The person doing the talking is the person doing the thinking.
We know that when students talk, question, discuss, justify, debate, answer and explain their thinking, they own the learning. When we plan our virtual lessons, we need to use what we know to meaningfully translate effective teaching practices into a virtual setting.
Educators have all participated in countless trainings showing us ways to increase student engagement through active participation. “Turn and talk,” a highly effective participation strategy, is difficult in a virtual setting without the use of break-out rooms, which many districts are no longer allowing because there is no teacher to monitor what is happening in the break-out rooms. One of the signs of an engaged student is that they feel safe in their environment. We cannot sacrifice safety in the name of active participation. Truly engaged students feel they have a supportive environment, opportunities for success, value in their ideas and are in a safe place.
We know what we want — we want our students to talk to each other, we want them to own their learning, we want them to see that their thoughts and ideas are valued. In a virtual setting, we get to create a new model of active participation that will lead to engaged students. After spending the summer Zooming with large and small groups, we put together our Top 10 Active Participation Strategies!
- Academic Signs One way to quickly engage all students is through the use of signs. These can be sent home in student packets or emailed to parents to have them print. These signs include academic answers such as “true,” “false,” “agree,” “disagree,” “?” “idea,” “ready to answer,” “I’d like to add,” or multiple choice answers. This requires the teacher to plan the questions ahead of time so that they will know when they want the students to hold up the signs. Giving students a cue like, “We will hold up True/False in 3 seconds,” allows the students think time and gives them a cue that all can participate at the same time. We’ve created these signs for you to download from our shop to use with your class.
- No Hands Necessary. Eliminate hand raising in your class whether in person or virtual! This will increase the likelihood of the student thinking because they will not be able to hide behind the quick thinkers that raise their hands. When you call on any student in a virtual setting, this will require all students to listen, think and be ready to answer.
- Whip Around A whip around requires every student to participate in a fast manner with a short answer. If every student is assigned a number, you can ask a question and have the whole class answer in number order or starting from a specific number. These questions can be “What was your answer to the number talk?” or “Which strategy was most like your thinking?” or “How do you think the character felt?” These are not thick, probing questions, but rather a thin question that can have everyone quickly answer as you “whip around” the class.
- Revoicing Revoicing is a participation strategy where the students retell or revoice the thinking of another student. It is a low-stress strategy because it only requires the students to listen to each other. It also shows big gains in understanding when students can put the thinking of others into their own words.
- 3 Before Me This is a twist on a popular strategy for students to check with three students before asking the teacher. In this virtual-engagement strategy, after the teacher asks a question, three students must talk before the teacher talks again. The students can answer a question, share whether they agree or disagree, ask a question of another student or revoice. This practice helps steer the teacher away from engaging in a one-on-one conversation with the most vocal student.
- Reaction Signs Similar to Academic Signs, Reaction Signs allow the students to show their emotions when listening to each other! These reaction signs can be emojis. I’ve watched kids get excited listening to other kids in their morning meeting, but they have no way of expressing it! If students have the emoji signs, it is a quick way to express how they are feeling in response to what is happening in class. Enter your email below to get access to a freebie of Reaction Signs for you to use with your class!
- Total Physical Response Having the students respond physically allows the teacher to quickly see what all of the students are thinking, and it gets them to move! Our children have never sat so long as they do in front of the computer for distance learning! Have the students stand up if they agree, lean to the left if you have a different answer, stick out your tongue if you got the same answer.
- Secret Word Do you want your students to use vocabulary? Create a secret word! Anytime the teacher or student uses the secret word, the students can give a secret signal. We used this “commutative property” with a class, and they would show us applause in sign language. Those kids were fluent in the commutative property! The class earned points if they caught the secret word and could use the points for various class rewards.
- Pre-teaching Have the students do as much as they can before the instruction with the teacher. If you are going to discuss a book, have an assignment to watch the video of you reading the book before you meet with them! That way you can get to the thinking faster because the prep work is already done. If you are doing a 3 Act Task, have them watch the first act prior to starting your math block. Think of what they can do ahead of time so the discussion is what takes place when they are with you.
- Tracking Sheet What gets measured gets done. If we track who is doing the talking in our classes, it allows us to measure which students are actively participating in class. It allows us to see the student that is hiding, the student who just doesn’t raise their hand or the student who can’t get their thoughts out before someone else starts talking. It also allows us to see patterns between participation with the whole and small groups and whose assignments are completed when they are not in front of the teacher.
As you are planning your lessons, pick just a few Active Participation strategies to implement with your class and write them into your plans. While they may not feel natural at first, the more that we use them, the more they will become our new normal. We know we can create an environment where students can be engaged in their learning, both in person and virtual!
FREE Virtual Learning Active Participation Slides!
Thank you for such excellent advice. 3 before me reminds me a bit of some advice I received to always ask a follow-up question before moving to the next student. While this works well in live classes I am not so sure it will on Zoom. I would love to know what you think.
Thanks
PJ
I can see your point! I think if you are doing this practice you would have to cue the students . Let them know that you are going to ask a question that will be a 3 before me question. Then the kids know that one person will respond, and at least 2 other students will either ask a question, revoice, agree or disagree with the student before the teacher will ask another question. It gets the kids to talk to each other about their thinking. I think this happens a lot in a live classes, but it is much harder to build in Zoom without strategic planning and procedures. 🙂