4 Promoting learning through active participation

Enacting active learning strategies in the classroom requires teachers to develop specific knowledge and skills. For example, for groupwork to be effective, a teacher needs to think about how to:

  • arrange the classroom
  • divide the students into groups
  • (most importantly) design a task that will help students to learn.

In Activity 2.4 you will be examining the skills that teachers need to use different active learning strategies effectively. 

Activity 2.4: The skills and knowledge needed

Timing: Allow approximately 1 hour

For each of the strategies listed in the table, identify the skills that a teacher needs from the list below. Complete the table by dragging and dropping two or three skills for each strategy into the correct box.

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A larger version of this table (‘Active teaching and learning methods [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] ’) is available. It has further strategies for you to use in the classroom, along with the suggested answers for this activity. 

Read through the table. Many teachers know that they should be helping students to construct knowledge, or organising opportunities for them to talk. Doing it in practice is difficult, but breaking it down in this way makes it easier.

3.1 Key messages from the TESS-India Teacher Development OER

5 Modelling principles and practices