Student-Friendly Teaching: Games, Movement and Testing
The best teaching evaluation I ever received came directly from a student who wrote: You helped me love math. This student was not one of my best students and math did not come easily to her. Other students also told me they liked my class despite the fact that they did not like math! I believe these students liked my class because I worked hard to create a student-friendly classroom. There were three key elements to creating the atmosphere I wanted: games, movement and my approach to testing.
Anyone who knew me as a child would be surprised that I listed games as a key element in my teaching. I was always the kid with my nose in a book. I preferred reading to any board or card game and my interest in video games ended with Pac Man, which most of you would find laughably primitive. But as a teacher, I recognized that my students liked games so I incorporated them into my teaching in a lowkey way. By that, I mean there were no tournaments or prizes and I rarely kept score. You can do all of these things but games worked for my students even without those elements.
A favorite game that works with any subject was Wordsplash. I put four images on the whiteboard then one disappeared. The students had to identify the missing image by saying the word out loud. This was a great game to get my often shy English learners talking, at least a little bit. The images then reappeared and I had a student volunteer repeat all four words (for listening practice) and a new image disappeared. You can easily differentiate this game by changing the number of images or substituting words for images. You can allow your students multiple ways to respond by drawing draw the image or saying the word in their first language. My students never tired of this game.
Movement breaks are also essential. Long before I became a teacher, I realized I could not sit at my desk for longer than 20 minutes. To keep working and stay focused, I had to stand up and move around. Your students likely need to move around with greater frequency. These movement breaks need not mean an end to learning. I used two activities, Find Your Partner and Four Corners, to meet my student’s need to move around and learn.
For Find Your Partner, I created paired index cards, one per student, distributed them and then told the students to find their partner. At the beginning of the year, I gave them the rule. For example, when I taught the word digit to my English learners, the students had to find the partner with the same digits in reverse order. For example, the student with the number 36 had to find the student with number 63. As the year progressed, the students had to work out who their partner was and why. Sometimes they had to solve an equation to find their partner. But the activity encouraged them to move around the room and talk to each other as well as reinforce a concept or vocabulary word.
In Four Corners, I posted a number or image in each corner of the room, gave each student an index card with a word, number or image on it and asked them to go to their corner. They then had to speak to the other students in the same corner to learn why the corner was appropriate. To teach this game, I used animals – I put an image of a dog, bird, cat, and fish in the corners and examples of those animals on each card. For math, during a unit on shapes, I put the words triangle, quadrilateral, pentagon and decagon in the corners and examples of those shapes on the cards. During a unit on money, I put a dollar amount: $0.25, $0.50, $0.75 and $1.00 in the corners and pictures of coins that added to those amounts on the cards. After students assembled in their corners, I asked each group to explain why they chose the corner. For the coin example, each student had to state the names and value of each coin on their card. Students could move a bit while gaining listening and speaking practice and reinforcing a math concept.
Testing is essential in education but it does not have to be so stressful. I gave frequent, short assessments. Each test was preceded by a practice test that used the exact same format. On the day of the test, students did not need to read or listen to any instructions – they already knew what was expected of them. I changed the problems and answers, of course. But by preparing them for the format of the test, students were able to focus on solving the math problem, not trying to figure out what the obscure instructions meant. If students did poorly on the practice test, I knew that I had to reteach the concept before giving the test and I did. My students knew that I wanted and expected everyone to pass every test and the vast majority of the time, they did.
Creating a student-friendly classroom is straightforward if you understand and accept your students’ needs. Students need to move, to have fun, and to be successful. Games, movement breaks and a low stress approach to testing can help meet these needs and help students master the content. Try these strategies in your classroom!
