A fast and easy way to activate your students and collect input is to present them an unfinished sentence that they need to complete. This can be a statement, a content question or a sentence in which students can tell something about themselves.
- Activity goal
- Activate prior knowledge | Assess | Exchange knowledge | Recap / Summarize
- When
- In class
- Where
- Offline | Online
- Duration
- < 10 minutes
- Group size
- Small | Medium | Large
- Materials
Zoom, Teams, Mentimeter, Canvas
Step-by-step
Step 1
Ask the students to consider a concrete question or statement. Formulate the question in the most open way possible so that students will have to come up with their own clarification, argument or explanation.
Step 2
Give the students time to consider their answer.
Step 3
During this time, write or show the sentence starter that is derived from your question. See some examples below.
Step 4
Then ask your students to complete this sentence. You can do this in various ways, such as giving the students turns or collecting input via post-its, an online tool or in a chat during an online meeting.
Step 5
If necessary, ask several students to clarify their input to others.
Tips:
A few examples that you can use:
- Finish the following sentence: ‘In this course/lecture/tutorial I'd like to learn about....’
- Finish the following sentence: ‘The hardest part of the article/essay/ homework assignment was...'
- Finish the following sentence: 'My favorite filosopher is...'
- You can collect students’ input via chat in a live session (during the Zoom or MS Teams’ session), on post-its or in an online tool such as Mentimeter (select ‘Word Cloud’ or ‘Open-Ended’).
Prior to a session you can also collect input in a discussion forum in Canvas.
Consider the tools and materials mentioned here as suggestions. In many cases it’s possible to use alternative tools. Please turn to the Learning & Innovation team of your faculty first to see which online and offline tools are available and how to apply them.
