Internal involvement techniques--designed to involve the students without requiring them to respond out loud--are often a useful way to start a presentation and to prepare students for activities that require active participation. Rather than plunging into an active learning situation, some teachers prefer to "warm up" their students with some of the following simple techniques.
EXAMPLES AND STORIES. Punctuate any presentation with frequent real life examples or stories. This helps maintain student interest and creates a subtle nonverbal student involvement. In identifying with an example or a story, the student is internally more active in the class (e.g., "One of the things that got me interested in civil engineering was photographs of the collapse of a bridge in Virginia...").Make sure that the examples and stories you choose are within the range of your students' experience.QUESTIONS. Pose questions that will be answered in the presentation. Even if students do not answer a question out loud, they are processing the answer internally (e.g., "Why would Hamlet hesitate to act in the beginning of the play?"). Clearly mark rhetorical questions (e.g., "Think with me about this. Later I'll ask for your thoughts").Ask your students to jot down in their notebooks the answers to questions you raise throughout your presentation. Then, when you call on them to answer, they will be more prepared.VISUALIZATIONS. Have students develop an internal picture of an event to make it more concrete for them (e.g., "Imagine that you are a newspaper correspondent at the summit conference. What are some of the questions you would ask?").Ask your students to write down in their notebooks images they see during your presentation, and ask them to share these.MINI-ACTIVITIES. Ask students to engage in some simple action to build student involvement (e.g., "Raise your hand if you have filled out an income tax form.").However, remember not to ask students to respond to a very private question in this manner. Some students may feel you are invading their privacy.DEMONSTRATIONS AND DRAMA. One way to capture student interest is to do a very short demonstration or act out a phenomenon.You might ask your students to write in their notebooks how they would have performed differently and why. Later, you can ask them to share their thoughts.PROPS. Show them an actual physical object (e.g., "Here is a model of the human muscle system. You can see...").Pass the object around the room when possible, particularly if you teach in a large classroom, so that all of your students can see it.
