Activators
“If you want students to learn you must first get their attention.”
~Judith Willis, M.D., M.Ed.
Use Compelling Questions
Have you ever forgotten the name of a song, a book title or even someone's name and spent the whole day trying to remember it? It was under your skin, so to speak, and the need to remember was compelling to the extreme. The same is true when you begin a class with a question that creates a compelling need for students to know the answer. This strategy is based on the principle that questions should come before answers. Typically, teachers give information and then ask questions about it. Hearing the question first, especially a great one, radically increases the need to learn the information just to find the answer.
The above is from Edutopia's Your Lesson's First Five Minutes: Make Them Grand
Great questions have these things in common:
They are related to the subject you're teaching.
They amplify the students' natural sense of wonder.
They challenge the students' belief of the way things are.
For Example:
High school English: If Hamlet were a television sitcom, what would be a better name for it?
High school social studies: If Napoleon spread nationalism, how did nationalism bring him down?
Badges
This is not an exhaustive list of tools that you can use to create and use activators with your students. The list below is there to help get you started or further your growth with this instructional practice. If you have a tool that you would like us to consider adding, please click on this Suggest a Badge Form.
You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.
- Albert Einstein
Padlet
Padlet is a virtual wall that allows people to express their thoughts on a common topic easily. It works like an online sheet of paper where people can put any content (e.g. images, videos, documents, text) anywhere on the page, together with anyone, from any device. This is a great tool to collaborate, collect ideas, brainstorm, summarize, and more!
Socrative
Need to get things going? Socrative is your classroom app for fun, effective classroom engagement. No matter where or how you teach, Socrative allows you to instantly connect with students as learning happens.
Quickly assess students with prepared activities or on-the-fly questions to get immediate insight into student understanding. Then use auto-populated results to determine the best instructional approach to most effectively drive learning.
Socrative has you covered.
Kahoot
Frame a lesson! Ask 5 intriguing questions to get your students focused on the learning objectives of the day. When it comes to checking for understanding, Kahoot is by far one of the most popular options right now with both teachers and students.
Teachers will appreciate how simple Kahoot makes it to combine questions, images, and videos into self-grading quizzes and surveys. Students seem to really enjoy the gamified features of the site – including individualized feedback, leaderboards, and the chance to compete against other students.
Nearpod
Nearpod is an interactive presentation and assessment tool that can be used to amazing effect in the classroom. The app's concept is simple. A teacher can create presentations that can contain Quiz's, Polls, Videos, Images, Drawing-Boards, Web Content and so on.
Chatterkids
Simply take any photo, draw a line to make a mouth, and record your voice. Then share your students' Pix with friends and family as silly greetings, playful messages, creative cards, or even fancy book reports. (iPad app only)