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
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
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 will 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, but I’ll also 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
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 by 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 personalized 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. 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 work. Of course, you can always
encourage sharing their 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
colored glass 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 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 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 best 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 an 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:

Wrap up
That’s it! Like in any list, you could add many other interactive teaching ideas. I could go on for quite 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! ;)

Examples of differentiating activities:

Match vocabulary words to definitions.

Read a passage of text and answer related questions.

Think of a situation that happened to a character in the story and a different outcome.

Differentiate fact from opinion in the story.

Identify an author’s position and provide evidence to support this viewpoint.

Create a PowerPoint presentation summarizing the lesson.

Examples of differentiating the process:

 Provide textbooks for visual and word learners.

 Allow auditory learners to listen to audio books.
 Give kinesthetic learners the opportunity to complete an interactive assignment
online.

Examples of differentiating the end product:

 Read and write learners write a book report.

 Visual learners create a graphic organizer of the story.
 Auditory learners give an oral report.
 Kinesthetic learners build a diorama illustrating the story.

]
What differentiated instruction means

Carol Ann Tomlinson is a leader in the area of differentiated learning and professor of educational
leadership, foundations, and policy at the University of Virginia. Tomlinson describes differentiated
instruction as factoring students’ individual learning styles and levels of readiness first before designing
a lesson plan. Research on the effectiveness of differentiation shows this method benefits a wide range
of students, from those with learning disabilities to those who are considered high ability.

Differentiating instruction may mean teaching the same material to all students using a variety of
instructional strategies, or it may require the teacher to deliver lessons at varying levels of difficulty
based on the ability of each student.

Teachers who practice differentiation in the classroom may:

Design lessons based on students’ learning styles.

Group students by shared interest, topic, or ability for assignments.

Assess students’ learning using formative assessment.

Manage the classroom to create a safe and supportive environment.

Continually assess and adjust lesson content to meet students’ needs.

History of differentiated instruction

The roots of differentiated instruction go all the way back to the days of the one-room schoolhouse,
where one teacher had students of all ages in one classroom. As the educational system transitioned to
grading schools, it was assumed that children of the same age learned similarly. However in 1912,
achievement tests were introduced, and the scores revealed the gaps in student’s abilities within grade
levels.

In 1975, Congress passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), ensuring that children
with disabilities had equal access to public education. To reach this student population, many educators
used differentiated instruction strategies. Then came the passage of No Child Left Behind in 2000, which
further encouraged differentiated and skill-based instruction—and that’s because it works. Research by
educator Leslie Owen Wilson supports differentiating instruction within the classroom, finding that
lecture is the least effective instructional strategy, with only 5 to 10 percent retention after 24 hours.
Engaging in a discussion, practicing after exposure to content, and teaching others are much more
effective ways to ensure learning retention.
Four ways to differentiate instruction

According to Tomlinson, teachers can differentiate instruction through four ways: 1) content, 2) process,
3) product, and 4) learning environment.

1. Content

As you already know, fundamental lesson content should cover the standards of learning set by the
school district or state educational standards. But some students in your class may be completely
unfamiliar with the concepts in a lesson, some students may have partial mastery, and some students
may already be familiar with the content before the lesson begins.

What you could do is differentiate the content by designing activities for groups of students that cover
various levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy (a classification of levels of intellectual behavior going from lower-
order thinking skills to higher-order thinking skills). The six levels are: remembering, understanding,
applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating.

Students who are unfamiliar with a lesson could be required to complete tasks on the lower levels:
remembering and understanding. Students with some mastery could be asked to apply and analyze the
content, and students who have high levels of mastery could be asked to complete tasks in the areas of
evaluating and creating.

Examples of differentiating activities:

Match vocabulary words to definitions.

Read a passage of text and answer related questions.

Think of a situation that happened to a character in the story and a different outcome.

Differentiate fact from opinion in the story.

Identify an author’s position and provide evidence to support this viewpoint.

Create a PowerPoint presentation summarizing the lesson.

2. Process

Each student has a preferred learning style, and successful differentiation includes delivering the
material to each style: visual, auditory and kinesthetic, and through words. This process-related method
also addresses the fact that not all students require the same amount of support from the teacher, and
students could choose to work in pairs, small groups, or individually. And while some students may
benefit from one-on-one interaction with you or the classroom aide, others may be able to progress by
themselves. Teachers can enhance student learning by offering support based on individual needs.

Examples of differentiating the process:

Provide textbooks for visual and word learners.

Allow auditory learners to listen to audio books.

Give kinesthetic learners the opportunity to complete an interactive assignment online.

3. Product

The product is what the student creates at the end of the lesson to demonstrate the mastery of the
content. This can be in the form of tests, projects, reports, or other activities. You could assign students
to complete activities that show mastery of an educational concept in a way the student prefers, based
on learning style.

Examples of differentiating the end product:

Read and write learners write a book report.

Visual learners create a graphic organizer of the story.

Auditory learners give an oral report.

Kinesthetic learners build a diorama illustrating the story.

4. Learning environment

The conditions for optimal learning include both physical and psychological elements. A flexible
classroom layout is key, incorporating various types of furniture and arrangements to support both
individual and group work. Psychologically speaking, teachers should use classroom management
techniques that support a safe and supportive learning environment.

Examples of differentiating the environment:

Break some students into reading groups to discuss the assignment.

Allow students to read individually if preferred.

Create quiet spaces where there are no distractions.

Pros and cons of differentiated instruction

The benefits of differentiation in the classroom are often accompanied by the drawback of an ever-
increasing workload. Here are a few factors to keep in mind:

Pros

Research shows differentiated instruction is effective for high-ability students as well as students with
mild to severe disabilities.

When students are given more options on how they can learn material, they take on more responsibility
for their own learning.

Students appear to be more engaged in learning, and there are reportedly fewer discipline problems in
classrooms where teachers provide differentiated lessons.

Cons

Differentiated instruction requires more work during lesson planning, and many teachers struggle to find
the extra time in their schedule.

The learning curve can be steep and some schools lack professional development resources.

Critics argue there isn’t enough research to support the benefits of differentiated instruction
outweighing the added prep time.

Learn More: Click to view related resources.

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