500 Creative Classroom Techniques for Teachers and Trainers

by Marlene Caroselli

Approach any training challenge with these new, fresh and inspired solutions. Make your teaching and their learning fun, fast-paced and functional. This toolkit of 500 tips and techniques is designed for trainers at all levels of experience who enjoy experimenting, discovering and evolving. 500 Creative Classroom Techniques for Teachers and Trainers covers all the important basic, including how Have participants introduce themselves, Test for understanding, Add humor, Give feedback, Use questions, Use quotations, Have groups report, Get through printed material, Appoint group leaders You ll also get creative ways to deal with reluctant learners, make subject matter relevant, encourage participant-learning after the course has ended, develop study habits, make take-home assignments relevant and more. Each of the book s 20 chapters contains an overview. Within the activities is a wide variety of tips, suggestions, options, cautions, FYI tidbits and recommendations. Use the brainteasers scattered throughout the book to assess the brainpower in the room, when the class needs a mental break, after lunch to get juices flowing again or whenever you have odd minutes to fill. 500 Creative Classroom Techniques for Teachers and Trainers concludes with an appendix section packed with feedback discussion questions, grammar tests, intuition quizzes, leadership quotes everything you need to bring training sessions to life and achieve maximum results.

300 pages, Ring-bound

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

MARLENE CAROSELLI is the author of Leadership Skills for Managers, The Big Book of Meeting Games, and Great Session Openers, Closers, and Energizers. She has trained employees and executives at many organizations, including Lockheed-Martin, Mobil, Eastman Kodak, and Allied-Signal.

Reviews

[Sebah Al-Ali · Rating 2 out of 5]

اممم، الكتاب مقسم على فصول، كل فصل يُدرَج فيه 25 طريقة لتأدية شيء ما في الفصل.

توقعت أن تكون الكثير من التقنيات توظف عامل الإبداع أو الـ "واو، فكرة رائعة". لكن لا أدري لم شعرت أن معظم ما ورد تقنيات بديهية/منتشرة.



اقتبست:

- "Ask them to think about the best teacher they ever had, and to isolate one specific thing that teacher did that was memorable.
Then, call on each person to give his name and to complete this sentence: “I hope you will do what my favorite teacher did: he used to . . .”"

-"C = Concentrate (What will they concentrate on learning today?)
H = Habit (What old learning habit do they want to break?)
A = Attitude (What attitude best serves knowledge acquisition?)
N = New habit (What new learning habit would they like to acquire?)
G = Grow (How do they intend to grow as a result of this course?)
E = Educate (Who else can they educate about this course?)"

[J. Boo · Rating 1 out of 5]

Started skipping further and further ahead looking for something useful, and then gave up. The ideas can be categorized as a) fairly obvious b) time-wasters c) would send me running away in horror d) all of the above.

"25 Ways to Have Participants Introduce Themselves"*, Chapter 1, Idea 1 set the tone for the book:

Print the name of the course on the board or flipchart. Leave space between the letters. Then ask each person to take one letter from the word and use that letter as the first letter of a word that explains why he is taking the course or what he hopes to learn.

Example: If the course is about supervision (S-U-P-E-R-V-I-S-I-O-N), you might take the letter ‘I’ and use it to introduce yourself in the following way: “I pride myself on being an intelligent person. Intelligence means always gathering new information. I’m here to learn as much as I can."

I'm old and out of touch; could anyone give me the modern-day slang equivalent of "gag me with a spoon"?

Every "idea" has a completely unrelated brain-teaser under it. Presumably the theory is that engaging one's students with the brain teaser would wake up the intellect, but even if that dubious claim is granted, the teasers should've been in a separate section because of the whole "completely unrelated" bit. Look, I'm ADD enough as it is, why make things even harder for me? That bit of disorganization ensured a drop from 2 -> 1 star.

Anyway, I read this because I was pointed to it by the guy I most respect in the education community (not a teacher, by the way). Maybe he read the title and stopped there? Maybe my reaction is idiosyncratic, and there are people out there who really derive value from this sort of b̶i̶l̶g̶e̶ exercise?

* Note "participants", not "students".