what two teaching strategies do you incorporate to most enhance student learning

As a teacher, one of your biggest challenges is to plan lessons that inspire your students to stay actively involved in the learning process. But you've probably noticed that traditional, instructor-centered learning plans aren't always conducive to achieving that inspiration. That's where active learning strategies come into play. Y'all can apply them to empower, engage, and stimulate a classroom past putting students at the centre of the learning process. Get inspired by these 8 strategies that will assist students talk more openly, think more creatively and -- ultimately -- become more than engaged in the process of learning. This article is accompanied by a downloadable list of active learning strategies to keep at your desk for quick reference.

Active Learning Strategies

ane. Reciprocal questioning

Apply reciprocal questioning to encourage an open dialogue in which students take on the function of the teacher and create their own questions nigh a topic, reading department, or lesson. Later on covering a topic of your choice in class -- or after assigning a reading selection -- divide the class into pairs or small groups and take students come with a few questions for discussion with the rest of the class. To facilitate the procedure, you can provide students with "question stems," which provide a foundation for a question but still crave students to recollect critically about a lesson, text, or other section of material past completing the query. Consider the examples below.

Comprehension Question Stems	Connector Question Stems
Describe x in your ain words. What does y hateful? Why is z important? How could 10 exist used to y?	Explicate how x and why z. In what ways are x and y similar? In what ways are x and y different? How does x tie in with that nosotros learned before?

Utilize these question stems to anchor and explore concepts in course textile, helping students investigate a range of new topics and points of view associated with your lesson. Much like student-generated test questions -- a blazon of of experiential learning activity -- reciprocal questioning involves students in the learning process to aid build their comprehension of course fabric. Reciprocal questioning tin be particularly useful when:

• Preparing for tests or exams
• Introducing a new topic or section of course content
• Discussing reading or writing materials in greater detail

2.Three footstep interviews

A cooperative learning strategy, thethree step interview encourages students to develop active listening skills past quizzing ane another, sharing their thoughts, and taking notes. To utilise the 3 step interview process, divide students into groups of iii, and assign three roles: interviewer, interviewee, and notetaker. Subsequently also assigning a theme or topic of discussion, have students participate in a five to 10 minute interview to talk over what they establish to be the key information relating to the topic. After each interview, accept students rotate roles. Depending on factors including the grade level of your students and their experience with the strategy, you may adjust the length of the fourth dimension for each interview. One interpretation of the three-step interview process. Feel free to experiment with the duration and number of students involved in these steps. Prototype courtesy: Kagan Publishing Before using the strategy, you may find it useful to accept students explore the types of questions reporters enquire in interviews and at what point in an interview they enquire them. You lot may also want to provide recording sheets to use when they are assigned the "reporter" role. The three-footstep interview confers benefits including:

• Helping  students learn and apply different questioning strategies
• Strengthening  students' connection with grade material in a creative and engaging mode
• Producing  a sense of accountability, with students working together to complete a task and grasp a lesson

three. The suspension procedure

Apply the pause process to intersperse strategic pauses into your class lectures and enhance student understanding of teaching materials. To utilize the suspension process, arrange for pauses of 2 to iii minutes between every x to xv minutes of lecture fourth dimension. During these brief breaks, encourage students to discuss or rework their notes in pairs to clarify central points covered, heighten questions, and solve problems posed by the teacher. Alternatively, students can work together to write a paragraph that connects or highlights key ideas set out in their partner'southward notes. A 2014 report concluded that breaking a lecture into cursory pauses can increase student attention and learning outcomes. The pause procedure, the study determined, is "a good active learning strategy which helps students review their notes, reflect on them, discuss and explain the key ideas with their partners." The use of the pause procedure involves a minimal amount of extra time, but can confer significant benefits in comparison to lectures that go along without breaks.

4. The muddiest bespeak technique

The muddiest signal technique involves asking students to write notes on the most unclear or nigh disruptive element of a given homework assignment, lecture, or grade discussion.

The Muddiest Point: Sample Phrasing What take you found to be the muddiest bespeak so far in this assignment? What topic do you find to be the least clear?

Asking students to write downwards what they notice to be the to the lowest degree clear is a powerful exercise because it compels them to form or rate their own knowledge of a topic. In curt, the practice helps students reflect on the lesson and identify concepts needing further examination or study. Instance of a "muddiest point" handout to issue to students. Image source: TeachersPayTeachers. From your perspective, the activity can serve as an insightful source of feedback. For example, if more than a quarter of the class mentions the aforementioned "muddiest indicate," yous may wish to schedule further time to talk over that topic, or create a new lesson plan or assignment to tackle it.

5. The devil's abet approach

The devil's abet arroyo asks one or more students to have the opposing side of a predominant statement or point of view being discussed during a lesson. Once you lot accept completed an consignment or lesson programme, select a topic that is suitable for discussion and debate. The topic should serve every bit an advisable bailiwick for providing arguments from both sides. The activity is flexible and should exist tailored to suit your students' course level. In its simplest form, dissever the form into two sections and coordinate a class-wide debate based on a selected topic. Alternatively, you may have students annotate reading texts and answer to contentions past creating counterarguments. Then, have students argue the proposals discussed during a mock town hall meeting. While this approach tin be used across a number of grade levels and subjects, consider this list of thematic claims used as primers for a devil's advocate activity in a secondary ELA course. Epitome source: Bespoke Classroom. This approach can assistance cultivate agile learning in the classroom by encouraging students to:

• Call up more critically , challenging  participants to expand their understanding of the perspectives surrounding an issue and to view it through a different lens

• Become more engaged, fostering involvement by cartoon out opinions to explore the complexity of an upshot being studied

• Produce deeper understanding of topics or issues, using rigorous analysis to collectively clarify, probe, and pose alternatives to issues being discussed

According to a study published in the Journal of Theory, Research and Action in Urban Teaching, the devil's abet arroyo tin assist students become "more familiar with a...topic and its multifaceted viewpoints." The same study concludes that a classroom using this strategy can:

"provide students with multiple perspectives, and challenge students with tough questions. In such a classroom, students will get more engaged and students' critical thinking and writing skills will exist enriched."

half-dozen. Peer teaching activities

A flexible and multi-faceted approach to active learning, peer instruction encompasses a range of scenarios where students instruct skills or explicate concepts to classmates. Some popular options include:

• Reading buddies — A cooperative learning strategy that pairs two students who work together to read an assigned text.
• Cross-historic period peer tutoring — A peer learning strategy involving students in different grades, wherein which 1 educatee instructs another on cloth in which the start student is advanced and the second student is a novice.
• Office play — A group of students is split into smaller groups and given a specific job to consummate, similar in modest group work. However, in addition to working on a specific task, the members of each grouping are asked to play a certain "role". Unlike in traditional role-play, all members of one group play the same part, not individually assigned roles.

Peer pedagogy activities assistance boost vital skills and behaviors including student interaction, accountability, grouping processing.

seven. Game-based learning platforms

Game-based learning platforms add depth and differentiation to the educational process and let students to work with their instructors to reach their learning objectives. Eric Sheninger, a principal, author, and Senior Fellow at the International Eye for Leadership in Pedagogy (ICLE), writes passionately about the use of technology as an active learning tool. In his article "Shifting From Passive to Agile Learning," he writes:

Information technology is actually most how students use devices to create artifacts of learning that demonstrate conceptual mastery through relevant application and evaluation...Give kids challenging problems to solve that take more than one right answer and let them use technology to show that they sympathise. This is the epitome of active learning...

Math games and websites are at the forefront of delivering active learning through technology. Ane example is Prodigy, a platform that constantlyadjusts questions to tackle educatee trouble spots and delivers math problems with words, charts pictures, and numbers. Meliorate yet, educational content is free to access and aligned with curricula for grades i to 8 teachers. Create and sign into your gratis teacher business relationship.

8. Rotating chair group discussions

Rotating chair group discussions encourage students to actively listen to selected speakers who follow a blueprint of guiding class discussion and summarizing previous points. Students atomic number 82 and stimulate class give-and-take every bit they "rotate" roles, repeatedly selecting the post-obit speaker. To use this strategy effectively, ensure that students adhere to the post-obit design:

• When a student wishes to participate, they must raise their hand
• The student who is speaking calls on the adjacent speaker, ideally someone who has not yet contributed
• The student who has been chosen upon briefly summarizes what the previous pupil said before developing the idea further

This procedure tin exist repeated across a variety of topics, with your guidance to stay on rails and help stuck students. The benefits of rotating chair group discussions are not just limited to the speakers. Knowing that they may exist chosen upon to summarize the previous topic, all students are engaged in attentive listening, frequently jotting downwards notes and ideas to stay on track in the spaces between speaking. Moreover, students are put into a scenario where they learn from their colleagues' ideas, sparking new considerations of material in an active and engaging way. This strategy is rewarding for students because information technology encourages powerful and directly engagement with course material.

The Instructor'southward Office in the Active Learning Classroom

While agile learning places an emphasis on the student's role in the learning experience, there is no incertitude that the success of any agile learning strategy starts with the thought and planning of a conscientious instructor. "Overall," a 2011 study found, "teachers play an influential role in increasing students' situational interest in the active-learning classroom," while factors like a teacher'south social connectedness with students and subject matter expertise "significantly influence the level of students' situational interest in the active learning classroom." And, critically, the benefits of active learning go both means, helping teachers every bit well as students. As agile learning advocate James Ballencia writes,

With the goal of pedagogy mindful learners who actively pursue knowledge, teachers become more than actively engaged in how they teach the curriculum and how they develop each student's learning potential. They mix and lucifer a diversity of ... tactics to ensure that students non simply learn more, ameliorate, and faster -- they also learn smarter.

As many of the techniques above are open-concluded, the active learning strategies underpinning them may differentiate for different types of learners. Be sure to consider how you lot can differentiate didactics while still enjoying the benefits of these active learning strategies.

Active Learning Techniques: Key Questions

To help the success of these strategies, put yourself in your students' position and imagine how they might experience it. This will help you lot get a feel for the lesson. When applying whatever of these strategies for your form, be sure to ask yourself:

• Will this be engaging and exciting for my students?
• Can this activity deploy formative assessment strategies ?
• Is the student placed at the centre of this learning strategy?
• Will this encourage my students to discuss a topic with one another?
• Am I giving students the opportunity  to reflect on the learning process?
• Is this activity getting my students to think deeply and critically about  a topic or lesson or is it simply a comprehension do?

Making Infinite for Active Learning Strategies

While all of the active learning strategies outlined above can be deployed in traditional, lecture-oriented classrooms, the physical arrangement of your room and the number of students in the class can make some of them difficult to perform easily. While a flexible seating classroom arrangement may ease this challenge, such a solution is not always possible. Program these exercises with the limitations of your physical space carefully, being mindful of the environmental constraints posed by the  unique arrangements of some of the strategies in a higher place.

Concluding Thoughts on Active Learning Strategies

Active learning plainly puts the focus on the learner: what the learner does, what the learner thinks, and how the learner behaves. Just, crucially, active learning doesn't simply happen with a few elementary instructions: it occurs in the classroom where the teacher is committed to a learning surround that makes active learning possible. Ultimately, these active learning strategies volition help build agreement rather than memorization of facts, giving students the conviction to apply learning to different bug and contexts and achieve greater autonomy over their learning. And, after all, that'southward exactly makes active learning "active":  putting students at the center of the learning process every bit they take the initiative to learn.

Downloadable List of the 8 Agile Learning Strategies

Click here to download the list of strategies to print and keep at your desk.

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Create or log in to your teacher business relationship on Prodigy -- a game-based learning platform that assesses student progress and performance equally they play. Aligned with a growing list of curricula across the world, over 800,000 teachers and xxx 1000000 students have signed upwards to Prodigy Math Game.

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