Students demonstrate how they know or can solve response items. They Answer, Cite evidence, and Explain (or expand). This is a great strategy for encouraging students to justify their answers and explain their process for solving.

Students work in groups to create a collaborative poster with each student using a different color marker. the poster includes an image, a quote, and a summary in response to text, a speaker, or digital media, etc. this strategy increases collaborative conversation and student participation and accountability.

This instructional activity (also called "Choral Counting") asks teachers to engage a group of students in counting together, to discuss patterns in the number system and to connect written and verbal language. The task requires that teachers choose a counting sequence that would be productive and accessible for their students, yet engage them in learning. It also requires that teachers manage choral response, participation, and responding to student comments, questions. The counting task can be a springboard for the upcoming mathematical work in the lesson.

Elevator speeches can be used to refine students’ understanding of vocabulary, concepts, content, and/or processes. Pair students up with partners. They have 30 seconds to deliver information to their partners. After 30 seconds, the students switch roles. Have a few share out. Then have students find a new partner. They have 30 seconds to deliver their refined understanding to their partners. After 30 seconds, the students switch roles once more. 

Give each student in the class a card and then have them find the other student with the matching card. Students can do this with many topics including equivalent expressions, words/definitions, problem/solution, model/equation

Place Agree/Strongly Agree/Disagree/Strongly Disagree signs or four different answer options to a problem (Which One Doesn't Belong problems work great for this strategy) in the corners of the classroom. Ask students to take a position on a statement by moving to the corner that matches their opinion. Once students have selected their corners, give them time to discuss their reasoning. Then call on a member from each of the four groups to justify their positions. Students may change corners at anytime as their opinions change.

Ask students to commit their thoughts to writing prior to moving to a corner. This way when discussing, students will have a reference to share their thoughts. This will also help prevent students just following their friends. 

Frayer Model

Use a version of the Frayer Model to create class anchor charts with students of new and interesting words. The middle of the diagram will be the word with the four corners including a student-friendly definition, a picture or visual representation of the word, an example (synonym) or non-example (antonym).

Students summarize the information in 20 words or less. To make it more difficult, they would have to summarize using exactly 20 words. Get a further explanation at ReadWriteThink, or download the template.

Students understand that readers continually ask questions while reading. The Give Me Five! Questioning Strategy helps students ask five critical questions using a graphic organizer. 

Students provide discussion and feedback on peer’s writing using “I notice…” and/or “I wonder…” sentence starters. This can also be used to introduce a new concept by placing a problem or picture on the board and asking students what they notice and wonder. 

Online Distance Learning Adaptation Video

Online Distance Learning Template

Students can play this online game with individual devices (phones). Teachers can create their own questions or search for created games by other teachers.

The K20 Center has over 100 strategies for use in the classroom, including Tweet It Up, Why Lighting, and Sentence-Phrase-Word. Find more information about all 100+ at the website.

Students create mini posters that reflect understanding of concepts or terms and participate in a gallery walk. Students can add their learning from the gallery walk to vocabulary- or content-specific notebooks.

Present a word problem to students... without the numbers! Encourages discussion and sense-making.

Online Distance Learning Template

This online collaborative hub allows users to post words and images. The teacher can pose a question for everyone to answer. Students can brainstorm together. Students can leave questions about a lesson for the teacher to answer.

This strategy could be used as a prewriting or review method. Students focus on a topic or concept and write about it for 3 to 5 minutes nonstop. No special attention is paid to grammar or mechanics, and ideas are recorded as soon as they come into students’ minds. The Heinemann blog explains this concept more in depth.

This activity encourages students to assume the role of the teacher in small group reading sessions. The teacher explicitly models and shows students how to guide group discussions using four strategies: summarizing, question generating, clarifying, and predicting. The four students in the group each lead the group through the text using one of the four strategies.

Using Mentimeter or Wordle, students respond to a question with a single word to create an instant word cloud. Teachers can use this as a formative assessment of their students’ understanding.

Students complete a 3-2-1 during or after a lesson, encouraging students to think about their learning and to check for understanding. Some variations include:

• 3 - things I discovered
• 2 - interesting things
• 1 - question I still have

• 3 - academic vocabulary words I learned
• 2 - sentences using new academic vocabulary words
• 1 - paragraph using the new academic vocabulary words

• 3- most important ideas from today
• 2- ways to solve a problem we had today
• 1- question students have about each of the ideas