Mini Whiteboards

Mini Whiteboards in class are an excellent way to achieve greater student participation and to allow the teacher to see immediately whether the class have grasped the topic under discussion.

Note that you should try to use mini whiteboards after you have introduced Hands Down. The Hands Down technique is where you get your class used to not putting up their hands to answer a question. Instead, you choose a student at random from the class.

Method

At the beginning of the class give out a mini whiteboard to each student (along with a marker pen and cloth for cleaning the boards).

Beginning by asking a few questions and rather than have the class call out or put their hands up, simply ask them to write the answer on their whiteboard and hold it up.

You can then, at a glance, see whether every single person in the class has understood.

Suppose, for example, you are looking at a comprehension text about pasta with an intermediate class. You might then ask a simple question about the text:

Farfalle pasta is a popular Italian pasta in the shape of a bow tie. In fact, some producers call their farfalle "bow tie pasta" to make it more friendly to non-Italian speaking consumers. The shape is fairly versatile, and can be used in a range of hot pasta dishes, including Farfalle Trapanesi as well as cold pasta salads.

In a usual class one or two students who have understood would put their hand up. Most of the class might not, either because they don't know the answer or they are too shy.

If you are using the Hands Down method then you could pick out a student at random and ask them. They may, or may not, know the answer.

But, with whiteboards the situation is much easier. Ask the whole class to write the answer (either hot or cold) and hold up their boards. You can take a quick look about and immediately see whether they know or not.

If everyone has hot, then you can move on. If everyone has cold, then you need to go back and cover the text again. And if there's a mixture, you may need to quickly go over the text to make sure everyone understands it.

Advantages

There are a number of advantages to using small whiteboards.

• the entire class participates; with the Hands Down method some of the better students in the class can feel as though they are being ignored but this brings them back in

• students can learn off each other; they write their own answer, look around and see what others have and maybe amend their answer in light of what they see

• as a teacher you can see immeditely if the class is with you or not

• boards can also be used as "scrap paper" for some activities

Disadvantages

• this is a new technique for most students and it will take time to get organised with the class; it does need persistence on the part of the teacher

• you need to make sure the students do keep the whiteboards for answering questions and not messing about

• tables, desks and clothes can get messy from marker pens