Thinking Activities
I recently came across a couple of excellent templates for some brilliant activities to help get students thinking more deeply about the content they have been learning. You can access a file with all the activities here. All are provided in a single page format and also in a two per page format. None of these are new activities, but I have found the templates a useful way to promote them.
The strength of each of these activities is that the get students to think deeply about their knowledge, and they tell you as a teacher a lot of information about the understanding of your students. They are also "fun" activities that students tend to enjoy! Most also give you something that you can use with the students again at a later date, to improve their retrieval of key information.
2 Truths and a Lie
A simple premise, you have to come up with three statements, where two are true and one is a lie. I had used this lots of times with tutor groups as a pastoral activity, but not in Maths, until I read this blog post where the template came from.
I have now use the activity a couple of times with classes and it really gets them thinking about what would be a good lie. It has to be convincing as the truth to make it hard to spot.
I particularly like the bit at the bottom which gets them to explain which one is the lie.
How to use
I have had students fill in the page, then I collect and check their responses. From this I write them some feedback on a post it note which I give to students to make any alterations before collecting them back in.
In the next class I stick the sheets up around the classroom, with the explanation folded up underneath, and get students to go round and work out which is the lie of each sheet. I will give them 1-2 minutes per sheet, depending on the topic.
Make your own Kahoot
Every student loves Kahoot! It is an instantly recognisable activity for them, and one that involves fun and competition. Personally, I am not convinced that when I play a game of Kahoot with my students they are learning much, as guessing tends to start becoming a problem. But the idea of multiple choice questions is what is interesting here. Particularly when you start to think deeply about the wrong answers. Creating wrong answers based on common mistakes and misconceptions is a powerful learning tool. When students do this you also get to see their misconceptions around how they write and answer questions.
How to use
Get students to fill in the template, perhaps in pairs, groups or individually. Make sure to explain carefully to them that the incorrect answers must be sensible wrong answers to the question. Including multiple correct answers adds a bit of a challenge to the activity.
Collect the sheets in, check them and make any feedback you need to. Then turn these questions into an actual Kahoot! Either type them in, or take a photo and upload the question that way. This makes an excellent low stakes quiz to use in a weeks' time to get students to recall the knowledge. You can throw a couple of your own questions in too if you want!
Tick or Trash
Tick or Trash has students compare two answers to a given questions and trash one of them (the wrong one or the worse one). I really like these activities as they get students thinking about which is the better answer and why. They are even more effective when the answer box has a full solution, so students can compare methods and decide which they prefer and why.
In this instance, students are tasked with creating their own Tick or Trash activity.
How to use
Students have to write five questions in the middle column. For each question they need to give an answer from both Nikki and Gavin. It could be that one of them is wrong (the classic version), both are right or both are wrong. Adding these extra options increases the thinking that students will need to solve the problems.
Once they are complete, and you have checked them and given feedback, they make an excellent revision activity later in the bimester, to give students the activity created by somebody else.
Odd One Out
Odd One Out is a classic activity. There are a number of statements, and students have to decide which one is the odd one out. Obviously there are lots of ways to lay this out:
You can have a large group of statements which match up in pairs, with one left with no partner;
You can have a large group of statements which are all different ways of saying the same thing, with one not matching this theme;
You can have three statements, one of which does not match the other two (as given here);
You can have 4 things all of which share some similarities and some differences (as in the fantastic Which One Doesn't Belong website).
How to use
Students have to write three statements, two of which match, with the third being the odd one out. They need to make it hard for people to find the odd one out.
When students come to answer each others problems, challenge them to find a "pair" for the odd one out. That is, get them to write a fourth statement that matches the odd one out.
Definition Map
This activity is to get students thinking about the words and definitions they come across. This seems most appropriate to new subject specific vocabulary. The idea is that students give a definition of the word (in their own words), then some of the characteristics to help them remember the defintion. Finally they have to give and example of it, and a non-example. This is based on the Frayer Model, and more information can be found here.
How to use
When you encounter a new vocabulary word, come back to it after a couple of days, and ask students to fill in the template individually. This is important as they need to come up with their own definition of the word. Do not let them look it up! Then get students to read out their definitions and examples and non-examples. Alternatively, have students stick them to the board so they can read each others. You should pick up on any errors or misconceptions, if the students don't realise in discussion.
I am planning to also use these for two similar phrases that students often confuse (cumulative frequency and frequency density). My hope is that in thinking about the two phrases in more depth, they will better remember the differences between them.
Who I Am
This activity is designed to get students to think about the basic information, and then more in depth details, for a given person/object. It can be used for characters from stories, historical or inspirational figures, shapes (such as the inspiration behind the template), objects or buildings of importance, or a wide variety of other things. A similar type of activity is to make use of a Facebook style template.
How to use
When learning about a character, object, or anything else which has any interesting properties or characteristics, students name it, then have to give a brief description of it (Who I am). This represents the basic information about the object/person. Then students are encouraged to think in a little more depth about the object/person, giving some more details. Finally, they are expected to synthesise their understanding of the object/person, and come up with a "wish" for them.
Always Sometimes Never
In this activity there are usually a number of statements and students have to place them in the write category: are they always true, sometimes true or never true? For example:
Mercury is a liquid
Feminine words in Spanish end in the letter a
Squares have 4 right angles
Elephants eat meat
How to use
Obviously you can create the statements and students can place them in the correct places. This is an excellent thinking activity in itself. But asking students to design a series of 10 statements for a given topic that have a mixture of these three answers is quite a challenge. This can often be a case of using precise, or more abstract, language.
Knowledge Reflection
In this activity, students have to reflect on what they have learnt, something they need to review and how it connects to their prior knowledge. The idea of this one is that students are both thinking about what they have learnt in more depth, but also that they are making connections to things they already know, which will help them remember the new content.
How to use
At the end of a lesson or unit of work, get students to fill in the template, thinking about what they learnt that was new, and what was stuff they already knew. Once done, this is a good opportunity for students to discuss with each other exactly what they felt they had learnt, and this can form part of a whole class discussion.
Brain Dump
This activity brings in the power of retrieval practice, and I came across it through this podcast. The idea is that every time a student recalls information they know, the stronger the memory of that item becomes, and the better they learn it. This is a very simple activity, that can be used both at the start and end of a unit to show students how much they have learnt, as well as trigger connections to prior knowledge, and focus on some retrieval too.
How to use
Simply get students to write everything they can remember about a given topic on a piece of paper. Once done, they can discuss with their partners what they have in common, and what one of them remembered that the other forgot. The act of trying to retrieve (even if it is unsuccessful) helps students learn the material, especially if it is paired with feedback on what the "right" answer was. This is particularly powerful as a strategy if used a little time after the unit has been finished, to add the benefits of spaced practice.
By no means are these all the different activities that you can use, and they will not be right for every situation, but these 9 activities might hopefully prove useful in your classrooms in the future. They all rely on students already having some knowledge of the content, and using this to create ideas of their own. This should help them develop their schemas, help improve their understanding and memory, and also give you resources to use in future lessons for low stakes formative assessment!
Do you have any great activities that can be generalised like these ones can? Share in the comments!