If you are reading this, chances are you are a teacher or educator trying to improve your students’ experience. As educators strive to involve students in the learning process more directly with active learning, this means you should include more interactive activities into your classroom.
By incorporating interactive elements into your lessons, you can drastically improve the performance of your students. Besides, it is always more fun to work with students when they are enthusiastic!
However, it requires a lot of creativity and effort to come up with fun and engaging interactions for your class.
So let us help you.
Make Your Classroom Interactive with AhaSlides Live Polls
AhaSlides is the technological solution for an interactive classroom. It is a presentation software with live polling key features. Through live polls, your students can learn actively, raise their opinions and brainstorm their ideas, compete in a friendly round of quiz, gauge their understanding, and much more.
Just prepare your set of poll questions before your class and ask your students to join in through their smartphones.
TRY AHASLIDES LIVE POLLS
In this blog, we will show you 7 ideas for easy live polls to help you get started:
- Find out about Your Students’ Expectation
- Break the Ice
- Brainstorm in a Creative Exercise
- Assess Your Students’ Comprehension
- Compare Your Students’ Opinions
- Compete in a Quiz
- Follow up for Questions
1. Find out about Your Students’ Expectation
On the first day, you would most probably ask your students what they hope to get from your class. Collecting your students’ expectation will help you teach them better and focus on what they really need.
But, asking your students one by one is very time consuming. Instead, you can easily collect all of your students’ thoughts with AhaSlides.
Through the live open-ended polls, your students can write down their thoughts on the phone and submit to you.
TIP: If you use PowerPoint, you can upload your presentation to AhaSlides using the Import function. Then, you will not have to start your lecture over from sratch.
2. Break the Ice
Begin your class with an icebreaker. Set up some live word cloud polls on AhaSlides to learn more about your students.
You can ask your students about a subject related to your class, for instance: “What is one word that comes to your mind when you hear ‘Computer Science’?”
You can also ask a fun question like: “Which flavor of ice cream best represents you?”
Word cloud works best when answered in one to two words. Thus, you should consider asking questions with short answers.
Also: if you are looking for more interactive icebreakers, here is a list of fun ideas for you.
3. Brainstorm in a Creative Exercise
You can also use AhaSlides’ live open-ended polls for a creative exercise. Pose a question or a prompt and ask your students to brainstorm their ideas.
You can also ask your students to discuss in group and submit their answers together.
4. Assess Your Students’ Comprehension
You don’t want your students to be lost in your lecture. After you have taught them a concept or idea, ask your students how well they understand it.
Consequently, you can gauge your students’ comprehension and go over your material one more time if your students are still struggling.
Also read: 7 Great Ways To Start Off Your Presentation
5. Compare Your Students’ Opinions
There are probably multiple contrasting ideas and concepts in your field. If you are drawing such a contrast in your lesson, have your students express which concepts they are more related to. Your students can simply cast their votes with live multiple choice polls.
From the result, you will gain an insight about how your students think and relate to your teaching subject.
If your students’ opinions differ greatly, then this exercise can serve as the beginning of a passionate discussion for your classroom.
6. Compete in a Quiz
Your students always learn better with a friendly dose of competition. Therefore, you can set up live quiz polls at the end of your class to recap the lesson or at the beginning to refresh your students’ mind.
Also, don’t forget a prize for the winner!
7. Follow up for Questions
While this is not a poll, allowing your students to ask follow-up questions is a great way to make your classroom more interactive. You may be used to asking your students to raise their hands for questions. But, using the Q&A session feature would allow students to be more confident in asking you.
Since not all of your students are comfortable with raising their hands, they can instead post their questions onto the slide.
As a result, gathering your students’ questions through a Q&A slide will help you discover any gaps in knowledge among your students and address them as necessary.
Also Read: How To Host A Successful Q&A Session Online
Final Words on Live Polls
We hope that you are inspired and that you will subsequently try some of these interactive activities in your classroom.
Since there are literally no fixed number of ways to use live polls, your imagination is the only limit. Get your creative juice flowing and create fun and engaging lessons for your students.
