I don’t know about you, but here the school year is winding down but with several weeks to go. This is a weird time of any school year, but especially now- what do we do to keep students engaged, and keep them learning, but without rocking the boat unnecessarily or creating stress as we wind down what has undeniably been a hugely stressful year. All learning time is valuable, but especially now, it’s important to ensure that students are benefiting from their time with us to the maximum extent possible, and sometimes changing things up can make a huge difference!
I know what you’re thinking. Is she for real? The last thing anyone wants to do right now is something that adds things to their plates. I get it. I really do. That’s why I want to plug one of the most easy to implement yet powerful strategies to keep students engaged and participating in learning, regardless of the circumstances.
I’m talking about response cards.
Simply put, a response card is something that a student can hold up, silently, to indicate an answer to a question posed by the teacher in class. These can take lots of forms and can be as generic or as customized as you’d like for your activity.
The benefits of response cards are numerous but some of the biggest benefits are:
All students can participate! Instead of asking students questions one at a time and risking one or two students being the only ones who answer, everyone can use their cards to indicate answers.
Students can practice answering different types of questions! With a few general types of response cards students can answer opinion questions, multiple choice questions, classification questions, and more!
Face to face and virtual students can participate in the activity simultaneously! Students who are in the classroom can use the cards in class, and students who are at home and hold up their answer to the screen, so teachers teaching both groups at the same time can gather information about both of those groups at once.
The cards are easy prep- simply print, cut out, and they’re ready to roll! Nice big shapes are also easy for students to cut themselves if fine motor difficulties are present.
Using the response cards feels like a game, but isn’t necessarily competitive- there’s no prize for being first, and if a student wants to change answers, it’s easy! It’s a fun way to practice skills.
Some of my favorite formats for response cards are shown below:
Yes and no response cards are a great option, especially for students who are working on receptive identification of concepts and vocabulary words or who are working on expressing opinions. You can pose a question to the class and ask if they agree, and they have the means to express their position instantly!
Multiple choice response cards are just what they sound like- they allow students to choose a letter that represents an answer choice for a multiple choice question. This is a great option for formative assessment as the teacher can see where the class as a whole is in their understanding of the concepts the questions are asking about.
Classification response cards are great for review games and exercises where students are working to master characteristics of related concepts. They can be text based, like this:
So students would be presented with concepts or facts related to the two options and would hold up the one that matched the concept.
As an added tasty option, classification response cards can be image based, like this:
Students reviewing geometry concepts can hold up the shape that matches the characteristic the teacher calls out. The possibilities are endless!
Using response cards in my self-contained special education class really ramped up the participation and engagement I was seeing from my students, and that translated into increased understanding and skill mastery for them! If you’re ready to give response cards a try with your class, I’m ready to hook you up!
Click the links below to grab FREE, EDITABLE response card templates for Google Drive™. While you’re there, click the links in the notes section to follow the blog here as well as my TpT store, Special Ed Safari!
Give these a shot with your class and let me know how it goes in the comments!
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