All Learning Activities
Quiz
Create a formative assessment of 1 to 10 questions of various types. Use templates for extra fast creation. You can use this assessment:
Variations
In this activity, three variations of a single exercise are generated and printed on cards. The variations differ in the amount of scaffolding provided, but each arrives at the same results. The student can choose which of these variations best suit their current level of understanding. They can attempt more difficult versions with practice. This activity is best suited to learning objectives focused on application or insight, preferably with multiple steps to take. The scaffolding is way less effective for learning objectives that are simple / just ask for memorization and reproduction.
Saboteur
In this learning activity groups of three or four students try to answer as many questions correctly as possible. However, one of the students is a saboteur who, well, tries to sabotage their group. This forces your students to pay attention to detail and critically evaluate the claims of their fellow students. You can play this for success/failure within each group, or as a low-stakes competition between the groups. This activity is suitable for all kinds of learning goals. Use it only after the students have experience working on these kinds of problems. When they first encounter the material, they should be in a learning mindset (being open, feeling it’s okay to make mistakes), while this activity asks more of a performance mindset (being focused, not wanting to make mistakes).
Donkeys
In both variants of this playful learning activity, students play in groups of 4-5 and try to collect sets of four cards. These sets can be anything from four terms belonging to the same historical period, to the combination of physics quantity, its symbol, the corresponding unit and its symbol (i.e. length, l, meter, m). Each turn, students discard a card from their hand and receive a card. To achieve a set of four, they must learn what belongs together. This learning activity is suitable for learning goals focused on either memorization or ordering/grouping. It can also be used at the end of a lesson series to quickly go over the terminology of a subject.
Flashcards
The good old flashcard. A classic because of its immediate feedback, its versatility and the active recall it requires. Many different combinations of front and backside are possible: term and definition, question and answer, word and translation, painting and artist and so on. Use it in the classroom either solo or in pairs, and give the flashcards home with students for self-study and spaced repetition. Especially useful for learning objectives that require memorization.
Free-form
Like we said, with the free-form, anything is possible! Here is a list to give you some initial ideas: