How to Get Students to Teach Each Other in Lessons

Ask yourself "during what sort of activity do students make the most progress?" Is the answer when they're being lectured to or when they're sat repeating the same sorts of questions continuously?  I believe that these to methods still have their place, there will always be the need to sometimes explain difficult concepts, and students will always need to practice questions.  I don't however, think that they should be used on a regular basis as I've found that these to methods in particular erode student engagement and have limited impact on progress.  We've probably all had students put together presentations to give to each other but even that has limited impact.  So about a year ago I came up with the concept of "micro teaching".

Micro teaching involves students teaching each other ideas & content during a lesson.  There is lots of evidence that shows that students make the greatest amount of progress when they have to explain ideas & concepts to each other. Below I have outlined how to carry out a micro teaching activity with students and have tried to detail some of the possible preparation that needs to be in place to ensure that this activity has a meaningful impact on student progress.

The first stage in any micro teaching activity is to enable students to gather the information for themselves.  If students have to find things out for themselves they will make more progress than if they are just spoon fed it.  This can be done in many different ways.

1. Flipped learning:  Before the lesson you can let students know what they will be teaching and then set appropriate videos for them to watch. Students can then use this to make notes on the content they need in preparation for the next lesson.
2. Directed reading:  Students can be given the content they will be producing a micro teaching presentation or short lesson on.  This method works most effectively when students have to pick out key information from the text and then have it taken away before they start interacting with other groups.
3. Use exam questions:  During revision, different groups of students can be given different exam questions that they need to explain to other students how to answer.
4. Information hunt:  Before beginning the micro teaching activity, put key information around the room that students will need to use.  Give students some time in small groups to go around and gather the information they need to carry out the micro teaching activity. 

Once students have collected the information they need, they need to put together a short lesson or presentation on a particular concept.  This can take the form of a traditional short presentation or a short lesson where students have prepared some simple resources to help them teach.  Once your students are ready set them up work around rows of tables as shown in the pictures below:

After students have worked around all the other groups you can carry out more traditional AFL to assess how much progress students have made.  

I hope that this has given you a few ideas about how you might be able to use micro teaching within your own practice.  Give it a go and see how it goes.

Thanks for reading 

Chalky