20 interactive teaching activities for in

the interactive classroom

  by Ruben Knapen — Jun 13,
2018

Interactive teaching is all about instructing the students in a way they

are actively involved with their own learning process. There are
different ways to create an involvement like this. Most of the time it’s
through

 teacher-student interaction
 student-student interaction
 the use of audio, visuals, video
 hands-on demonstrations and exercises

You encourage your students to be active members of your class,

thinking on their own, using their own brains, resulting in long-term
memory retention. Not only the students' knowledge will improve, but
their interest, strength, knowledge, team spirit and freedom of
expression will increase as well.
In this blog post, I wall talk about the use of interactive methods for
teaching, encouraging more dedication towards the lesson material.
We will see some interactive teaching tools, interactive teaching ideas
and interactive teaching games.
Not only will I talk about the use of interactive methods of teaching, I’ll
give you some examples of methods used in the present classroom as
well.
Ready? Here are some of the most effective ways to engage your
pupils!

3 Effective interactive teaching strategies to

encourage speech in your classroom
First, I want to put some activities in the spotlight. The following
interactive student activities are three of the most effective ways to
encourage more speech in your classroom.

1. Think, pair and share

Set a problem or a question around a certain topic, and pair

up your students. Give each pair of students enough time so they can
reach a proper conclusion, and permit the kids to share their
conclusion in their personal voice. This way your students will be
engaged, communicating, and remember more of the class than ever
before.

2. Brainstorming

Interactive brainstorming is mostly performed in group

sessions. The process is useful for generating creative thoughts and
ideas. Brainstorming helps students learn to work together, and above
all, learn from each other. You’ll be surprised of all the great ideas
they come up with! Check out these 8 fun brainstorming apps you can
use in your classroom, or use BookWidgets' Mindmap widget to
structure thinking.

3. Buzz session

Participants come together in session groups that focus on a

single topic. Within each group, every student contributes thoughts
and ideas. Encourage discussion and collaboration among the
students within each group. Everyone should learn from each other’s
input and experiences. As a teacher, you could give your students
some keywords to spark the conversation.
Of course, there are many other interactive teaching ideas as well. I
split up the activities in different categories:

 Individual student activities

 Student pair activities
 Student group activities
 Interactive game activities

Individual student activities

4. Exit slips

These are best used at the end of the class session. You’ll
ask the students to write for one minute on a specific question. It might
be generalized to “what was the most important thing you learned
today”. Then, you can decide if you are going to open up a
conversation about it in your next class. You can ask them if they still
remember what they wrote down. Need a digital exit slip template?
Try this one from BookWidgets and learn more about the possibilities
of an exit slip.

5. Misconception check

Discover students' misconceptions. See if students can

identify what is the correct answer, when given a false fact. It’s useful
when going over a previous lesson. It encourages students to think
deeply and wager all the possibilities.

6. Circle the questions

Make a worksheet or a survey that has a list of questions

(make them specific) about your topic, and ask students to circle (or
check) the ones they don’t know the answers to. Then, let them turn in
the paper.
Create corners concerning different questions that were circled. Let
your students work on the extra exercises and explanation in the
corners, individually. As your students will all have circled different
questions, you have to give each student a different
and personilized order to visit the corners.

7. Ask the winner

Ask students to silently solve a problem on the board. After

revealing the answer, instruct those who got it right to raise their
hands (and keep them raised). Then, all other students have to talk to
someone with a raised hand to better understand the question and
how to solve it next time.

Student pair activities

8. Pair-share-repeat

After a Think-pair-share experience, which I’ve written about

in the first interactive learning lesson idea, you can also ask students
to find a new partner and share the wisdom of the old partnership to
this new partner.

9. Teacher and student

Let students brainstorm the main points of the last lesson.

Then, pair up your students and assign them 2 roles. One of them is
the teacher, and the other the student. The teacher’s job is to sketch
the main points, while the student’s job is to cross off points on his list
as they are mentioned and come up with 2 to 3 points that the teacher
missed.

10. Wisdom from another

After an individual brainstorm or creative activity, pair

students to share their results with each other. Then, call for
volunteers who found their partner’s work to be interesting or
exemplary. Students are often more willing to share the work of fellow
students publicly than their own work. Of course, you can always
encourage sharing their own objectives as well.
11. Forced debate

Let students debate in pairs. Students must defend the

opposite side of their personal opinion. It encourages them to step
away from their own beliefs and teaches them to look through a
different coloured glass for once in a while.
Variation: one half of the class takes one position, the other half takes
the other position. Students line up and face each other. Each student
may only speak once, so that all students on both sides can engage
the issue.

12. Optimist/Pessimist

In pairs, students take opposite emotional sides of a case

study, statement, or topic. Encourage them to be empathic and truly
“live” the case study. You’ll discover some good solution proposals
and your students will learn some exceptional social skills.

13. Peer review writing task

To assist students with a writing assignment, encourage

them to exchange drafts with a partner. The partner reads the essay
and writes a three-paragraph response: the first paragraph outlines
the strengths of the essay, the second paragraph discusses the
essay’s problems, and the third paragraph is a description of what the
partner would focus on in revision, if it were her essay. Students can
learn a lot from each other and from themselves as well! Here are 10
more creative self-assessment ideas.
Student group activities
14. Board rotation

This interactive learning strategy is even more interactive

than the others! Divide your class into different groups of students and
assign them to each of the boards you’ve set up in the room. Assign
one topic/question per board. After each group writes an answer, they
rotate to the next board. Here, they write their answer below the first
answer of the previous group. Let them go around the room until all
the groups have covered all the boards. Not that many boards in your
classroom? Try using tablets and BookWidgets' interactive
whiteboard.

15. Pick the Winner

Divide the class into groups and let them work on the same
topic/problem. Let them record an answer/strategy on paper or
digitally. Then, ask the groups to switch with a nearby group and let
them evaluate their answer. After a few minutes, allow each set of
groups to merge and ask them to select the better answer from the
two choices, which will be presented to the complete class.

16. Movie Application

In groups, students discuss examples of movies that made

use of a concept or event discussed in class, trying to identify at least
one way the movie makers got it right, and one way they got it wrong.
Think about movies showing historical facts, geographical facts,
biographies of famous people, …

Interactive game activities

Create in interactive classroom full of interactive learning games.
Games are so much fun for students, since it doesn’t feel like learning.
With BookWidgets, you can make interactive learning games like
crossword puzzles, pair matching games, bingo games, jigsaw
puzzles, memory games, and many more in minutes (and there’s a
Google Classroom integration as well).

17. Crossword puzzle

The crossword game is perfect to use as repetition activity.

Choose a list of words and their description, and BookWidgets creates
an interactive crossword for you. The crossword game transforms
these boring lessons into a fun experience. Here you can read more
about how to create them and for which topics you can use them (not
only for teaching languages)!

18. Scrabble

Use the chapter (or course) title as the pool of letters from
which to make words (e.g., mitochondrial DNA), and allow teams to
brainstorm as many words relevant to the topic as possible. You can
also actually play scrabble and ask students to form words from the
newly learned vocabulary.

19. Who/what am I?
 Tape a term or name on the back of each student. You can
also tape it on their forehead. Each student walks around the room,
asking “yes or no” questions to the other students in an effort to guess
the term. Of course, the term has something to do with your lesson
topic.

20. Bingo

Bingo is a fun game that can be used for all sorts of

exercises: language exercises, introductory games, math exercises,
etc. Take a look at this blog post with all the different bingo
possibilities here. You’ll be surprised about how many interactive
lesson activities you can do with just one game.
Want to create a bingo game yourself? You can start for free right
here:

Create a Bingo Game

Wrap up
That’s it! Like in any list, you could add many other interactive
teaching ideas. I could go on for quiet a while myself. But what about
you? Tell me about your creative, interactive classroom ideas by
adding them to this Padlet board below. This way, we can build out
this article with many more great ideas!
One more thing… Don’t forget to share! ;)