Avoid Worksheets and Desk Work with these Interactive Classroom Activities
We all learn by doing. Too many students consider school to be "boring" when instead, school could help students explore, expand their creativity, and immerse themselves in learning. These 5 interactive lessons will have your students looking forward to walking into your classroom each day.
#5 - Survivor Circle
This fun class activity is especially common to pair with a text such as The Lord of the Flies, but it can be used with any text that relates to government.
Here’s how it works:
Students come into the room and sit in a huge circle. You give them the following scenario: They are to pretend that they were on a flight together as a class, they had to make an emergency landing in a wooded mountaintop, and there’s no adults who landed with them.
The assignment is then for them to come up with a plan as a whole class for how they’re going to survive for one year. They need to turn in one paper outlining their survival plan by the end of the period. That's one paper for the whole class--not per student! (Be sure to tell them not to figure out a plan for getting rescued because that’s not the focus for the assignment.)
I put some guiding prompts and questions up on the screen for students to reference in order to get them thinking about important points. And then I let them...go.
As the facilitator, your role is truly to stay out of the conversation. Your job is really more to take notes that you’re then going to use to debrief in the following class. This lesson is an opportunity for students to experience the authenticity of having to talk without a teacher pushing them, and it’s really an observational experience of a community for you as the observer.
What I love about this assignment is how you immediately get to see the different personalities in society. There are some students who will say absolutely nothing the entire period. There are other students who will dominate the conversation. There are pockets of students who will start to have side conversations that will never get brought up to the entire class as a whole. There are a lot of students who resort immediately to...cannibalism. It’s pretty scary, how fast it will go there. And it just gives you such a dynamic experience that you have so much to talk about the next class.
The next class, I try to ask students the following questions:
“What type of government did you end up setting up in our activity yesterday?” “How did it feel being an individual interacting in this society, which was your whole classroom?”
“What are your chances of survival?”
“Does this plan seem like it’s going to work?” “What are some of the pitfalls here?”
“What led to those pitfalls?” “What would have allowed you to create a stronger system?”
Debrief these questions however you want: pass them out to students at the end of the period to reflect on for homework before the next day's debrief, or give them some reflection time or time to talk with a partner first before coming together as a whole class during the debriefing lesson.
Why I like this assignment:
The students love it! There are certain students who thrive in this type of lesson. These students will always ask me if we can do another class similar to this one in the future. I find that it resonates with them because it is so different from their normal classroom experience. Even your quiet students will be intrigued due to the change in class routine and be immersed in learning.
And I love it, too! It gives students a frame of reference when we’re working with a text such as Animal Farm or Persepolis. When reading these texts, I want my students to reflect on what reality looks like after usurping an existing government. This consideration allows us to talk about our own country and how the United States’ government formed versus whichever government we are studying in our text.
This lesson's teaching point: When our society rebels against current government structures, how do we know the new structure is going to be better?
It begets the question of “How do we set up a government from chaos? From just a group of people who have come together with no intention to do so, who just kind of find themselves together?”
#4 - Grammar Grabbers
Even several years in to teaching, I know I'm always in need of new interactive strategies for teaching grammar. For this one, I challenged myself to make grammar fun …. or at least, as engaging as I could. I tasked myself with thinking “How can I add in a kinesthetic approach to teaching grammar?”
The merits of teaching or not teaching grammar is enough for an entirely different post. Personally, one approach I like is to teach students grammar concepts that will help them with comma placement (a huge area of need for many of my students).
For this reason, I like to teach complex sentences that include subordinating conjunctions. But I thought to myself: “I cannot walk into a classroom and say the word 'subordinating conjunctions' because I will have lost them. For the whole year.”
So instead, I created manipulatives. (To do this, print each subordinating conjunction word or phrase on colorful pieces of cardstock that you cut, laminate, and put magnet tape on. If you have a student aide, this is a perfect project for them to do for you!)
How it works:
Before class begins, I hide the words all around the room, on anything that is magnetic. Students then come into the classroom and I say nothing. We begin our normal class period. When I'm ready, I then say, "Okay, students, there are words hidden all over this classroom. See if you can find them all, but make sure that everybody grabs at least one!"
Everybody gets up, some students begrudgingly, some students with enthusiasm (I have some students who want to grab all the words in the room, and a couple who are happy to just find one under their desk and stay there.) Regardless of how they find their word/phrase, my purpose is not for them to memorize every single one on my list, but at least remember maybe one or two that they find to pick up.
The intention is that hopefully with just even this one or two word exposure, they might begin to recognize words or phrases that function in a similar way, leading to a better understanding of sentence structure and comma placement.
Once students have returned to their desks, I ask them to write a sentence that begins with their word or phrase. As we share sentence examples, we talk about the pause they may hear after the dependent clause, and then I dive into more formalities of how complex sentences work.
After the lesson, I have all students bring up their words and throw them on our chalkboard. At this point, I can (if I want to) even use the word Subordinating Conjunction -- I usually have a student with nice, fancy handwriting write it at the top of our chalkboard.
But in during future class lessons, I might just call them “dependent” words. I really believe it doesn’t matter if students know the official terms if they have a feel for the concept when it comes to grammar.
If you’re in a school where there’s another teacher in your classroom right before you teach (like me!), you might not have time to hide the words before class. The solution: Allow two students from your class to walk in, ask one of them to help you hide the terms all around the room, and ask the other to hold guard at the door. This gives you a student representative outside your classroom to hold your class and tell other teachers/administrators walking by “My teacher's in there; she’s just setting up the classroom for an activity.” And voila! (It only takes two minutes to hide the manipulatives, so your class won't be in the hallway long.)
If you teach the same classes back to back, at the end of the period, simply have your class hide the words in the room again for the next class, and you'll be all set!
Download this free resource here!
#3 - Marxism Simulation
We’re starting to get down to my super favorites here! I use this lesson specifically for when I teach Animal Farm or Persepolis, two texts which expose students to Karl Marx and communism.
This is another time where I challenged myself to think “How can I teach students a concept by experiencing it?”
When I introduce Karl Marx, I teach the difference between capitalism and communism. First, I do show an introductory video so students can take some preliminary notes on key terms such as capitalism, communism, bourgeoise, and proletariat. Then, I dive into this lesson simulation.
How it works:
I divide my classroom into two groups. I tell these two groups that they both work in a factory creating T-shirts. I give them an outline of a T-shirt for them to decorate, and I set a timer for about one minute and say, “Okay, pretend your workday starts now.” Everybody designs their shirts, and then at the end of the minute, the timer goes off and I tell everybody: “I’m going to pay you out now.” (We’re talking about economic systems today, so money must be involved!)
Here’s the fun part: You can choose how to pay students out. You can give them homework passes, tokens (at my school we have tickets they can use to trade in for gift cards, pencils, notebooks, etc.), or if your school allows it, you could use something with food that is ok with your allergy policy, such as Hershey kisses.
One group is a communism group, and one group is a capitalism group, but I don’t tell them that. I always start by paying out my communism group. I give every student in that group two Hershey kisses.
I’ll hold up their drawings and commend them on their work, and I’ll even hold up a student’s who maybe didn’t really do much, and pay them out the same. Then I move over to my capitalist group, again, not mentioning which is which, to pay them out. I give everybody in my capitalist group one Hershey kiss--except the last person, who I usually give 8 or 10. I do it one by one so students watch me and they have this reaction of “Oh my god -- how many is she going to give this person?!”
Afterwards, I put the terms communism and capitalism up on the screen, and I ask students to explain which group is which. Then I put up the terms bourgeoisie and proletariat and ask students to explain who is which from our exercise.
When I do this activity, I see students really get it. Students will exclaim “Oh! That boy or that girl with the 10 Hershey kisses is the bourgeoise! They’re getting all the profits!”
From this activity, students have a personal connection to the systems of communism and capitalism. As we continue reading Animal Farm or Persepolis, I keep referring back to this lesson. When students ask what communism means again, I say, “Remember, if you were in the group that got two Hershey kisses, you were in the communism group; you were in the group where everyone was equal.”
And I even have students reflect on these questions at the end of the lesson: How did it feel? Which system do you think you would prefer in your own life? We talk about the differences between the two economic systems and question why the characters in our text are drawn to communism in light of their own situations.
#2 - Speed-Dating Speeches
I observed this lesson from my mentor teacher when I was an intern, and this is truly something more teachers need to do if they haven’t heard of it before. This is one fun teaching activity that will get your students presenting, which is certainly one of the biggest student resistors!
For this assignment, students write a speech on a famous individual. What makes this lesson more dynamic is the way they deliver their speech.
Instead of having the traditional student come up in front of the classroom and present their speech in front of everyone, this activity takes it to a whole new level.
How it works:
On presentation day, students usually prepare a visual aid, along with their speech. I then divide the class in half and the first group stands in a circle around the perimeter of the room. They set up their poster and stand right next to it.
The second group of students all find someone to stand in front of. So now we have a presenter and an audience member. It’s usually about a 1:1 ratio, or about one presenter to no more than three students (in case some students came that day, unprepared).
Students then give their speeches in a speed dating format. I set a timer and every 3 minutes, the inner circle, which is the audience members, rotates. This means the presenting students will actually give their speech about five times within one class period!
Halfway through class, we swap. The inner circle sets up their poster and the outer circle is now the listener.
As students rotate, they take notes. Notes can be related to content or evaluating something positive about the speaker’s presentation, depending on the standards you wish to address with this lesson.
Why I love this assignment:
Most students are so uncomfortable with speaking. They tend to avoid it, and a lot of the time it’s because they just don’t have enough experience with it.
This assignment is wonderful because it allows them to say their speech so many times that by the end of the class period, they feel so much more comfortable than had they only given their speech one time. If you do this activity a couple times throughout the school year, it can help take the pressure off public speaking for many students.
My favorite interactive lesson: #1 The Shakespeare Museum
Every year that I teach the bard, I consider how to make Shakespeare fun for students. In particular, I wanted to find a better way to introduce students to background information about Shakespeare.
I wanted to give them the opportunity to practice some research skills, but it oftentimes became the boring PowerPoint or Google slides presentation, or students would just throw out ideas and we would take notes in our notebooks and then move on.
Again, I wanted an experience for students that was much more immersive. So we put on a Shakespeare museum.
Of course, this museum can apply to any content you need students to research… whether you’re teaching a text that requires to learn about the Holocaust, such as Night or The Diary of Anne Frank, or you’re teaching a text that requires a lot of background information about religion, such as Life of Pi, or students need background of any time period, like the 20's to prepare for The Great Gatsby, or the history of World War 2, or the Harlem renaissance, (and the list goes on).
How it works:
Divide the class into about six groups of students, with each group choosing a different Shakespearean topic. I give each group guiding points that I want their audience to be able to learn from their station.
Students work in a group to research information for their topic and develop a museum station. The requirements for their museum stations include a mixture of visual, interactive, and digital displays.
For example, with digital media, students will create videos or voiceovers to share important information; one time a group created an audio recording pretending to be different scholars assessing who was the real author of Shakespeare's works, and each scholar presented a different theory.
Other groups used our Chromebooks with the touch pad capability to create a very real museum-like digital presentation about Shakespeare's background and home life. And viewers could touch on different links to go to different slides on the presentation to learn about the different areas that Shakespeare had lived throughout his life.
Groups also need to make physical artifacts. These are things that people can actually touch at each station. Students will often make flags in the colors that were used to represent the different plays -- comedies, histories, tragedies. Students have made replicas of the currency used in Shakespeare's time. One time, a student brought in a renaissance dress that she borrowed from the choir teacher for the station learning about the different roles of women during the Elizabethan period. Students have also made games with iambic pentameter and figuring out whether or not you’re getting your accent right.
On museum day, I give students ten minutes to set up their station. They can do whatever arrangement they want with the desks: fold them into a group, make a line with them in the back of the room against the wall, etc. And then students rotate to each station. When students are going through the activity, they take notes on what they need to learn from each station.
Sometimes if we don’t have enough time in one class period I’ll split the class in half, and the first three groups will go on the first day, and the next three groups go on the second day.
Why I love this assignment:
My classroom comes alive on presentation day. Students have engaged in real-life work as researchers, used their creativity to develop aesthetic displays, and they immersive themselves in learning from each other's work. My first year doing this project, my principal stepped into my room, drawn in from the energy as he was passing by. "All student generated?" he asked, knowing the answer. He looked around the room with pride for his students.
This was a teacher-revel moment: The students had done all the work. As a teacher, I facilitated and guided their learning. And the outcome was more striking than anything I had done before. This is what school is supposed to be like, I thought to myself.
Since then, I have pushed myself to discover more inventive ways of teaching lessons that "could" be done with desk-work or worksheets. This doesn't mean handouts aren't involved. This doesn't mean students don't sit at desks and collaborate while they work. But it does mean the learning experience is entirely different.
If you have interactive lessons that you absolutely LOVE, share them with our learning community! Share in the comments below, or share on Twitter and Instagram at #illuminatelearning
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