flexible. You can then go deeper into issues, depending on your students’ needs.
18.7. Use different colours If available, use different colours to emphasise matters or to highlight contradictions. For example, advantages in green and disadvantages in red, or words in one colour and relationships or lines in another.
18.8. Give compliments People appreciate getting compliments. Therefore, thank a student when he takes the initiative to ask a question. He or she at least dares to do so, and gives you an opportunity to explain again. When you ask a question and find that it is a difficult one, or when you write down a question on the board for the students to work on, you can then also go around the classroom and ask everybody for their answers. Do not react directly to the answers, but make an inventory. At the end you pay a compliment to the student who got the right answer. The others you let be for the time being.
18.9. Ask questions: open and closed, broad and in-depth Ask question to see what your students are thinking and to test if they understand it all, or to involve the students in the lesson. When a student asks a question you can ask another student to give the answer, and then possibly ask a third one whether number two had given the right answer. You thus encourage the thinking process. Already think of a few questions when you are preparing, and be deliberate about asking open or closed questions. Open questions inventorise thoughts, ideas and opinions: What do you think of…? How important is it in your situation for….? How would you solve this? Closed questions ask for facts: What is the time? What forms of insurance exist? To what age can you get insurance? What is the price of….? Maintain the dialogue with your students by asking broad and in-depth questions. A broad question is asking for more information. For instance, your question is about the advantages of an aspect. The student spontaneously mentions two. You then ask: what other advantages can you think of? It is about you encouraging a student to become involved and think. In-depth questions inquire into the meaning of an answer. For instance: can you elaborate on your response? Can you give an example of it? What did you mean with ………….. in your answer?
18.10. Have breaks After half an hour the students’ span of attention will drop clearly. Therefore, have a short break every, e.g., hour. Preferably, let them out and enjoy a different environment for a while, and tell them that you will be seeing them again in ten minutes. The break will reward you twice over, you and your students have refreshed their brains. A break is not a waste of time, but an investment.
18.11. Gesticulate Talk with your hands and arms. Especially when you are discussing advantages and disadvantages or contradictions; look to the left when you are listing advantages and to the right when you are listing disadvantages. Or first move both hands to the left when you are talking and then to the right. It stimulates students to better absorb the material.
18.12. Make schematics When it is about processes, lists, advantages, disadvantages, contradictions or relationships between matters, make the material insightful with the help of schematics or graphs. This makes it easier to remember than a long text would.
18.13. Stand in front of the group and walk up and down a bit Do not sit on a chair in front of the students, but stand up. You then get a better overview of the class and it forces you to think and talk, instead of read and talk. The second advantage is that it is easy to write down a concept on the board when you are talking. You are more flexible, literally, Version 3.0 22-09-2008
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