Activities to engage students during the lesson

Fishbowl

Fishbowl is an activity that uses a discussion format. Unlike group discussion, fishbowl allows the entire class to participate in the discussion process. This activity can be used in small to medium classes with 15-50 students, topics can be any open-ended discussion questions and you can also use it as a group project debriefing.  

How:

• Inner circle: Three to five students (fishes) form a discussion group (the fishbowl) to share their thoughts.
• Outer circle: The rest of the group are observers, sitting outside the fishbowl and surrounding the fishes.

Rules:

• The teacher introduces the topic and the students start discussing. The audience outside the fishbowl listen in on the discussion.
• Observers can join the discussion group by tapping out a fish.
• Fish can also leave the group by tapping an observer in. When time runs out, teacher summarizes (or ask an observer to) the discussion.

Advantages:

• Engage every student by allowing them the opportunity to actively listen and participate in the discussion.
• Encourage peer learning & provide chances for students to interact with each other.
• Students are exposed to more ideas (compare to a small group discussion).

Think-pair-share

It is a strategy which aims at promoting classroom participation by encouraging a high degree of student response. It’s also an easy way to engage students in large class setting to participate more. In this strategy, a question/ problem is posed, students have time to think about it individually for 2-3 minutes before working in pairs to solve the problem and sharing their ideas with the rest of class. Active learning happens when students have to do something (think, discuss & share) on the questions/ problem posed.

Procedure:

• Pose a question (writing it on the board/ typing out in a PPT slide)
• Ask students to think about the question on their own (2 - 3 mins)
• Form groups (3-4 students per group)
• Ask students to discuss the question within the group  (5 mins)
• Ask groups to share what they discussed (5 - 10 mins)

Think-pair-share engage all students in the classroom (even the quieter students will have a chance and confidence to speak in small groups). It also provides a quick snapshot of the class (e.g., students' understanding of a particular concept, general misconceptions and thoughts and feeling etc), students are encouraged to speak and participate actively in class.

Agress/disagree/ cannot reach agreement card

This simple activity will give students a chance to discuss a topic within their group, before showing their group's stance and explaining their viewpoints to the class. You can group 4-5 students together, present a controversial topic to the class, ask them to discuss among themselves in groups. The group then need to show their stance to the class (by showing the "agree", "disagree" or "cannot reach agreement" card). You can ask students who have different stance to explain their ideas to the class and all students will have a chance to listen to different ideas.