To counteract absenteeism, teachers should focus on improving student engagement, Therefore creating an engaging classroom environment is a great way to improve your students’ learning experience.

There are 3 unique ways to use Poll Everywhere in your classroom to improve student engagement and create an exciting learning environment that students will want to be in.

Play an improv game

Break out of the typical classroom mold and energize your students with a fun and interactive improvisation game. Have your students rewrite the ending of a book or historical event by choosing scenarios and acting them out in front of the class.

1. Select four to five volunteers to play as the improv ‘actors’
2. Moderate the questions via Poll Everywhere
3. The audience controls the direction of the story by answering the questions

Poll questions can be multiple choice with options like:

What setting should the actors be in?

• High school bathroom
• Self-checkout line at Target
• Grandma’s kitchen

Or open-ended poll types like:

• What is the guiding sentiment of this scene?
• What is Character A’s hidden talent?
• What is the relationship between Character B and Character C?

Continue the game with a variety of questions and switching participants so everyone gets to participate. An improv game is a fun way to develop your students’ presentation skills, ability to think quickly, and review class material.

Host a game show

Poll Everywhere’s Competitions – the exciting poll type that allows presenters to ask a series of questions and lets participants compete to answer the fastest. Instead of asking a simple multiple-choice question, why not gamify the experience by turning it into a game show?

1. Choose one person to be the host
   
2. Select three individual participants to play the game
3. The audience plays as the 4th participant

Test the participants by asking class trivia questions such as:

• History: What year was the Declaration of Independence signed?
• Math: What is a triangle with one 90 degree angle called?
• Science: What are the two elements that make up water?

Incentivize your students with prizes like extra credit for the winner of the game show. Using Competitions will make any lesson exciting and encourage active engagement from your class.

Choose-your-own-adventure lesson plan

Let your students be in charge and choose the lessons and activities for the day. Set aside a few topics you’d like the students to review and have them pick which they want to learn about with a ranking activity type. Students can reorder the choices in the order that they prefer, with the top choice moving to the top and last choice moving to the bottom.

Prioritize the top choices to make time for other activities. Your students will feel empowered by the freedom to choose and you maximize class time by reviewing most relevant topics to the students. With more power over the lesson plan, students will engage more with the material.

On top of choosing topics, allow your students to pick which activities they’d like to do for that day. Use a word cloud to create an exciting visualization of your students’ favorite activities. Examples include:

• Quiet music hour – silent studying while playing a class Spotify playlist
• Small group discussions
• Think-pair-share
• Fun trivia game
• Arts and crafts time

Don’t lose your students’ attention due to boredom. Improve their learning experience and increase student engagement by gamifying your lesson plans with Poll Everywhere.

(This article is quoted from Poll Everywhere)