Check-In Questions

Check-in questions have helped me learn student names and I’ve also received feedback from students who’ve said that it has made them feel like I’ve wanted to get to know who they are. It’s a low-stakes way to start dialogue in the classroom to get them comfortable with speaking to each other.

Small-Group Or Pairs Work At Least Once a Class

At one point in the class, the students are talking to each other. It wakes them up, for one thing, but it helps them to get to know each other and I don’t mind them digressing once they’ve tackled the questions I’ve assigned.

Let Them Be Experts

They know more than you about a lot of things. Every now and then they take the lead and teach me. Every year there’s a new slang term that makes me looketh the fool and every year the students enjoy trying to get me learn how to use it. Or it’s letting them compare and contrast the dialects of Puerto Rican and Dominican Spanish after we’ve read Gloria Anzaldúa’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.”