40 ¦ Active learning strategies: 12 zero-prep activities for the classroom

I'm Liam Brinter and this is the Motivated Classroom. Hello, Falker, Björn Vynu, Bien Vynidos to this Motivated Classroom Podcast episode. Today we are talking about active learning strategies, now this mainly came about from a variety of listeners getting in touch and asking me for some more practical ideas for motivation, engagement and getting students moving. This is particularly important for anyone who's teaching online but also for the face-to-face classroom. I've recently recorded an episode with Quint Olga Baldwin who's a researcher working in Japan on young learners and English language learning and motivation and he actually spoke about this and the importance of moving on to the next activity and not doing something for too long and that active learning part is so important. That episode is coming soon, so hang on in there, it's a great episode. But also this comes from Esther, one of the first original patrons of the podcast. I think she was the very first patron, so thank you so much Esther and she asked about more of these sponge activities or activities that we go to when we really want to make sure that we're hitting some motivation and the students are engaged and they're enjoying themselves. So that's also to Esther. Now, of course, before we get into the active learning strategies, we need to start with our little bit of Irish. So today's Irish word is "un-thraw", "un-thraw", any idea what that might be. Yes, you are right listeners. It is the beach. So if you want to say you're going to the beach, you say, "I'm going to the thraw" and you'd often see in Ireland, Bohrna Thraw. We had Bohrna before, which means "road". Bohrna Thraw, the beach road, so on the way to the beach. And you might see it at the written and signposts around Ireland when you go there. Whenever the country opens up again and you can go there, hopefully you're listening to this at a time when travel is open again and people can visit the wonderful country of Ireland and it's not locked down because of COVID infection. So I hope you're ever to do that. So today, I want to share with you some of my go-to strategies or what someone put as kind of sponge activities, the quick starters or enders of a class that you want to go to when we really want some more learning to take place, but in a more fun, active, engaging and way. And it doesn't have to be a game because they always are not that motivating for some students, but it's these are ways that I like to get students out of their seats. And one of my basic rules of teaching is students will never sit in my class for the entire class. They will get up and move at least once, if not twice or three times. The only time they will ever be sitting for the entire class is if they happen to be doing an assessment that takes that long. But if there's learning taking place, I believe strongly that they need to get up and move around in order to keep that engagement there just so they don't kind of fall asleep. It's really, really important. Students in the secondary school in particular are just two, I suppose, well conditioned to show when they're really disengaged and really demotivated. They can show it in their eyes, but they're not going to do what a primary school student might do. A primary school student might just get up and just walk out the door or a primary school student might just burst out and go, "This is so boring!" Secondary school students typically don't do that because they've been conditioned not to do that, but it may be going through their minds. And we know that in order for motivation to be their engagement is very important in this process. This was also copper fastened for me when I read Grant Wiggins' really amazing blog. He's a veteran teacher and basically he shadowed students for a whole week. And his number one takeaway from the whole week of shadowing was, "Sitting is exhausting. Students need to get up and move." And it's just, it's not enough for them to get up and move in between classes. And I personally believe it's not just a thing of, "Okay, stand up and take a break and come back. That can work." But for me, why not add the activity and the movement into the learning? It makes it more interesting and engaging in their brains or focused in. And also, in the previous school I worked in, we were lucky to have a TEDx talk host by Lisa Lee. No, I should say she didn't give the TEDx talk in our school, but Lisa Lee is a wonderful TEDx talk called "Getting at the Heart of Teaching." And in this talk, she waxes lyrical about the vital importance of student movement in the classroom. Now, again, if you're listening to this, I'm not saying that they need to be standing up, running around the room all the time. What I'm saying is that sitting is exhausting. And particularly if they're in a school where you have to wear masks all day. So here are some of my go-to favorite activities for active learning strategies. Now I've written down 12, but we know in the past I may well have 13, I may have 9, mathematics is not really my strong point. So I've said 12, but it might be anything between 10 and 15. Who knows? Here we go. So practical strategies for active movement. My first one that I love to do is bingo. Now, it's not bingo in the way that you call out numbers and people tick them off a card. This is a bingo for language learning. Now, I do a lot of these activities at the beginning or the end of a class, but often sometimes right in the middle if I see that they're a bit tired. So here's how bingo works. Each student gets a mini whiteboard or it can simply be a piece of paper or they can write down on a little posted, doesn't really matter somewhere. And you will give them a topic or something you've recently done and they have to write down three words to do with that. Now, of course, this is all done in your target language. So maybe you're recently doing foods, maybe you've recently done verbs in the past 10s, maybe you've recently done games, whatever you've recently done, and you just say I want you to write three words to do with that. Now, they'll quickly learn that what they're trying to do here is write three words that are difficult that you might not get and they might win if they are different words everyone else. So they all stand up when they've got their three words and typically I'll start counting down after about 10 seconds, so I'll go five four and then everyone counts with me three, two, one, okay, everyone up and if you've not written three things, you're not allowed to play and they nearly always find three things. And then you start to list out items or words to do with that topic or maybe it's things you've recently done or maybe you sometimes I like to tell a little story about foods and a disgusting event of foods I had in a restaurant and I'll be naming out foods and drinks. If I list something that is on your board or you're carried, you must sit down and you're out, just one of your three things and you're out. And you'll see that they really want to win at this. And what's great is sometimes they will beat the teacher like I can't think of what is on their board and I think of said everything and then I'm like, okay, what have you got Alice? What have you got? And she'll tell me I'm like, oh yeah, I didn't say that and they win and they love this. And we might play this once or twice and they love it. They're really listening intently gets them out of their seats and it's just a little bit of fun. There's no prizes or anything. They just enjoy being the one who can beat the teacher. So that's bingo. The next one is called touch the board. Now a lot of these activities work in classrooms where we are allowed to move around the class. It may be different depending on the COVID situation in your class. I really hope that people are still listening to this podcast in a few years when hopefully you're gone. What are they talking about COVID? COVID-19 was a pandemic in 2020 if you're listening to this in five years. Google it and you'll see why we're talking about the fact that we couldn't move around the class. Touch the board essentially is something very similar. They might write some topic or a sentence out or something on their whiteboard or maybe it's just they speak to their partner. So it's everybody stand up in groups of two or groups of three and you have to write something on your whiteboard and whether it's translating a sentence or write one key sentence from our story from yesterday, write a sentence that contains these three colors, whatever. It doesn't really matter something that you're wanting to go over that they've already done. And whoever runs to the board and touches the board first is the first person who can respond and you allow two more teams to enter. So you may have six or eight teams in your class. And yes, this can get really quite, I wouldn't like to say the word aggressive. That's the wrong word. Enthusiastic. Where they're running to the board to try and touch it. And I often make sure to say you have to touch the board with your hand, not with your boards. You don't break it. And if the first three teams there can play. And if the first person gets it right. So whatever it is, you've asked for if that's a translation or to include this word. If they're right, they get three points, but if they're wrong, all the other teams get a point. Now that is great because what it means it incentivizes them only to run to the board when they really think they've got the right answer because they don't want to risk it. If the first team gets it wrong, everyone else gets a point and now the second team get a chance to answer it correctly for two points. If they get it wrong, everyone gets a point, third team gets a chance to answer it for one points. There's only three teams who can answer. And then you do it again. You might play this two or three or four or five times either again beginning or the end of the class, either reviewing material from that class or reviewing something from the previous class works very well for that and allow them thinking time. Number three is the elimination game. The elimination game. This is just what I've called it. So for this, students have one white board between two and most of my games are actually like this so they're working together with someone. And again, you will get them to maybe write a list of words about something or a list of topics or stuff that you've recently gone over and things you've recently done in class. And so they're working together to try and write out this list and they try and get the most words down that they can. Now you can do this in a variety of ways. Sometimes I get them to pass their white board around the table a few times so you're reading and adding or it can just simply be being the two of them. When everybody stands up and they all go around the room in their groups of two with their white board between them. And what they do then is they start to call out things from their boards. But the goal is to call out something that is not on your board because every time you call out something on your board, you have to wipe it off. And if you wipe off everything, you're out. If you repeat something, someone else said you're out or if you can think of something in five seconds, you're out. And the beauty of doing this in groups of two is it's not that one person who's like oh I didn't get the right answer I'm silly. I'm not good enough at this and they sit down as first when it's a group of two There's kind of equal responsibility there and often especially I always try and have a student who is typically quite strong With a student who is maybe takes a bit longer with their learning and so therefore they're working together on this That's the elimination game essentially last group standing wins and they're just saying words as they go around in a circle And I always have the rule that if person a spoke the first time then the next time I come round It should be person B so you're just going round the class. That's the elimination game. Number four is word sharing or sentence sharing and Co-teaching how this works is at the beginning of all of my classes Students read for the first five or ten minutes. They read from our little library of books that we've built up over the years Not every single class, but most classes. That's how we start and in order to get them engaged and active in the reading Is they know that after approximately five minutes? They will have to teach one word that they've learned today to their partner So that's fine. They do that and they use it in French or Spanish I teach them to out that sentence say the word I have for today is this and I learned it from so they're list The person who's listening has to learn the word the translation and the context So if they're teaching the word computer and they teach that to their partner It's because all in my book this boy is always playing in on his computer. That's the context. Okay So they've done that now what they've to do is stand up find someone else in the class Who is not at your table and teach them the word that you were just taught? So now they go over to the partner and to say I was sitting beside Alice and she taught me the word Computer because in her game in her book There's a boy who plays lots of video games and it's computer and they teach that and so there's a double teaching going on They've moved they've moved around the class and they know that when they come back to their seats Now I'll pick out a few people randomly usually with my little sticks and this is my cold calling which I really dislike that term But it's me calling and a student but making sure that it's they can answer the question I'm asking So then they know that they're going to be asked and I if it's really a student who maybe is not my strongest student I might say to them. Okay, can you tell me one of the words that you learned from either the first person or the second person And you can tell me in English or in Spanish if I really want to go down that line for another stronger student I might say what did you learn from your second student and what was the context and then they do this and we do this Five times so not everyone will share and those five words go on the board and they write them down Just an easy way to start the class. They're cool teaching each other They're talking about the context of their book and it might hook in another student to that book So then I'd say oh and my book is always playing video games and then maybe that student is going all I love video games So I'm going to read that one next so it's all about the love of reading standing up sharing and cool teaching The next one I use is just get up and find someone from a different table This is when I see that the energy in the class has dropped for whatever reason Maybe I'm not given them enough autonomy. Maybe they don't feel competent. Maybe there's not enough for latinist But their energy has dropped for whatever reason that is So we're doing a reading or something is happening then all of a sudden. I'll just say to them Okay, stand up everyone and they're like oh, and they'll stand up find someone from a different table and discuss What we've just been talking about find someone from a different table and talk to them about something you just learned Find someone from a different table and explain the summarize what we've just been talking about and now suddenly They realize oh, I've got to talk to someone and hopefully they were listening more than I was and we need to talk a little bit about this It's very quick just stand up find someone from a different table and do X 5 to 10 seconds I was gonna say minutes like 5 to 10 seconds of movement and then maybe 30 seconds 45 seconds of discussion and then they come back Sit down and they will be more engaged and more listening now that is quite simply just get up and move around The next one is volleyball or ping pong reading now if you listen back to the episode about reading strategies I talk about this one This is essentially when you have a text or a story and each student is reading one sentence And then the other student has to translate the sentence and now read the next sentence So if our text is a text in Mandarin. I will read the first sentence in Mandarin My partner will translate that sentence and now read the next sentence in Mandarin and now I translate and read the next one And it goes on like this and they do this standing up around the room in pairs with the text in front of them And what you do is after you've read a little bit of the text you'll say okay Everyone switch partner and they will know who's switching. I'll have told them it's either person a or person b All the a's will switch they moved the next person they say hello Where you what's your name where you in the text or I was here on line four I was on line eight So we must start line four again They always start at the highest point and geniusly what this means is they all finish the text at the same time Because you keep making them change enough time so they keep repeating until everyone finishes almost at the same time Which I love and I got this from Blaine Ray actually in his workshops around teaching proficiency what reading and storytelling using readings to embed the learning a little bit more next active strategy number seven I'm pretty sure I am on point with my numbers here is find someone who so this is quite simply find someone who and then Could be anything find someone who has three pets find someone has the same amount of pets as you Find someone who has the same amount of brothers as you find someone who is born in the same month as you And you may need to give the structure on the board for I was born in when were you born or I have three Pets how many do you have and they walk around until they find the other people who have the thing in common with them They're building relationships. They're practicing the language. They're listening to you explaining They're talking to each other all of these things help and they're engaged. They're moving around There's some active learning going on Next one is called pass it up now. I got this from senior woolly I've talked about this brilliant website called senior woolly which is mainly for Spanish teachers by guy called Jim Woolridge And in his activities. He's got a thing called pass it up And this is when you have two or three or four lines of students They usually will stand for me and there might be eight people per line or four per line or six per line And they person at the back of the line has a group of seven or eight images in their hand from the story that you've just done From a unit you've just done from a video you just watched from a movie talk, whatever You will describe you also have them when you're right at the back of the class You will start describing the image in the target language and they have to find that image and then pass it up The person at the front when he gets that image has to run up to the front of the class touch the board Turns around then he explains it back or to us. This is why it is because you say it's a man with a red hat Here's the red hat. It's two people speaking and it's the first group to do it wins And you do this a few times person at the front now goes all the way to the back everyone moves forward Why is this a good activity? They're listening actively to everything you're saying They're working as a team. They're looking at those images and they're making sure that they are trying to all do it together and collectively So there's a lot of active listening going on active learning strategy number nine I can't believe I'm still on point for my numbers here is pop so pop I spoke about when we talked about reading strategies and this one is you're reading something or maybe it's a video You're watching and whenever the person or a character you read a particular item that you are working on Whether that is something really simple for beginners like a color or a direction or It's a description a physical description or maybe more advanced students It's the use of the subjunctive in the past or it's the use of the conditional Whatever you're using then what you will say to them is when I say when you hear that word being used You jump out your seat and you say pop and then they have to explain to me What is the word translated? What's the context if they can do all of that perfectly And for the more advanced students when we're looking around subjunctive. Why is the subjunctive used here Then they are allowed to get a little sticker and this is the game of pop So it's active because they're jumping out of their seats that are doing active listening They're trying to find the word that you're looking for to get the right answer And they must give me those full explanations in order to get it It's a really good way to get active listening and it is about that when we're trying to learn grammar and teach grammar I talked about this in the grammar episode I think number 38 which is all about noticing so there's a lot there about extensive processing and when we're processing The language that if we are noticing actively the different types of language being used Then that helps to engage our language acquisition device and our brains which gives it more in the long term memory And we have more acquisition So you're trying to notice these particular items whether that's the conditional or the colors or the directions And when they notice there's more like the hood that it will stick in their brains So that that's the noticing aspect The next one many teachers will do and this is yes and no walls So quite simply everyone stand up The door is yes the window is no and you will read out various statements They're usually quite I wouldn't say controversial statements But they're debatable so maybe something like language learning is all about accent Yes or no and then they'll go to yes, no and then you will explain as a language teacher why it is absolutely not about that Everyone who speaks any language in the world we all have an accent And if I'm speaking Spanish with an accent and you can hear my accent Well that just makes me bilingual I'm not trying to have some perfect Spanish accent whatever that means in order to come as Because it doesn't matter and there's no such thing as the right or wrong accent So that's one or another debatable question like And we should finish school one month early every year and now they might all go to yes But then you can ask why some will probably not some will go to the other side They'll be brave and say no because we need to do this this and this or We should have no homework ever or we should stop learning at one o'clock every day and just play afterwards It doesn't really matter matter. Can be what anything you're working on. If it's to do with foods, it can be foods that are disgusting or tasty. So I find this process, or this food process, disgusting and you list a few things together and they'll say yes or no. And then you'll ask them all really? You like putting chocolate on bananas? Really? Why is that? I went and did you do that last? And then you get to learn about the student. Everyone's more interested. They might go down and write down after this activity. Five things they learned about each other. Oh, Margherita really likes chocolate and bananas together. Whatever it may be. So that is simply yes and no walls. They move from one side to the other based on yes or no. And that can be something you throw in in the middle of the class or it can be actually farming much more an integral part of the class for debating a big topic. Number 12. Oh, no, I've messed it up. Have a night. I think I'm a my list on number 12, but it's because I put in number 10. Oh, anyway, you get where I'm coming from. There's 12 in total. This is 12, but I need to go back because I skipped one. I can just never get the numbers right. Can I? The rhythm circle. So the rhythm circle is everyone stands in a circle and we all make a rhythm by clicking our fingers or clapping our hands and everyone has to say a word based off of a certain topic. Now, this is one to be a little bit careful off because the first student who gets it wrong or who can't say something, they're out. And so you need to make sure that you have the right relationship with your students and there's enough respect in your room and you know your students well enough that this won't harm their competence or their confidence. So it'll take a bit of time to do this. And you can have a bit of fun with it. The first one can be something like colors, something really easy to start with. And maybe you always start with a student who you feel like they may not have many of these colors in their head. So I'll start with them. And you may even say ones to help them. So you might say, okay, John, we're going to start with you now. The topic is colors. So you know, you can say anything like red or black or white, whatever, any color. And then of course you've given them the answer, which is fine. And it goes round the circle. And whoever repeats or pauses for more than three seconds, they're out, but they're allowed to jump back in the circle if they can tell you who said the word already. So say if someone repeats later, they put their hand in, they go stop. Michael said that word earlier and they go, oh, that's correct. You're allowed to reenter and it keeps going. And the rhythm is simply just by you clicking your fingers in time or clapping in time, quite slowly. And so it's kind of going like I'll do a little clap so it doesn't hurt your ears. So it's kind of like one, two, three, go. Say a color on the beat. Black, red, yellow, blue. And then it comes to someone like three claps, you're out. So that's how it works. So it's on a rhythm. They kind of enjoy this as well. And as I say, think carefully about how you're doing this and making sure that you're not going to ruin someone's confidence if they're the first one out. Sometimes I let myself go out first. So I'll start with three students on my right. I'll be fourth and I'll pretend I can't think of something and I'll step out of the circle. Now number 12, I know I said 12 already, but I think there's 12 in total because I skipped one. I was like, I'll put that one at the end. This one is simply brain breaks. Brain breaks are when you stand up and do something to rest your brain. But for me, I like to always have the target language in there so that it's not just a break for the brain. It's a break for the body, but your brain is still doing something with the language, mainly listening. So here are a few quick brain breaks I like to do. Think no more than 30 seconds, maybe a minute. And it's just when I see the energy drops. I'll say, right, everyone stand up quickly. Everyone has to line up at the board by age. Everyone has to line up at the board by the amount of pets you have. Everyone has to line up at the board by the month that you were born in, but not necessarily your age. Anyway, at all, and it just quickly gets the move in, they need to talk to each other, they need to get moving. And okay, they might say a little bit of English or when they're doing this activity, but you encourage them to use Spanish and you say, give them the sentence that they need a scaffolding, but you of course are commenting on the whole thing in the target language. Next one is stay standing if. So everybody stand up. Stay standing if you already ate a dairy product today. Stay standing if you already ate a piece of fruit today. Stay standing if you would love to visit a desert island tomorrow. Stay standing if you've ever been to another continent, anything. And then of course, you're learning about the students and this is stay standing if and they're learning by you saying the sentences we're seeing about other people, if loads of people are still standing, then you can make it more specific. So stay standing if you have eaten a green fruit today, whatever it may be. And the last brain breaker I like to use is quite simply TPR, total physical response. And I just quickly break the room into two halves and I say, okay, you guys are Honduras, you guys are Ecuador. And then I will say Ecuador is really sad and they have to act sad. Whereas Honduras is really excited and Honduras acts excited. And then of course, you make it more complex depending on the class. Honduras has just seen some awful news this morning. Ah Ecuador would really like to go there, but they can't. You know anything and you're getting them acting it out and they have to really act it. And they'll know that they're just listening intently. It's just a little break for the brain. So there you go. They are some of my main go-to activities for active learning. And these are breaks for the students, but they're still learning because they're listening intently to what you're doing. And my biggest piece of advice is just quite simply try and get your students up and out of their seats at least once in every class if not more than that. Just reinvigorates the room, breeds life into what's going on. And that ties really closely into next week's episode, which is all about memory. And we have a wonderful guest on the show, the wonderful and brilliant Steve Smith. So glad that Steve could join me and we're talking all about memory, the use of the brain when we are trying to learn languages and the important things we can do as the classroom teachers to ensure we're not overloading our students cognitively. And this ties in with this, the act of learning strategies, getting them out of their seats and doing something different, keeping them engaged. So I'd a brilliant chat with Steve and you need to make sure you check that out next week on the motivated classroom. Now before we go, of course, we need to finish with our little bit of Irish. And can you remember what it was today? Yes, it was the word "thraw", meaning "beach". So I hope you get to go to a thraw over the summer and maybe even in Ireland. We do have wonderful beaches there and they're always beautifully sunny in Ireland, I promise. So thank you so much for joining me. If you would like to support the podcast, please head on over to patreon.com, look for the motivated classroom. If you feel like, if you bumped into me in a cafe and you were like, do you know what Liam, thanks for the four episodes a month, I'm going to get you a coffee. That is exactly what the Patreon page is for. If you think you would do that, if you'd get me a coffee once a month or a nice bag of crisps, then please do become a supporter of the podcast. I'd really appreciate it. But if you can't and you're not in a position to do that, that is absolutely okay. No problem whatsoever. Keep listening for free, keep sharing, keep telling your friends, keep liking on all the social media. Garamila Mahagav, Agassalon Awalya. The motivated classroom podcast is an original production by Liam Printer. I am at Liam Printer on Twitter and my YouTube channel is Liam Printer at the motivated classroom. Full podcast notes with links to resources are available on my website, LiamPrinter.com. For more, find and follow the motivated classroom podcast on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Graphics and music are provided by Paul Mahan. Intro clips are thanks to the wonderful multilingual staff at the International School of Lozan.