Thursday, February 10, 2011

Extra Credit Competitions

Most of the people who read this blog are teachers or former teachers so I don't think you'll mind if I share a small activity that I use to reinforce what I'm teaching.

For key concepts I want my students to remember, I hold extra credit contests. (Usually I'll do this after a lecture.) I break the students into small groups and ask them to develop their own definition of the concept that I had just talked about. After collecting their definitions, I type up the three best definitions into my PowerPoint presentation and share them with the class. (The students with the best definitions get 2 points extra credit points.)

Not only are students forced to restate what they have learned, but then they get to see several different definitions of the same topic.

A small variation I do on this activity is to have students vote on what they think are the top definitions. This involves a lot more typing since I have to type up all the definitions, but it can be a lot of fun with different students promising to vote for each other.

1 comment:

Mai said...

Love the idea! I'll have to try it sometime!