When it comes to teaching and learning and who does the heavy work, I like to tip the balance towards the students: I want them to do the work, not me. Unless they invest the energy, the thinking and the hard work, learning is less likely to happen. There are various ways to make this shift happen. If you are a beginner in this respect, I suggest you start with some tasks that are traditionally the teacher’s “job to do”, and ask the students to create an activity for themselves. If you are beyond this level, you can start thinking about how to make the students the agent in the learning process.
Here are some entry-level ideas on how to make the students do the work and still enjoy it.
1. Students write a mock test and test each other. This is a very simple thing to set up: divide the lesson into two parts. In the first half, the students write a mock test. The teacher gives the task types, the type of items to create and some guidelines on how to write a test. All these conditions should be the same as in the upcoming test this exercise is practice of. The students in groups write questions and test items. The teacher monitors and gives ideas. My experience is that students don’t know what questions and items would work in a test – which is normal, that’s why they are the students. So the teacher needs to guide them and elicit or explain why certain questions wouldn’t work. The easiest way to do this is to ask the students, “What kind of answer do you expect here?” or “How would you answer this question?” or “Would you accept X or Y as an answer? Why?” This probing will lead students to the discovery of what makes a good question. The aim here is not to train the students in mind-reading, but to make them understand what they need to know and understand in order to excel in the upcoming test. In the second half of the lesson the groups exchange their test, write down their answers, then correct each other’s work. The usual reaction I get for this activity is that the students find it hard but satisfying to create test items, they acknowledge that it is not easy to be a teacher, and usually they ask for more such activities.
2. Students create an online quiz for each other. There are so many online quizzes such as Kahoot!, Quizlet, Quizizz, and so on. Students pick their favourite and in pairs or small teams, create a test. They then share the link to their game and play. Teacher monitoring is a must while they create their test – guide them on content, the way they ask their questions, the answers they would accept, typos and so on. As most of these games can be reconfigured, the students can go on playing after the lesson. The greatest success and most amazing result I had was using this method with university students and Quizlet. When it came to practising (and learning the material at hand), they were so absorbed in the Gravity game that I couldn’t stop being amazed.
3. Human board game. This game is an enlarged board game: There’s one task or activity or question on each A4 sheet you place on the floor around the classroom. The students are the life-sized counters who move along the board. This is usually great fun, and you can make the students work even harder: Have them come up with the activities and create the board game together. Even children as young as 5-6 can contribute with sufficient teacher help. Of course, the younger the students are, the more scaffolding is needed. With such young students, you can demonstrate some tasks, such as “Draw [an animal]” or “What colour is this?” (and they have to colour the sheet). The teacher also needs to make sure the students stay on task and write items that are related to the content to be practised.
4. Questions and muddy points. Each student writes a question on a slip of paper; the teacher redistributes them. The students mingle to answer, then after each round, swap their slip. The teacher can use this information as assessment and evaluate what needs to be reteaching and who needs more help. Studying student questions are a great way to learn about the current level of understanding of students. If they write their own questions? Bonus.
5. Talking stones. Why not? Students can divide an A4 sheet into four parts (or more), write a question or a debatable point in each part, distribute an equal number of colourful pebbles/paper clips/small stationery to each participating member, and start the discussion immediately. Depending on how much time you want to spend on this or how you organise this activity, you can require students to swap their sheets and discuss another group’s talking points.
Here are some advance-level ideas:
1. Students plan and teach a lesson. It is an elevated flipped lesson. Give as much guidance to the students as they need, from the topic to focus on to the materials to reference, and have them plan and teach (part of) a lesson. They can use tried and tested methods they “stole” from you or they can be as innovative as they want to be. Don’t forget to give them feedback after the lesson, in private.
2. Choice boards. Some basic ideas about choices can be read in this blog. While offering choices is a simple but effective way to give ownership to the students, the types of activities and outcomes on offer need to be carefully considered. As long as the options come from the teacher, they are the teacher’s ideas. However, with some intuition and experimentation you can work out paths that give the students maximum freedom in how they learn the material. Think of varying the types of task, the tools, the outcomes. In an extreme case you can allow the students to submit their work as a song or a tik-tok video. Why not? As long as they prove their learning, anything goes.
3. Students create their individual learning plan. This takes the previous idea one step forward. If the students are mature or talented enough, why not allow them to design their individual learning plan? As assessment tends to be reliant on the curriculum, it’s worth discussing with the students what it means and where they have to be at the end of the term or academic year. The teacher needs to understand the curriculum requirements in great depth and share outcomes and objectives with the students so that they know where they are headed. A lot of scaffolding is necessary, and monitoring and plenty of feedback on the way are a must.
4. Students plan the unit and how they want to work. You can start small when it comes to students planning their own learning. Start with a unit. Share outcomes, objectives, success criteria, expected milestones, resources, etc. with the students. Create a checklist for the students so that they can monitor and self-evaluate on the way.
5. The negotiated syllabus. This is an advanced-level practice where you come to a common understanding with the students bypassing the agenda of the teacher; the students and the teacher shape the syllabus on an emerging basis. You can read a summary of negotiation and the negotiated syllabus in the language teaching environment below. (Note, however, that the claims are equally valid in non-language teaching classrooms as well.)
While this idea of placing so much responsibility on the students might seem a bit alien at first, it is worth giving it a go. Start small, start with the beginner ideas. Don’t forget, however, that the students need a lot of scaffolding and feedback when they first start out creating material and paths of learning for themselves. Also, be patient – they are not teachers, and they don’t have to know how to be one. Don’t expect them to be teachers, but guide them on how they can find ways to practise and learn more effectively. Let us know in the comments section of other tried and tested methods of making the students work harder and taking more responsibility for their work.
