Click Away!

Looking for a way to get your students moving and engaged and receive precious feedback about their performance—all in one stroke?  If you have remote controls in your classroom (if not, you need to beg your adminstrators to buy you a set), then you realize how valuable they can be.  For the unfamiliar, various companies produe remote controls that allow students to click their answers into a system and receive immediate feedback on the projector screen.

In this post, I want to take it a step further and discuss how you can use remote controls to bring more life to traditional games and activities and engage all of your students, all the time!

For instance, I play a game called Around the World, where students must answer questions correctly to move around the classroom. Until recently, I would have two students face off, and the winner would move to another student’s desk. The problem is only two students were fully engaged and accountable for knowing the answer. Enter the remote control.

Now, I have all students stand at their desk with a remote in hand. If they answer the question correctly, they get to move to the next desk, where they answer another question. The goal is to get around the whole room and back to their seat. The students are fully engaged and love it! Better yet, I can review a large amount of material and get immediate feedback on where my students might be weak.

Other games including playing football, where students answer questions correctly to move “ yards” down the classroom until they score a touchdown. The possibilities are endless.

So how do you use remote controls to get students moving and infuse lessons with new life?