Last year, I returned to the high school classroom after a 15 year hiatus. The schedule was part-time and solely focused on a series of Acting classes. This year, my schedule includes sophomore English and a co-taught humanities-centered class in the school's Leadership Academy. I've enjoyed the new challenges in this work, particularly inspiring students to engage and share in the English classroom. (Theatre students aren't hesitant to share; in fact, it is possible they may share too often!)
As a shy, introverted student myself, I am sensitive to the hesitation and discomfort that teenagers may have about being called upon to answer questions, or (gasp!) read out loud. One solution I've found is in randomizing the way in which students are selected for these tasks.
The first step is always to ask for volunteers, but that typically brings crickets to the room. Another teacher had suggested writing student names on popsicle sticks and drawing those from a jar. Instead, the process in my classroom has been further randomized by a series of cards and a pair of foam dice (that I stole from my children).
At the beginning of class, I pass around a set of 24 cards that are numbered from 2-12. Each number is written twice. When it comes time for a question, or to read aloud, I roll the dice and the students holding the resulting number must decide if they want to volunteer to read/answer, or battle it out in a best-of-3 bout of rock/paper/scissors. The card is collected from whomever ends up reading/answering and the next time the number is up, the other person holding it has no choice but to respond. I've been doing this for about two months and it has worked very well. The students are excited by the anticipation of the dice roll and love the rock/paper/scissors battle. What's best is that not one person has refused to read/answer in this format. Thanks to the folks in the weekly #games4ed Twitter chat for sparking my interest in "gamifying" the classroom!
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