12 Classroom Demonstration Ideas (plus lots of tips to ensure your success)
If you’ve been asked to give a classroom demonstration as part of your interview or teacher preparation program, you may be feeling anxious about getting everything just right to either get the grade you want or secure your first teaching job. Alternatively, if you’re an expert in your field, you might be asked to give a classroom demonstration to bring real-world experiences into the classroom. Congratulations!
You’ll want to prepare a lesson plan that is rigorous, engaging and student-centered. Remember, teaching is never about what you know, but rather about what you can get students to discover on their own through small groups, an open-ended question, a case study, or other interactive classroom activities.
The purpose of this article is to provide different ways to engage your learners and wow your evaluators with a variety of classroom demonstration ideas. I’ll also provide tips for ensuring your success.
Classroom Demonstration Ideas for an Engaging Lesson
In order to create a strong classroom demonstration, you’ll want to build a lesson plan that includes one or two student-centered activities. Here are some classroom demonstration ideas to help your students master any important concept, and also aid in their retention of new information. They will work for all subject areas.
It’s a good idea to think through how long it will take your students to complete each activity, and plan an appropriate amount of activities based on the length of time available to you. Remember to plan about 2 minutes to transition between each activity.
Think Pair Share
In a think-pair-share, the instructor asks an open-ended question that requires critical thinking or some debate.
Then, students take a few seconds to think independently before forming a pair with a student nearby. After each partner has had a moment to talk about their ideas, the teacher calls on different pairs to share out what they discussed. This can work well at the beginning of a lesson even before the concept has been introduced to activate prior knowledge.
This strategy can be used any time during the class, but you can also get creative with Think-Pair-Share, so check out this website for extension ideas.
Short Video
You can introduce your topic with a short video. Remember, the magic of teaching isn’t in your direct teaching style or lecturing abilities, so anytime that another person can introduce a concept while you facilitate different learning activities, you’ll be winning!
Brainpop is a teacher favorite, because the videos are always accurate, short, and well-made. Kids love Tim and Moby, the two main characters.
Musical Mix Freeze
This activity is from the Lead4Ward instructional playlist. First, put on some fun music. Bonus points if it’s relevant to the topic you’re teaching. While the music plays, students are instructed to mix with each other around the room, just staying in motion. When the music stops, students are instructed to freeze, then look for the classmate nearest them to make a pair. Once students are partnered, ask your higher-order thinking question and have them begin discussing.
To ramp up the movement for younger students who need to stay busy and active throughout the day, you can extend the activity by having them do jumping jacks when they’re ready to share with the class. Once most of the class is doing jumping jacks, you’ll know it’s time to call on someone to share their answer.
Scholar Talk
To improve the quality of the conversation during your classroom demonstration, insist that students participate in “scholar talk” by responding in complete sentences, and turning to face one another when a classmate speaks.
IQ Slapdown
Here is another activity from the Lead4Ward instructional playlist. Students are given a multiple choice question of appropriate rigor and they quickly create a deck of cards from a piece of paper, with each labeled A, B, C, and D.
Students hold their 4 cards as if they’re playing a traditional card game, and they are instructed to slap down the worst answer first on the count of 3-2-1. They’re instructed to take a moment to discuss or debate if they chose a different worst answer.
Next, the instructor asks them to slap down the “distractor” answer choice. This is the answer that’s not terribly wrong, but is meant to distract from the best answer. Discussion and debate follows.
Finally, they’re asked to slap down the right answer and follow the same procedure.
This instructional strategy works best for difficult or debatable answer choices, so avoid using it for simple, straightforward questions.
Gallery Walk
During a gallery walk, images, text, or student work can be posted on large anchor chart paper around the room.
Students are placed into partnerships or small groups and instructed to spread out around the different exhibits. Give them a few discussion questions to discuss every time they rotate to a new exhibit.
For more information, see here.
One Minute Paper
A one-minute paper can be a great exit ticket. At the end of a class, you can ask students to take 60 seconds to record their thoughts about a specific prompt related to the question. This can be done anonymously but used to get a measure of whole class understanding. Individual student responses can also be analyzed to find common errors for reteaching. When utilized often, it can also boost student writing skills.
Learning Loops
Here is another activity from the Lead4Ward instructional playlist. In learning loops, students form an inner and outer circle, with the outer circle facing inward and the inner circle facing outward. There should be an equal number of students in each circle so that pairs can be formed.
Each person on the outer loop is given an index card with a question, visual, or vocabulary word on it. The person on the inner loop responds to the question, and the outer loop partner praises or prompts differently. The outer loop rotates clockwise to the next student after a set period of time.
The inner loop can then rotate in the opposite direction.
To reduce the number of prompts needed, you can form multiple learning loops within the classroom and print two copies of all your questions.
This activity is a great way to increase rigor through meaningful student conversation, build in some movement, and is an overall creative activity that gives your lesson some wow factor. Just be sure to think it through carefully and ensure you have enough time to set up the activity and explain it.
4 Corners
With this fun game, the 4 corners of the room are each labeled with a piece of paper that indicates “strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree.”
Then, students are asked a series of questions, and they move to the corner of the room to indicate their response. This ensures that students are getting the necessary movement in a lesson to keep their minds engaged with the learning.
Of course, this game can be adapted by putting any possible answer choice in each of the 4 corners.
Card Sort
Here is another activity from the Lead4Ward instructional playlist. The teacher provides each partner or small group in the class with a set of cards to sort. These cards might be concepts, vocabulary words, visuals, genre demands or assessment items.
Students can sort the cards as know it, sort of it know it, or don’t it, or even always true, sometimes true, or never true. In a closed sort, the teacher provides the sorting category, and in an open sort, students sort the cards however they see fit.
Afterward, students share their card sort with the whole class or with another group.
Jigsaw
In Jigsaw, students begin with their home table group by learning and exploring a new topic. After a period of time, students are regrouped so that every new group will have a member from each home group in it. Each person in the new group is now an expert on a different topic. They teach the topic to their new group. Students share their learning with the rest of the group so that each topic is introduced to every student.
Cafe Conversations
Here is another activity from the Lead4Ward instructional playlist.
First, place a sheet of butcher paper or large anchor chart paper on each group’s table or on a grouping of desks. Ask a question and have all students at each table respond in writing anywhere on their poster.
Next, instruct each group to move to a different tablecloth and read over the responses. They place check marks next to answers they agree with and question marks next to ideas they’d like to discuss further or challenge.
Remaining at their same table, the teacher now asks a second question and instructs students to discuss and then add visual representations or drawings to the “tablecloth.”
Finally, students relocate to a third table as a group and repeat the process of discussing and then adding question marks and check marks. Now, the teacher asks them to find a way to summarize all the ideas on the paper by adding hashtags to the “tablecloth.”
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Tips for an Effective Classroom Demonstration
It doesn’t matter how many classroom demonstration ideas you have prepared if you don’t have a good handle on the most important aspects of teaching and classroom management. Below are some tips for running a classroom smoothly, which will ensure that you have enough time for the various elements of your classroom demonstration.
Limit the time spent in lecture to 8 minutes at a time.
Limited lecture isn’t a strategy as much as it is simply “best practice.” At any age, lecture almost guarantees that much of the information will be forgotten as soon as the day has ended. By using collaborative strategies and students teaching one another, much more of the information will be retained.
Consider timing your own direct teaching to ensure you don’t ramble. The best classrooms transition quickly from whole group lecture to small groups or partner work and then independent activities seamlessly.
Use a Call and Response to gain your audience’s attention.
You’ll need a way to get the attention of your students as they’ll be spending lots of time talking and listening to one another. You don’t want to be yelling and trying desperately to end the conversation so that you can give your next set of instructions.
Here are some popular calls and responses. Choose just one for your classroom demonstration and practice it a couple of times with the class right at the start of the lesson.
Prepare your key concepts or main points.
Make sure you don’t just get up there and start talking. Decide one or two key concepts or main points that students need to master, and then assess them at the end of class with a simple exit ticket. It can be very tempting to teach more information, but it’s critical that you narrow your focus to ensure student success. Depth is more valuable than breadth of knowledge.
Include visual aids.
You’ll absolutely need to utilize visual aids to accommodate all learners. Most people don’t learn well with just their ears. You’ll want to use either PowerPoint or Google Slides to add visuals that support your key concepts. If you don’t want to lean on technology, just make certain your visuals are large enough and think through where you’ll place them in the classroom and how you’ll hang them.
Spend minimal time in whole class activities and focus on smaller groups.
Kids learn better when they get frequent opportunities to speak and listen. They get more opportunities to talk in smaller groups, and listening becomes easier, too. You’ll increase the learning in smaller groups, and behaviors will be easier to manage, as well.
Use exit tickets at the end of class to gauge student understanding.
If your lesson is carefully targeted, you’ll be able to easily create a single question that measures whether or not students met the learning objective.
An exit ticket is basically a tiny assessment that measures whether or not students learned each day. These are not usually graded and take less than two minutes to complete.
Include timestamps in your lesson plans, and utilize timers effectively.
Whether you’ve been given 15 minutes or a whole class period for your lesson demonstration, you’ll need to use your time very wisely.
Begin by building timestamps into your lesson plan so that you carefully think through each lesson component, making sure to factor in about 90 seconds for each transition.
When you deliver your lesson, bring a timer. You can use either your phone or a simple egg timer. This will ensure that you get through all your lesson components.
Include online tools in small doses.
It’s a great idea to include an online tool in your classroom demonstration to show technology proficiency if you’re being evaluated.
With that said, keep it simple, especially if you’re not overly confident with your use of classroom technology.
Also, you don’t want to seem like a “one trick pony,” so keep your online tools limited to keep kids engaging with each other rather than only with a screen.
Prepare your list of questions in advance.
If you haven’t taught your age group many times before, you’ll want to pre-plan your questioning in advance. Do not waste time on low rigor questions, or those with simple yes or no answers. Encourage students to answer in complete sentences.
Have a plan for transitioning to different activities.
Think through the materials that are involved in each activity, and plan for the quickest way to get supplies to students so they can begin their work. Whenever there is downtime, off task behavior ramps up, and it can be hard to settle them back down.
You’ll also want a plan for how to get students across the room, into groups, or back to their desks for independent work. What will you do if students begin to waste time or don’t quickly follow instructions? Timing is important, and most novices lose lots of time in transitions. To be proficient, you’ll want to make sure these happen quickly.
Concluding Thoughts
The days of completing crossword puzzles and doing coloring sheets or boring worksheets are long gone in the education system.
Instructional leaders are looking for educators who can engage students in critical thinking, meaningful dialogue, and who are willing to ensure that students are the ones doing the hard work. Using good instructional strategies puts the demands of the day on the students.
