40 WAYS TO KEEP UNDERGRADUATES AWAKE AND ENGAGED IN YOUR CLASSROOM

1. Be passionate about what you teach
2. Imagine that every day is the first day of your teaching and put your heart and soul into it
3. Reserve at least 20 minutes for small group activities for every 1 hour of class
4. Limit your presentation to 20 minutes–encourage questions-resume presentation
5. Keep content on each powerpoint slide brief
6. If you are showing a video, cue forward to the most important sections and start student discussion after each section of the video
7. In between a lecture, ask students to stand in rows in the aisles between the seats, stretch their hands above their heads and say together 'reach for the stars'
8. Take attendance at half time during a lecture, and thank each student for being attentive
9. If students come in with their Iphones or laptops, make them responsible for looking up the latest research findings on the topic of day
10. Circulate around the room – avoid standing near the board the entire class session
11. Have a quiz using key words in the lecture during half time at each class
12. Break for 5 minutes during lecture to share jokes
13. Have students stretch, breathe in and breathe out a couple of minutes halfway through class
14. In small groups have students create a rap/poem using key words in the lecture and each group present their creations
15. In small groups let students create graphic organizers of key points of the lecture and display
16. Alternative to sitting at their desks and working, glue poster papers on the walls and let students stand and work on creating the graphic organizers. You could also clear floor space and students could sit on the ground to do this activity.
17. If possible, have students take turns to role play key characters in the topic
18. For topics involving calculations or statistical analysis, use the wireless facility in the classroom to look up data on current events- natural disasters or phenomena, number of hits a blog has received, number of results that a Google search produces, etc
19. Take a brisk, 100-steps-walk around the building with your students. In pleasant weather, teach under a tree
20. Pause between a lecture – ask students to read definitions of terms from the text book
21. Turn a boring lecture into a poem or a play and have students read or enact the parts
22. Replace prose in your lecture/presentation with visuals, symbols, pictures or diagrams where ever possible
23. Have 1-2 people read your lecture, record their voices and play the audio to synchronize with your powerpoint presentation instead of you reading them out all the time
24. Take a small cowbell to class. Ring it to signal transitions or if you want their attention turned towards you or to signal silence after a group discussion
25. If it’s a small class of 20-30, vary seating arrangements every two weeks or so.
26. If the library is within your building, include a task that involves doing brief research in the library during class time and accompany your students to the library.
27. Encourage choral responses to definitions
28. Ask students how a particular concept may play out in real life. Provide examples from your experience to encourage candid discussions
29. Make it mandatory that they bring at least 2 questions from their reading for class discussion. Award points.
30. From the beginning of the semester, have students take turns to do brief presentations individually or in groups on a section of the reading for the day. You will need to communicate this to your students at least a week in advance.
31. Collaborate with other professionals in your school and invite them for short guest lectures
32. If 2 of you are teaching different sections of the same course, visit each other’s class, team teach, take turns to lecture and lead hands on activities
33. Print out a single handout of your powerpoint presentation with some blanks for each slide. Have the student seated in the front fill in the first blank, and pass it on till all the students get a chance to fill in the blanks. You can do this in rows too. In this case, the first person in each row starts to fill in the blanks
34. Have the last person in each row distribute and collect handouts instead of the first person in the front row.
35. Insert a few words in a foreign language in your lecture. Have students with Ipods and laptops look up the meanings/translate
36. Encourage students to carry a pocket dictionary to class. Pause frequently to ask them to find meanings/synonyms/definitions of complex and important words.
37. Collaboratively develop classroom expectations with your students and include them in your syllabus. Remember they are adults and would like to be respected and treated as equals.
38. Have a bragging day in turns for each row. While taking attendance, have each student in one row brag about something he/she did or achieved. For example students in Row # 1 brag on Monday and Row # 2 on Wednesday and so on.
39. Break for 5 minutes-ask each student to look at his neighbor and say something complimentary about him or her.
40. If you have done everything and a student is still going off to sleep, encourage him or her to visit the restroom and splash some cool water on his/her face. Praise for returning to class and remaining awake!