Active learning in the classroom

Active learning involves many things. For me it is to engage the student in learning within the classroom. As a teacher, we want to increase the feedback from the student to teacher and vice versa. Active communication is a big part of active learning within the classroom. There cannot be a one sided conversation within the classroom.

For an active learning activity in the classroom, I plan to put into use think-pair share activities for a higher level soils class. I would implement this by having the class partner up with another person. Then, I would pose a challenging thinking question to them. For instance, I would post a picture of a soil profile on the PowerPoint and ask the groups to figure out what types of soil forming processes could be occurring.  This group activity allows for individuals to interact and creates dialogue with each other especially for challenging areas of topics. After 10 minutes have passed, I would open the classroom up for a large group discussion to see what ideas the groups have come up with. This allows me as an instructor to see if the concepts of soil forming processes were understood or not.