Engineering effective classroom discussion, questions and learning tasks that elicit evidence of learning

Give each student a set of lettered cards (you might want to include Y and N or T and F) and pose multiple choice questions of the whole class. This is most useful when there is more than one correct answer, or when answers depend on the assumptions the students make – this can lead to good discussions.

Use a soft ball to throw to a student to answer a question. The student then passes the ball to another student to see whether the second student agrees with the first. The second student then passes the ball to a third student who comments on why the answer is correct or not. This can continue with questions like How? When? How long? Who else was involved? What else could have happened? depending on the subject.

Hand out a card to each student as they walk into the room and ask them to write the answer to a question posed on the board. Glance through the students’ answers to help decide questions to ask the class, discussions, tasks to set, or how to seat students.

Only let students raise their hands if they have a question to ask. Do not let students call out. Use a random method of choosing which students answers a question, e.g. each student’s name is on a stick, a small card or on a randomising programme on a whiteboard.

Each student has a white board and is asked to write the short answer to a question posed by the teacher. Students hold their white boards up to show their answers to the teacher, who can then gauge how well students understand the concept, and whether to continue to teach the concept, or if some students should be moved to sit next to someone who understands.

Google Classroom

You can randomly select students for participation in class. You can also skip a student and select them later or mark a student absent. Requires Android or iOS app on a mobile device.

support.google.com/edu/classroom/answer/9123699?hl=en

Each student has a post-it note with their name clearly written on it. The teacher draws a horizontal line on the board with, say, opposing statements at each end and asks students to think about where they would stick their post-it on the line to reflect their own view (e.g. caused entirely by humans versus an entirely natural phenomenon – where would you put Global Warming).

Several students are then randomly asked to come to the board and place their post-it notes, explaining why they have placed it in that position. This can also work with a line from zero to one and probabilities of events occurring. The post-its can be used many times over and kept in a corner on the board between lessons. Using 4 colours of notes helps divide the class into four groups, so that “orange” students can be asked to come to the board the place their notes.

Because it is hard for teachers to wait for 3 seconds after asking a question to allow students to think, it is occasionally useful to have a student volunteer with a stopwatch checking the teacher’s wait time for a whole lesson.

Sometimes when students are chosen randomly to answer a question they really do not know the answer, and may feel awkward and embarrassed, and it may be useful to allow them to “phone a friend”, another student in the class who may be able to help them answer the question.