Have you noticed a steep drop in attention span, concentration and overall class involvement lately? In recent years, teachers have had to come up with new ways of capturing student attention and holding onto it.

Since returning to school after pandemic lockdowns, engagement has been a top priority in my classroom. Here, I will share with you one simple classroom activity I’ve been using that works every time. Hopefully it helps you in your classroom.

This activity is:

• Interactive

• Easy

• Enjoyable for student and instructor

• Flexible

• Good for all age groups with access to an electronic device in class, and who are able to type fairly quickly (ideal for Grades 8-12, and beyond. I use this with my undergraduate students)

• Good for a variety of subjects

Let me tell you all about it! 

The idea behind my Interactive Writing Activity is that all students will have a chance to share their ideas in a low-impact environment, by typing their responses into a shared Google Doc. As they type their responses in one color, say, black, I type responses to them in another color, like blue. They read my responses, make edits, then move on to comment on their classmates’ responses in a third color, like red. 

Typing their responses takes away some of the anxiety students may feel when speaking up in class, as long as the instructor:

• Focuses on meaning and content rather than grammar, spelling and punctuation*

• Celebrates risks taken by students, in the form of new ideas not yet explored in class, or connections to other areas of the student’s life or learning

• Acknowledges strengths in the writing

• Takes each writer’s individual learning into account. Students will be at different levels in terms of their writing’s quality

You are going to get creative with what exactly you have your students write about. I use this activity almost weekly in my Art History undergraduate course. By breaking up my lectures with these short and engaging activities, I keep students’ attention, because they know that after each lecture they will have to do one of these, or some similar low-stakes assessment, like a brief quiz. When students have a clear idea of where they are going and know that they will be asked to actively apply their knowledge right away, they are more likely to stay involved and succeed.

I actually do this activity with my HyFlex courses, where the majority of my students are online, and it is a wonderful way to keep them learning in an active way. I highly encourage you try this with your online classes if you have any. 

After the session, you are going to be left with so much to work with. Students’ ideas are all out there on the page. You might:

• Look for any ideas that are related to your next lecture topic, and use student writing as a springboard into that idea

• Ask for a few volunteers to share one piece of writing from a classmate that made them think of a concept in a new way

• Model other possible replies to the prompt

• Workshop a variation of the prompt, and as a class write a new prompt for next class

• Ask students to continue expanding upon their ideas and submit a short essay by next week

So there you have it, simple, engaging, and fun! As an added bonus, it gives you a break from talking. I don’t know about you, but my voice needs as much rest as it can get throughout the day, and as an introverted teacher who is extremely excited about my subject, I sometimes talk more than my poor voice wants me to, and it can deplete my energy. Which would be one thing, if students actually retained any of it, but we know that after a certain point (maybe 12 minutes) they stop retaining information from lectures. So this is a nice way to communicate with students in a different way, while resting my voice. 

I hope this grabs your students’ attention and keeps you on track. 

* Of course, you can make technical corrections, but don’t focus too much on them. Go beyond into understanding what the writer is trying to say, and helping them clarify their ideas. Sometimes technical corrections are necessary in order to make a piece of writing more clear. Use your discretion.