There are many active learning strategies that can keep students engaged in lessons. The big idea of these strategies is that you keep students’ attention by changing up what they are doing every few minutes. Within a lesson, students should be bouncing from thinking, to discussing with one peer, to listening to the teacher, to engaging in whole group discussion to compiling their thoughts and then sharing with a small group. Also to keep learning active, incorporate movement into the lesson and paper folding can be an interesting way to have students show what they know in a hands-on way.

Resource: Inspiring Active Learning by Merrill Harmin, Melanie Toth
Activity: Show off your paper folding skills here. Make one of the paper folding mentioned in the video. Show an example of what students would write on it that relates to what they are learning. Take a picture or video and upload it here.

Competition among students can help students persevere through difficult challenges and excite them. There are multiple ways to do competitions in your class. Students can compete against each other, in groups or individually. Students can compete against the teacher. Students can compete against time. All of these competitions are only as exciting as the teacher makes them! So hype up your students to get them to compete to learn!

Article: Teaching through competition in the classroom by InnerDrive and Bradley Busch
Activity: Describe a scenario where you used a competition to get students excited about their learning here.

Research shows that writing promotes deeper understanding and longer retention of information. There are many different types of writing strategies for teachers to use to encourage writing. The first one discussed is think-pair-pass where students think about the answer to a question, write it down and pass it to a peer who then adds onto the thought. Another fun strategy is a graffiti wall where the teacher writes a main idea in the center and students write their thoughts all around it, making it look like graffiti. 

Resource: The Writing Strategies Book: Your Everything Guide to Developing Skilled Writers by Jennifer Serravallo
Activity: Tell us some writing prompts you use with your students. Access activity here.

Classroom discussions are vital to help students learn how to communicate and hear from others about their thinking. Two fun discussion strategies that will get students engaged are inside out circles where students stand in two circles facing each other and discuss a point, then rotate to discuss with someone else. Another strategy is ripple roll call where students quickly respond to a prompt and then pass it on to another student to respond. The third strategy is called forced listening where you as the teacher call on two students at the same time to respond to the same question.

Resource: Questioning for Classroom Discussion: Purposeful Speaking, Engaged Listening, Deep Thinking, by Jackie Acree Walsh and Beth Dankert Sattes