Tuesday Teaching Tips 02/13/24

Welcome to the Tuesday Teaching Tip

Each week, the Faculty Collaborative for Teaching will bring you an easy-to-implement tool that you can use immediately in your classroom teaching. The goals of these tips will be to broaden your teaching toolbox, share resources on teaching, and alert you to upcoming teaching and learning opportunities from the Faculty Collaborative.

TUESDAY TEACHING TIP: Beyond Think-Pair-Share

Don’t get us wrong, we LOVE Think-Pair-Share and recommend you use it frequently--even in the midst of a lecture (instead of asking that question that no one volunteers to answer). But here’s a tip for other ideas that you can do quickly and easily in your classroom to get more students engaged and involved in the conversation. Of course, you probably already know that there’s a whole lot of research demonstrating that students who are highly engaged are more likely to learn.

This week, we challenge you to incorporate a new engagement activity into your class. We’ve given you some suggestions, which can be incorporated into any format or topic.

Here are ways to do it – pick one!

Small group engagement (3- 4 students): Break your class into small groups and give each group a question (it can be the same question or different ones). Have the group work on that question and then ask them to report their findings to the class. If you like, you can have students write a one-sentence response on the board or in a shared google doc.
Popcorn: Give the class a question (with multiple possible answers or perspectives) for them to think about for a minute. Have one student give a response and then call on other students to add on to the idea -- depending on your class, you can have students call on each other, or you can. You can write notes on the board and then review the answers as a class.

3. Word Cloud: Use Poll Everywhere (or another tool) to create a word cloud based on a question you pose to the class that can be answered in one word, ideally. For example, “What’s one word that comes to your mind when I say ‘research’?” Project the final word cloud and engage in a conversation about the themes that emerged in their responses.

4. Send a problem: Break your class into small groups. Each group will write a quiz question or problem. After that, each group swaps with another group to answer the questions or solve the problems. As a class, talk about all problems and solutions.

Process Suggestions

Consider adding the engagement strategy during a time where your class may have a natural lull.
Keep the activity short (~10 mins).
Make sure you have time to process the activity as a class (including some opportunity for reflection).
Try to move around the class and listen in on the conversations happening in groups.
Be comfortable with the added excitement and energy that the activity might produce.

DID YOU DO IT?

Let us know how it went! We would love to hear your feedback about how you implemented today’s Tuesday Teaching Tip in your classroom. Click here to fill out our 3-question survey.

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