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Maximizing Participation |
Classroom participation involves more than just willingness to speak without much prodding. Participation comprises attentiveness to the instructor and fellow students, active listening, critical thinking, and mental engagement in classroom activities. The following techniques--classroom tested again and again--will help your students to focus on and engage in classroom activities successfully.
Creative Personalization
Why?
Students who are constantly asked to speak about their own experiences tend to recycle the same vocabulary, subject pronouns, and general themes over and over again. Student who focus primarily on themselves and their actions are not guided to use critical thinking abilities, nor are they guided to be attentive to listener/reader needs and interests. Finally, many students feel uncomfortable discussing various aspects of their lives.
How?
When assigning discussion topics, writing topics, creative speaking activities, try to build in one degree of separation between the student and his/her own personal experiences.
Guided Response Writing
Why?
Just as there is a tendency to over-personalize in elementary classes, it can be easy to under-personalize in more advanced classes. Guided response validates and helps students to articulate the difference between their emotional and intellectual reactions to readings and films.
How?
Let's say students are going to see "Last Year at Marienbad" for your film class. Their two-paragraph, guided response writing assignment will be to describe what they liked and disliked about the film in one paragraph. In a second paragraph, they will answer the question, "Why do you think so many people have studied and discussed this film over the past decades? What is important about the style and content of the film?" The "Guided response writing" makes students aware of their own need to make shifts in tone, content and perspective in academic speech and writing.
Red Herring
Why?
Students often tune out in follow-up presentations of small-group and pair activities. Provide motivation for them to listen to one-another.
How?
When students are preparing and presenting creative projects such as magazine aids, brochures, group compositions, dialogues--require that each group use a word (méchant!) or an expression (en avoir marre) somewhere in the project. Curious to see how each group has integrated the word or phrase, students are more likely to pay attention to presentations.
See the full explanation in the Classroom / Homework Activities directory.
Last to First: Answers on the Board
Why?
Some exercises are best written out and corrected on the board or an overhead. But students write out answers at wildly different paces. This gives the slow-writers a little extra time to work, the fast-writers something to do if they finish early.
How?
When students are producing a number of sentences individually or in small groups, ask for volunteers to write sentences on the board last to first. Start with ,"Who has number seven? Number six? Number five?" and have volunteers begin writing on the board right away. Assign numbers one and two to students who aren't finished but like to write on the board. By the time all seven sentences are on the board, everyone should have finished.
Games
Why?
Games are authentic language-using activities. Think of all of the board games on the market based on language. Games break the monotony, and allow for mechanical practice and review in the context of an activity that (young) adults recognize.
How?
I like games that divide the class into two teams, with one representative of each team at the board at a time. The two contestants race to see who can get information on the board first. Teammates may help, but only in French. Verb drill competitions require no preparation and allow everyone to review. See The Match Game, a personal favorite.
Visuals
Why?
Most Americans have a predominantly visual learning style. When post cards, objects, magazine photos are passed around the room, hands-on students have something to touch. Visuals trigger new ideas and creative thinking, and generally liven up the class.
How?
Base writing assignments on pictures. Use objects as the basis of description exercises. Cue simple grammar drills with pictures. Use pictures on tests.
Suspense
Why?
It keeps students' interest.
How?
It can be as simple as placing a video tape on your desk and leaving it there until it's time to show it, or as complex as riddles and guessing games in French. I like to build mystery into as many activities as possible.
For example, you've probably had students exchange names and make predictions about one-another for 20 years from now, using the future tense. Add suspense by having students guess which student's future is being told as students read their predications.
Pre-Reading / Pre-Writing in Class
Why?
So that students will have already begun their reading/writing assignment before going home and facing the full/empty page.
How?
Most textbooks today provide ample pre-reading and pre-writing exercises. Use these or modify them. At the very least, discuss the title and first sentence of a text! Use small-group or individual in-class writing exercises whenever possible. This allows each student to go home with at least a piece of his/her composition written.
Classroom Reflection Cards
Why?
Students don't always know when to take notes. They may not have practice simply writing down good ideas that come to mind in class.
How?
After a good discussion, a good activity, etc., ask students to take a moment to write down something they have learned, need to study, or don't want to forget. Depending on the course and the recent activity, this could be a concrete grammar example, or an idea. Have students hand in the cards. You'll read valuable comments about the class and the individual students, and you'll have a better sense of your students' intellectual participation in the classs.
Copyright 1998 by Cheryl Krueger
Department of French
University of Virginia