5 Simple Active Teaching Strategies for Low Resource & High Student Ratio Classrooms


As teachers & educators if we had our way, we would like to have the best teaching and learning resources and all the time we need to get our work done. However, this is clearly not usually the case, especially in poorer countries where high quality teaching and learning resources are not so readily available. 

However, to be the best teacher you can be be, you are still charged with the responsibility of finding creative ways you can carry out your teaching to provide the best learning outcomes for your students. We all know that strategies such as putting copious notes on the board for students to copy or just talking at them does very little to help them develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes they need to become fully developed and functioning individuals in society. There are several ways to keep the minds of your learners engaged in the learning process rather than sitting passively listening and taking notes throughout your lessons.

Here are five (5) activities that I have found to be very useful especially in low resource conditions:

  • Flipped Classroom: this technique literally 'flips' the classroom - students do their reading and discovery of content outside of class so that when they come to class the lesson's time is spent answering questions and reflecting on what has been learned.
  • Think pair-share: give students a question or small task, they discuss their thoughts in pairs and various groups are given chance to share their thoughts/responses. It also helps to encourage pairs to feedback on the responses from others.
  • Group brainstorm & representative (rotating) to share: this is similar as the 'think pair-share' strategy but applied to groups of 3 and above. Here it's important to give various students an opportunity at presenting the group's responses.
  • Self/Pair-graded quizzes: this helps reduce teacher marking time and also helps develop students' mindset in giving objective feedback/judgement on others' responses to the same question/ task.
  • Jumbled-up columns to be re-arranged: the teacher may have one column (numbered 1-7 containing terms/phrases and another (lettered a-g) containing definitions/explanations for students to connect. Labelling the columns rows with numbers and letters means a student can simply give an answer '1 = e' means that this requires little resources to implement. To save time, the teacher can write the statements/vocabulary to be re-arranged on a big pièce of paper before hand.
These are just some strategies that came to mind, please share any strategies that you consider particularly effective for low recourse and high student ratio schools/classes.

Have a great week...

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