Critical Teaching Skills For
Promoting Active Participation.
Presentation by: Amanda Normand-Telenko
Chapter 6
The Importance of Active Participation
in the Classroom.
• Gives opportunities to respond.
• Keeps students engaged in lessons/activities.
• Students more likely to LEARN, RETAIN and PROCESS
information.
• Allows teacher to check for understanding early and often
during instruction.
• Using Active Participation strategies, students will be:
» More likely to be attentive.
» Less likely to be off task.
» More likely to feel good about their competence.
Consider:
• What type of response is required?
» Written response? E.g. Writing answers on a
chalkboard or a paper think pad.
» Oral Response? E.g. Calling out answers or
discussing main ideas with partners.
» Signal Response? Actions such as pointing or holding
up cards.
3 Types of Strategies
• Involvement Strategies:
» Designed to keep students alert/attentive
• Rehearsal Strategies:
» Used to provide students with opportunity to practice/
rehearse information presented
• Processing Strategies:
» Helps increase comprehension by giving student
opportunity to think about or discuss content to
develop a deeper understanding of the material.
Types Of Strategies Continued..
• All Three Active Participation Strategies can be
incorporated into lessons/activities.
• Important to select an appropriate variety of
strategies to use in plans, than it is to spend time
trying to figure it out in which a category a
strategy fits.
• When asking questions, select response strategies
that will involve as many as possible. (The act of
asking questions is not an active participation,
where-as strategies used for getting a response is).
Involvement Strategies
• Goal: To keep students alert/ attentive
during instruction.
Examples of Involvement
Strategies
Ask Students to:
1. Unison responses.
»
From the whole class/group/row ask: “The name of this
river is…….Everyone? Make sure everyone responds.
2. To use response cards.
»
Ask students, “When you hear one of the new words in the
story I read to you, hold up your card”.
3. To write a response.
»
For example, “ On your list, check off steps for resolving
conflicts as I model them”.
Strategies 1,2,3 work well as response strategies when
questions/requests when brief responses are required.
Involvement Strategies
•
Have Students:
»
Think to write preview.
»
Stand to share answers.
»
Do a choral reading of content text.
»
Take notes during teacher presentation,film etc.
»
Brainstorm.
»
Try to covert strategies: visual imagery, covert strategies.
Rehearsal Strategies
• Goal: To give students a chance to practice/
rehearse new information.
Rehearsal Strategies
1. Ask a Question
»
Ask students to say answer to neighbor
2. Partner Up!
»
•
Ask partners to take turns summarizing, defining terms or
give examples.
Works well when questions require long
answers. This is effective when many are eager
to speak, but not enough time to call on each
student individually.
Rehearsal Strategies
• Ask Students to:
» Write down answer on paper, have them hold it up so you
can see answer.
» To respond using student response cards or other objects.
» For finger signals.
• Works well when you require brief responses. This also
allows you to check for student understanding.
Rehearsal Strategies
• Pausing Techniques.
• Drill Partners.
• Board Workers.
Processing Strategies
• Goal: To allow students Opportunity to
think about new information.
Processing Strategies
• Ask students to:
» Think about answer to question and discuss with neighbor.
Call on pairs to share.
» Share discuss answers in small groups.
• Effective when content is complicated or difficult. Works
well when you need long and varied responses.
• Keep groups accountable for involving all members by
asking students t record all answers, to defend their method
of reaching consensus.
Processing Strategies
• Ask students to:
» Think to Write Review- write what they learned. Give
students 3-5 minutes to write down everything they
leaned in the lesson/activity.
» Bookends!- is a co-operative learning strategy.
Students meet in small groups before an oral
presentation to share existing knowledge about topic.
Get groups to generate questions related to topic,
discuss before or after.
Responding to Diversity When
Planning for Active Participation.
• Consider diversity when you design active
participation strategies. Think about:
» Skill diversity.
» Cultural diversity.
» Linguistic diversity.
Diversity
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Use prompts with students who aren’t responding.
Students who have difficulty sitting?
Use variety of response strategies.
Provide opportunities to respond in non-verbal ways.
Plan various physical gestures/ signals
Use Pre-printed response cards
Keep in mind:
» Response time varies with some students. Response time
varies with cultural experiences.
» Plan how to regain attention, or how to have students show
they are ready to go on. * They will look at you, or put their
pencils down*.
Consider when planning for
diversity and Active Participation
• Student comfort levels
• Experience with divergent/open ended
questions.
• Beliefs on how much talking is polite
• Students comfort on group/partner/same
gender work partners.
English Language Learners and
Active Participation
• Pair up with Positive Peer language models.
• Practice English skills.
• Encourage Participation
» Who, what, where, when, why and how?
Calling On Individuals?
• Do not use exclusively/ extensively.
• Keep rest of class engaged, accountable.
• Ask?
» Pause, call on student by name.
» Call on non-volunteers randomly. Tell class ahead of time
that you will be doing so. Class is more likely to be
attentive.
» Calling on an individual only allows you to check his/her
understanding, not the groups.
» Develop system where you keep track of students who have
been called on, to avoid leaving anyone out, and to keep
students accountable.
» It is NOT appropriate to call on non-attending students with
the intent of embarrassing them.
Remember To:
• Give opportunities to respond early and
often in lessons/activities.
• Goal: Use variety of strategies that allow
and give all students an opportunity to
respond.