How do I encourage my students to participate more in class?

Question

During class time the students ( Gr.7 ) don't participate. There is usually only like two students who always answer as the rest don't. How can I make them or teach them to participate?

Answer 1

"only like two students"

I know you're flustered, but don't use 'like' unless you are describing something or talking about preference. That's the die-hard English teacher in me talking.

As for getting students to participate, there are ways to do that. You can use a ticket system. Give them each two or three slips of paper, and each time they answer a question you take the slip of paper and give them either "bonus points" (they love to think they're getting something extra!) or a piece of candy or a token that allows a wrong answer on a test not to be counted and boosts their grade.

Another way is to spice up your instruction. You might have fallen into a rut during your frustration. Kids love new things and playing games. My sixth graders loved playing Grammar Jeopardy during writing and 20 Questions during reading. Kids could ask each other questions to figure out what character or story they were thinking of. For spelling words, we would play Sparkle, and it was nothing more than round-robin spelling with each student saying one letter of the word we were spelling. A mistake meant that person had to sit down, and the winners would receive "homework coupons," meaning they could waive a homework assignment.

I remember one teacher giving "I Know!" points. Each question answered in class (and you could only answer three per class) got you a point, and twenty points got you a prize--a new pencil sharpener, a pencil (this was usually a very cool one with foil, paint splatters, or neon colors), an eraser, a new pen with the school logo, cinnamon candy (those were most popular), etc. Kids who sat in the back of the class and would never even look at the teacher before suddenly perked up and started participating.

You might try some time in the school computer lab for a change of pace. My kids always looked forward to that.

Here are some sites for ideas. Good luck.

http://www.classbrain.com/artteach/publish/cat_index_16.shtml

http://www.teachervision.fen.com/tv/tvsearch.php?keywords=games&sitesearch=1&in=tv_all

http://members.learningplanet.com/directory/index.asp?lev=4

Answer 2

Here's some suggestions:
1) Break the class into groups of about 4 and give them a question to discuss among themselves. Then have one (or more) people from each group tell the rest of the class what they came up with (They might be discussing "what caused the Civil War, for example).
2) Have one student each day (thus, about once a month for each student) give a short (3-4 minutes) talk on some topic-and then answer questions from the class.
3) (if the class is small enough) change the class layout by pulling all the desks into a circle--this does help--the ones who've been "hiding in back" are brought into the group.

It also helps ( if the school policies allow) to make participation part of the final grade.

Answer 3

You may already give positive reinforcement to those students that do participate, but if you don't do that so much, it's great to do so and remain enthusiastic with the ones that do voluntarily participate. Perhaps you can either call on a few more students and that may prompt others to participate before being asked to do so or give extra credit for class participation. Some teachers (at least in college) would make class participation as part of the student's grade. Can I just ask which subject material it is? How about also sometimes incorporating a fun game related to the material or such.

Answer 4

Okay, so if all of the praise and kudos don't work, you could always punish them for not answering or participating. My teacher last year (8th grade) was having the same problem with my class. She told us one day that since we weren't going to answer her questions, then we had a two page essay due when we came into class the next day. No one really believed her or did the work (except me-really) and she gave zero's. The class participated after that. Give it a try.

Answer 5

Have them discuss their ideas in small groups before bringing the whole class together. Give students the option of sharing their answer, the answer of someone else in their group, or asking someone from the group to share their answer (if they don't want to say it themselves). This creates a very low-risk zone in which students will feel more comfortable speaking up. It's your job to structure the groups in ways that will maximize participation (for example, don't pair the shyest student with the loudest student because the loud one will dominate the conversation).

Answer 6

OK, a couple of ideas. maybe draw names for a rotation, and every day change to new people to participate(mandatory). The ones that always answer and others can submit participation in writing.
Grade participation as you would a pop quiz.
Don't know if you have special needs kids. That could present a problem.
Bribe them.

Answer 7

Making answering into a competition. Put the information into game form. Even scrambling up vocabulary can help.

The popcorn technique always works. You have the student speaking call on another student to speak and so on.

Also positive reinforcement. Thank them each time.

Give them sentence starters. To answer questions.

Make sure they have 'think time". They should all write down their answers before they participate that way everyone has a chance to formulate answers.

Answer 8

My art history professor just used to call on people out of the blue even if they didn't want to answer or even if they didn't have their hand up. Try getting your students to get out of their chairs to do presentations etc. Offer to have an in class debate. Come up with two opposing topics and let the students debate. This will make them more comfortable about speaking in a class environment.

Answer 9

Put Out Some Innovative Ideas
Then Give Them Challange

I M Sure They Will Try Their Best

Then PutSome Subject Related Challenge
Thus You Can Give Them Interest

Answer 10

Give out kudos- in The 7th grade my teacher did it with us and it worked well. If we answered a question we got a kudos (a sticker or slip of paper) if it was correct we'd get 2. then on Fridays in the last five min of class we could trade the kudos for different things like candy or pencils or even free homework passes or bonus points on tests. of course the homework passes and points cost more kudos than candy. It worked great.