Long lectures. Just don’t do them. That is my best advice. The average attention span for children is two minutes per year of age. So for example, your average middle schooler will have an attention span of 22-26 minutes. So you really should try not to have direct instruction for longer than that amount of time if you are teaching middle school. Break up long lessons into multiple days as much as possible.
But, as a teacher, I know there have been times when it seems as if a long lecture is the only option. Some of you may have pacing guides to follow and test deadlines hanging over your heads. So when it seems like a long lecture is your best option, here are five simple and easy-to-implement tricks you can use. These methods can also be easily combined to your liking. They’ll help keep your students engaged and actively learning.
1: Interactive notes
Ask students to take notes in a format that gives them space for their thoughts and questions. Pause throughout the lecture to give them time to interact with their notes. There are many ways to do this. You can do a quick search on the internet for ideas.
For me, I used the Cornell notes format, but I allowed for more creativity in how students used the side section. Traditionally, students are supposed to write keywords and questions in the side section as they study their notes outside of class. However, I actually paused a lot during lectures to have them write down their thoughts and comments on the side during class. Sometimes, they had the option to illustrate or map their thoughts. We also focused on questions a lot. I encouraged students to ask deeper questions about the information. I wanted them to focus on processes, cause and effect, motivations, credibility, and perspective. Giving them breaks in class and a consistent template in their notes to record their thinking helped them process and remember the information I was giving them. It gave us the necessary breathing room to pause, reflect, and question.
I’d time these breaks to 1-2 minutes and give students a 20-second warning before the time was up. Then I’d ask 2-3 people to share what they wrote down. Sometimes we would have great discussions. If your schedule doesn’t allow for that, at least write the questions/thoughts down on the board and try your best to have that discussion the next day or sometime soon after the lecture.Think, pair, shares:
2: “Think, Pair, Share”
I wouldn’t be surprised if I recommended the “think, pair, share” method in every article I write about teaching methods. Social learning is so powerful! And what’s really important about “think, pair, share” is that it gives students time to independently come up with their ideas before sharing them in a low-risk setting (with a shoulder partner) and then sharing with the whole class. I love that it encourages risk-taking for all students by making it safe through scaffolding. Movement Breaks:
3: Movement Breaks
Giving the kids movement breaks at least 2-3 times in the middle of a long lecture helps tremendously in resetting their attention spans. It gets the blood circulating in their brains for better memory.
Having them move randomly, like having a 30-second dance party, is an option. Or you can have everyone do a set number of exercises. If you want to tie it to the learning, you can task them to get into pre-assigned temporary thinking groups for a set amount of time. For me, students find four partners ( North, South, East, West) at the beginning of each quarter/semester. Then during a lecture, I sometimes just say, “You have two minutes to do _______________with your North partners. Go.” Students then quickly move around the room to find their partners. Using a timer is crucial. Project an online timer onto your board if you can. Otherwise, at least have a timer with a loud beep and give 10- and/or 5-second warnings to cue students to wrap up and move back to their seats. Peer Summaries –
4: Peer Summaries
I really like giving students one minute or so to give a quick summary of what they just learned to their shoulder partners. We usually do these short verbal summaries after learning about different parts of a concept. They’re also great at the end of the lesson, to help students put ideas together. I like to use the “think, pair, share” method for peer summaries whenever we have more time.
This method gives students repeated exposure to the information through different people. More importantly, the students gain practice in recalling the information, which increases their chance of remembering it later for a quiz or a test.Informal Pop Quizzes:
5: Informal Pop Quizzes
Instead of just verbally asking the class assessment questions and having people raise their hands, you can present 2-3 questions at the end of a segment of your lecture and have students write down their answers in their notes. They can then exchange with table or shoulder partners, and you can quickly correct as a whole class. This is another great way for students to practice recall. It’s also a low-risk opportunity for students to learn from their mistakes. So when the real quiz or test comes, they will be less likely to make the same errors.
You can also try to come up with your own. The key thing to remember is to break up the lecture by sprinkling it with short, engaging student activities – not full-on student assignments you’d have to collect and correct. I’m talking more like informal assessments and social interactions. To keep things running smoothly and to stay on schedule, I highly recommend using a digital timer and projecting it onto the board so students can also see. This will save you from yelling over any discussions and will help students manage their time.
Other General Tips for Long Lectures:
Move around the classroom. As you do so, make sure to peek at their notes. This will help you keep track of students’ engagement and pacing. You can redirect, pause, or speed up to accommodate your students. This also helps a lot with classroom management. Students tend to stay on task when they know you are present and nearby. A wireless mouse and keyboard have been crucial tools in my classroom because they allow me to move around the room freely.
Change your pacing and tone. This may take a few years to master, but you won’t be able to get good at it if you don’t try. Start by trying to find different parts of your lecture that could benefit from a faster or slower pace of talking. You can even try repeating the same information using different paces or tones. Repetition is always good, especially the repetition of the most important information. Try to be excited by what you are teaching. When you’re excited, your voice will naturally take on different tones and communicate wonderment, which is engaging and infectious to students.
Ask questions and pause a lot. Mix up your questions between straightforward ones and deeper, more critical questions. Straightforward questions require a simple recall of facts. Deeper questions tend to be more the hows and whys. They’re about processes, cause and effect, perspective, and even credibility. Question the information you’re teaching. Are there any holes or gaps? Try to model critical questioning by thinking them aloud. Then pausing for students to process.
Write down student ideas on the board. When you have the short class discussions or it’s share time, try to take some time to write down student questions, answers, comments on the board for everyone to see. I even like writing down student initials next to their contributions. I’ve found that this encourages more students to participate and is a subtle way that helps us all keep track of who is participating or monopolizing the conversation. It also creates continuity throughout the lecture because we end up going back to a lot of their ideas later on in the lecture when different things come up. It’s also another way to repeat exposure of the information to your students, which will help them remember it.
In conclusion, it’s best to avoid long lectures. But when you can’t, inject it with lots of short student activities and social interactions. Keep things interesting with your tone, pacing, movement, and questions. Doing even just some of these can make a long lecture more effective and go very fast for you and your students.
Anyway, I hope this has been helpful. Thank you for teaching!