Page 40 - Teaching Principles and Methods Student Textbook short

7. Student reports by individuals. The students giving the report will engage and learn a great deal
from the experience. The rest of the students hearing their report will probably not learn much. The best
use of this method is to assign research papers to individuals and omit the presentations.

8. Students debate one another in the class. This is a very excellent tool to use when reviewing for a
test over a section of information.

9. Choral speaking

10. Collection Project and Presentation - The student will learn a great deal about what he is collecting
and presentations are normally interesting. If all students are doing the same collection, perhaps
randomly select a few students in the class to present the collection to others to save time and repetition.

11. Crossword puzzles or other work sheets - Great tool to bridge time between events. Students really
immerse themselves in the work and learn a lot.

12. Diaries entries – Be sure to give students specific instructions about what is to be included in their
entries that may cover information presented in class. Great tools to write out prayers to the Lord.

13. Term or research paper - Students will learn a lot about the subject of the paper and also learn
research and typing skills. Give the students a topic where there is a problem to resolve and let them
resolve it. For example, “Our pastor said we should never do any work on Sunday because Sunday is the
Sabbath. Is this a truly Biblical position?”

14. Library research on topics or problems – If you have a library, then take the students as a class over
and let them research a topic and create note cards with research information. Rather than have them
write an entire paper, have them hand in their note cards for grades. This exercise helps them learn how
to research and dig to find answers to questions.

15. Review Games – Have students compete on teams to get extra points on the test tomorrow.
Questions in the games should include the information they should know to do well on the test. Students
are normally highly competitive so this exercise will get them totally immersed in the review.

16. Interviews or Roll Playing – Have a student pretend he is a news reporter on the street and have him
ask various students questions about information they have learned. With role playing, someone in the
class could pretend to take an errant position on the topic, and the class has to present the correct
position in rebuttal.

17. Models – Depending on your subject, creating a model of a place or a structure that they are
learning about gives them a 3 dimensional view of the item. One time we gave a class a bunch of
popsicle sticks and they had to construct a bridge a certain length which would withstand a load of 30
lbs. Their grade was based on how much their bridge would carry. They really started studying how to
construct the strongest bridge possible with the limited number of sticks we gave them.

18. Music - Have the students write the lyrics to a song on the subject in question. Perhaps some could
even put it to music and sing the song to another class.

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