert groups. In this activity students get put into one group to become ‘experts’ on a topic. There are various groups of experts, all on a different topic. When they are done, students are re-divided into new groups, now with one expert from each first group. All students then have to explain their subject to their new group. This activity makes sure that a) students have to take responsibility for becoming the expert, because otherwise it hurts their group mates, and b) students have to explain what they’ve just learned in their own words, which is a great way to retain knowledge. I did this activity when I had expert groups research Hanukah, Diwali, Santa Lucia, and Three Kings Day, and they in turn told their classmates all about these celebrations!
Learning by Teaching
Perhaps the best of the active learning strategies I have for you is learning by teaching. This activity has students do research on a topic that they will teach their peers. This can be new topic or a revision of one they already came across. Learning by teaching is one of the greatest active learning techniques, because it forces students to really get their thoughts straight on the topic and to make sure they understand it well enough themselves before they teach others.
Responding to a Spoken or Written Text
Another one of my active learning strategies in the classroom is getting students to watch a video or read a (passage of) text and respond to what they’ve just seen or read. Give them a question or set of questions beforehand to really engage them throughout. Getting students to respond in spoken or written form to anything they learn is an active learning method in itself, and I try to do this at the end of every one of my lessons, if possible. I have them do this in their journal or out loud in the classroom, and via posting platforms like Padlet or Jamboard in an online setting!
Games!
Now for the funnest of all my active learning strategies: I looooove to play games in my lessons! Games make learning fun, they get students moving, which is good for knowledge retention (more on this topic at a later time), and they are a great way for students to review the course material. My favorites are dominoes, memory, bingo, and Bananagrams, but I have played quizzes a lot too, like Jeopardy and Trivial Pursuit, which are all great for vocabulary or grammar practice. For speaking or writing practice, I love Would you Rather..?, Story Cubes, Tuesday Dilemma, Four Corners, The Odd One Out, and Black Stories. Anything that gets my students moving, and talking, and be active, all while learning, makes my heart beat so much faster!
Active learning strategies in the classroom
So there you have it: my 7 favorite examples of active learning strategies! I hope you enjoyed reading about these active learning strategies and that you found some techniques to make your students’ learning active too!
If you want to know more about small group discussions with statement carousels, click here to read my article on it! Or read the one on speed dating in the classroom, here!
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