At the end of the Day 2 small group session, I suggested that each participant pick a specific active learning technique that they have liked among those introduced in the preceding two days, and challenge themselves to use it in their Day 3 mini-lesson. The suggestion was received with enthusiasm and actually one of our participants came up with a fun way to do it: using the cuttings of the handout of active learning techniques, we crumpled them into balls and put them in a bowl. Each participant then could draw a couple of techniques out of the bowl (these were 14 techniques that they had worked on both on the online module as well as the theme session on the same morning, so they were reasonably familiar with all of the techniques.) I greatly encouraged them to use their ‘lottery techniques’ in the following mini-lesson, if they felt comfortable.
This activity was essentially meant as a reflective practice to get them to take one step further from just reading about, summarizing and even evaluating the active learning technique, and seriously consider them for application in near future. I was pleasantly surprised the next day when I saw that most of them had really incorporated the lottery techniques in their lesson and were happy about the experience!
This is awesome, I usually give them a similar challenge, but I like the lottery. That way they get to first reflect on all the techniques they’ve seen which is already good. Incorporating them is a bonus. I’ll try it next ISW!
i like how this challenge is “conducted” – it’s a safe and neutral invitation but also laced with increased peer-to-peer accountability/expectation to take risks! i think i would emphasize alignment when i try this one out in my next isw 🙂