Active Learning

In my opinion active learning means that you give the students an activity or an instruction to
complete but it is trying to find the balance to help them understanding why they are doing it.
During the online space I was trying to think of new ways to incorporate active learning into my
lesson plans. I felt this would be difficult and also to come up with ideas as I did not have an
interaction or engagement with the students face to face. I found that I was losing students as they
would just sit there in silence. I had to critical think about a fun activity for all the students to
interact within the live online lesson and also get the students’ knowledge of the topic to a very high
standard. “Teaching Technique introduces a fun, versatile game that gets students thinking, talking,
and working together” (Mermelstein, 2016). One way that I had overcome this challenge was to use
the chat function within Microsoft teams to get all the students to type in any concerns that they are
having. As the teacher I feel that it is important to communicate with the students to see whether
they feel comfortable with interacting and I got them to vote whether or not they to use the chat
function. They voted yes to use this resource.

When talking with the tutor I feel that I had to bring up this topic to discuss how he would
incorporate active learning in the online environment. After talking with the cooperating teacher and
the tutor I had to critical think about way to include this in the lesson and one method that stood out
for me was to use the whiteboard. At the end of each lesson, the students would write a key word
on the word wall which stood out for them. The word wall is a list of words that are enlarged on one
wall in the classroom. I felt that this is very important to keep referring back to it because the
students will remember the words better by seeing them after each lesson and building on them
throughout the year. I feel that this is important to keep adding words to the wall so that the
students will remember these words for exam purposes and the future. “agrees that classroom
strategy provides a visual learning environment for students to analyze key words in depth” (Buehi,
2017).

When getting a review from the cooperating teacher he explained to me that it is very important to
keep repeating the words back to the students so that they will remember them better for exams.
The teacher said to me that at the start of the lesson ask the students to have a pen and paper to
write down key words so that they can answer, add a word to the whiteboard and add colour to
make it stand out for all the students and the teacher. In the future I am going to use the whiteboard
in the online environment and in the classroom use the word wall because I feel that it is a great way
to get all the students to participate in the activity and help reinforce the learning on the students.

References
Buehi, D. (2017). Classroom stategies for interative learning. Portland: Stenhouse.

Mermelstein, A. D. (2016). Ten things to enchance learning and fun in the classroom:. Retrieved from
ERIC: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1123194