How do you make you class more interactive and have the students participating more during class? Here are several tips on making you classroom more interactive that we have found useful in our classroom.
1. Attention grabbing statements and questions to start your class.

We start off the day with our Question of the Day, our hook or bell ringer for that day.  We incorporate current news, video clips, and real world problems into this time to get our students “hooked” about the upcoming lesson.

2. Encourage student participation verbally, written, and electronically

We have various methods that students can participate.  We use whiteboards, calling on students randomly, poll everywhere, or plickers to help encourage student participation.
3. Integrate real world issues and problem solving in to class discussion

Giving students real world problems helps them connect the material from your class to their lives.  We get ideas from online science websites as well as scientific magazines.  Scholastic has different aged magazines depending on the grade level that you teach.

4. Ask higher level questions to students

These can be used as a bell ringer or closure/exit tickets for your students.

5. Partnering/Small work groups on classwork

When we do this sometimes students get to pick their groups and sometimes we assign their groups.  It also helps to assign specific jobs in each group to help the students keep on task.

6. Allow student’s to given feedback on class activities

This can be done at the end of a unit, the end of the grading period, or at the end of a semester.  We use google forms to collect the data, it makes it easier to read as well as easier to organize since it is electronic document.