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Suppose you’re doing some kind of activity that requires a few students to volunteer for something. Maybe it’s a discussion, and you want to hear ideas from a handful of people, or you’re running a workshop and need a few participants for some kind of demonstration — in short, you need volunteers, but you’re not sure if enough people will raise their hands and anyway, you’d like participation to be more evenly distributed across the room, not limited to just a few extroverted people.
I got this idea years ago from a teacher named Ruth Wickham. Here’s what she did to get more participation from students in a language workshop that had 132 students attending:
- She downloaded a set of 33 icons (which would be very easy to do from a site like The Noun Project) and printed out four copies of each one. She just used clipart of things like a house, an ant, a cow, a duck, and so on.
- She cut out the icons and taped each one inside one of the workbooks students would be given for the workshop.
- When the workshop started, she had students look to see which icon they had.
- Then, as she went through her PowerPoint presentation, the icons would appear on different slides. When a student’s icon appeared on the screen, they would have to come down to the front of the room and perform an action (in her case, students were pronouncing certain words in English).
Wickham said the system worked really well and added a lot of energy to the workshop. “The looks on their faces every time they saw an icon appear was just classic! We all had a lot of fun and a lot of laughs even with such a big group.”
You could use this approach in so many ways: To get participation in a workshop like in the example, to have students share ideas on a given discussion topic, to have students take turns sharing their solution to a math problem, contributing a detail to a collaborative art project, or trying a hands-on demonstration. Just another fun little idea you can add to your toolbox to make your classroom more fun.
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Sounds like a solution to something that isn’t a problem. And why does it have to cost another stack of nonsensical paper copies?
There are tons of random name selectors online that you can use. Or just pick some people from the class as it is totally random after all.
Hi, this edutip is meant to be a quick and fun idea to increase student engagement during lessons. It may not work for everyone, but hopefully some teachers out there find it useful!
I love this idea – it’s new and fresh. You could just hand out laminated cards to students as they walk in. It would be a fun way to liven up staff meetings and PD too!
This seems like a cute idea, but I must agree that any kind of picker, even popsicle sticks, will do that very same job just fine. In fact, this version lends itself to students not fessing up that they have a particular icon – and how will you know unless you catalog those icons next to student names from the start?
Hi Laura,
I noticed Sue Kelly says in another comment, “You could just hand out laminated cards to students as they walk in.” I’m also thinking students could place them on their desks or somewhere visible so teachers can see which one they have.
What is cool about this, is it’s different from the same old thing that they do in other classes. The end result is if it increases student engagement, then Boom! Use it. Thanks for the great article and sharing this.
I was thinking you could have a variety of icons on a paper exit slip. They get the exit slip prompt at the beginning to be ready with something to write at the end. The idea behind having the icon on the slide is to encourage them to watch and tune in to the presentation, which is much different than the popsicle sticks. Do a quick icon check to start (cats wave your exit slip). I may use this at my next staff PD. Thanks!
Thanks for sharing this idea, Kris. We’d love to hear how it works out in a staff PD!