Avoid the awkward silence & get your students talking.

No Gimmicks! Here are some quick strategies that can be used whether you are meeting a class for the first time, or introducing new content areas. They are designed to be interactive, get your students talking and help you identify their prior learning.

Strategy One: Turn your Back

Before class, prepare post it notes or labels with content area related to the new topic you will be teaching. Some examples include:

• Terminology directly related to your subject or topic.

• Images that portray certain events or art styles.

• Numbers.

As each student enters the room you place a sticker on each of their backs.

You then distribute a ‘scavenger hunt style’ worksheet to each of the students. The worksheet should include definitions, equations or quiz questions that directly match the stickers placed on each of the students backs (which are the answers). The task for each student is to walk around with their classmates and try to match the right answer to the question on the sheet.

When each student finds a match, they write down the answer, as well as the name of the student with the sticker on their back. If you are introducing a class to each other for the first time, you can add a column to the worksheet where they record a fun fact about their peer. The student who has the most correct answers, in the fastest time, will be the winner. The teacher can also assign a definition and play the game with the students too!

Here is a template for you to use.

Here is an example of how I used this in VCE Legal Studies.

Strategy Two: Picture this

This is an engaging strategy, but it does require you to set the room up a few minutes before. You will need to print out visuals and stick them up around the room.

Collate a visual gallery of a topic that you will be starting with. As it is January 26th in Australia when I am writing this, I will use Australia Day as my example. Collate images that have something to do with this topic - you could collate pictures of Australia Day celebrations and clean up, winners of the Australia Day medals, protests surrounding the day, paintings of the 1788 British fleet arrival, paintings of indigenous massacres. The key is that you don’t want the images to project an opinion - provide as many options as possible. You can also add audio (songs, news reports) that you can play as the students walk through the museum.

Students walk quietly through the whole gallery. At the end, they are told to go and stand next to an image that they either:

a) know something about
b) makes them question something
c) they found interesting

Ask for volunteers or call on students randomly to share why they stood next to that image. Hand out cards with numbers on it - two cards with number one, two cards with number two, etc. Students need to find the person with the same number as them, and share why they choose to stand next to the image originally.

To conclude, call upon 3-4 pairs to discuss what they talked about.

Here is an example of images related to Australia Day.

Strategy Three: Vote with your Feet

Put up a statement on the board that could be deemed controversial. For example, in a History class, you might write, “War is Pointless”. In an English classroom, you might write, “Australia Day should not be celebrated on January 26th”. In a Maths classroom, you could write, “All problems can be solved with Maths”. The key is, there doesn’t have to be a right or wrong answer - the question just must allow the students to think, and decide.

Create a continuum of ‘Totally Agree’ and ‘Totally disagree’ in the room. Students get up, choose a position on this metaphorical line, and have to justify where they are standing to the person nearest to them.

Once you have given them a minute or two to discuss their position with someone who is nearby, either call on volunteers or pick students at random to share their justification. Make it clear that students can move positions if their classmates arguments are convincing enough.

To ensure that students listen to one another’s responses, you can ask students randomly to summarise their classmates arguments.

This activity can take anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes depending on how talkative and passionate your class it - lead into content that is relevant to the discussion question afterwards. For example, in History, you could lead into a lesson about why countries go to war, depending on the historical period you are looking at.