Picking Non-Volunteers
The teachers at our school completed Teaching Sprints over several weeks.
The goal was to increase student engagement in an inclusive way by calling on them without students volunteering and keeping them accountable for their thinking and participation in the classroom.
Below are some useful links for this process.
We also came up with a few of our own as we looked for tweaks and improvements. These included:
- Using a timer to keep students on track.
- Asking students to share something their partner shared.
- When students passively refuse to engage; making them partner with a teacher or education assistant.
- Allowing students to speak in their own language when partner sharing.
- When pairing off, having two rotations in case one member contributes little during the sharing session.
- Getting students out of their seats or pairing with the person in front or behind them so they partner up with someone other than the person next to them.
- With odd numbers, the teacher would nominate a group of three or nominate a student who is regularly a non-participator, to be a 'group leader'.
- Getting students to raise their hand if they don't have a partner to quickly identify someone they can share with.
- Modelling a pairing process whereby the couple place their right arm on their partner's shoulder; the tallest person speaks first then they swap to their left hand on each other's shoulder and the shorter person then shares. students who were the same height would resolve who went first by identifying whose birthday was first in the calendar year.
Click on the images to follow the links.
Enter the maximum number of students in the class and then generate a number.
Use the random number to select a student from the class list.
The magic-box-name-picker can be used with either names or numbers.
This app allows for a little think time and can also remove names from the box once they have been drawn, rather like drawing pop sticks from a jar with student's names on them.
Use the timer to keep your lessons on track and allow enough time for students to think by themselves and manage time when sharing with a partner.
Bouncing Balls provides a fun way of students and teachers monitoring the noise level in the classroom.
