This document provides numerous suggestions for making secondary classrooms more engaging and interactive. It recommends humanizing the classroom through regular check-ins with students, creating random groups to avoid cliques, using varied seating arrangements, and keeping a fast pace with multiple short activities per class. Gathering student feedback and involving parents are also encouraged. The document offers formats for review games, engaging multilingual learners, and generating deep thinking through discussions. It concludes with advice on assigning meaningful homework.

1. Kitty Kelly Epstein, PHD
kkepstein@gmail.com
A SECONDARY CLASSROOM THAT WORKS

2. PROCESSES, FORMATS,
AND ACTIVITIES TO TRY
• You have probably learned lesson
planning, the use of standards, and
pacing to cover the whole
curriculum through your teacher
education classes. However, you
may need additional ideas about
how to make your class “work” by
making it human and interactive

3. Humanizing Your Classroom:
• Secondary school is especially anonymous,
alienating, lonely, and difficult for many young
people. In order to make your classroom
more welcoming try some or all of the
following:

4. 1. Take time to “check in” at the beginning of class
several times a week.
Happy Face/Sad Face. On a piece of colored paper,
draw a happy face on one side and a sad face on
the other. Demonstrate the process by holding up
one side and saying one sentence. “I’m happy
today because…” Or, while holding up the other
side, “I’m sad today because…” Then pass the
paper to your right. The student next to you does
the same thing and passes it on.
I Am poems. You can find the format for “I Am”
poems on the Internet. Ask every student to write
one, share it with a partner (See creating pairs
below). Perhaps you will want to publish or put on
walls. There is a version in Spanish also.

5. 2. Spend time with a student as
a reward. Take a student out for
pizza for being a) exceptionally
kind and helpful to other
students; b) having the most
improved attendance; c) having
the most improved academics

6. 3. Creating groups and pairs
• Create groups and pairs randomly by
numbering off, cutting up playing cards and
having students find the other half of the card
they hold, cutting up comic strips and having
students find the other half; placing two parts
of someone’s name on cards and have
students find their other half (Cesar Chavez;
John Steinbeck etc.)
• Do not have students choose their own groups
or pairs. It always leads to someone feeling
left out.

7. 4. Seating arrangements
• Use a square, circle or U-shape as
much as possible and always use
it for Socratic seminar or other
substantive discussions
• It is really not workable to
“discuss” when people have their
backs to each other

8. Keep Up the Pace
• If you went to the gym, and the leader of the yoga or
Zumba class did the same exercise with the same
music for an hour, you’d rebel and demand your money
back. The same goes for your class.
• Plan for an average of three activities every period,
including frequent use of a brief check-In (happy-face;
sad face, for example, at the beginning). You and the
students should be breathless by the time the class is
over.

9. Learning About Your Own Teaching
• Several times during the semester, ask
students to write you a simple anonymous
note to be turned in at the door answering
these questions “What class activities are
most useful at helping you learn?” “What
class activities are least useful at helping you
learn?” “Other thoughts.”

10. Keeping Parents in the Education
Loop
• Call parents within the first few days or weeks of school to
praise something about their youngster
• Call when students are absent
• Organize a “Parent participation” Day.
• Invite parents to a regular class to participate in an activity
with you and their youngsters. Example – Read and discuss
a story together. It should be part of the curriculum but
organized in such a way that a random adult can “do” the
activity without having been in the class all semester. Yes,
many parents work, but the thrill of actually learning with
their teen-ager in a regular classroom will get a lot of them
there. (Give enough advanced notice)

11. Struggle Against Your Own
Defensiveness
If and when students say
mean things to you or behind your
back:

12. • a. Grit your teeth and think about it before
you snap back (advice to myself, believe me!)
• b. Practice your humor strategies. Learn
some jokes. Watch old Richard Pryor or Bill
Cosby videos.
• c. DO NOT confront students in public. Take
the student aside for a one-on-one. If the
student is being really disrespectful, call the
parents. If it’s just unkind, try telling the
student she hurt your feelings. That will be
such a shock she just might stop.

13. • d. Remember that it is probably not about
you. Your students are teen-agers living in a
society that does not provide routine support
(and often not even basic essentials) for
humans living through this transition
• e. Avoid sending students to the office unless
it’s really dire. Try asking the student to step
outside for a moment; set the rest of the class
to some written work; then go outside and
agree to a penalty that does not involve the
principal

14. Formats for Reinforcing Facts and
Skills using Games
•
•
•
•
•
Bingo
Jeopardy
Pair and share
Concentric Circles
Random Calling (Now called “equity sticks” by some)
Have each student put his/her name on a card or a
coffee stick. Put them in a jar or a bag. Ask a question.
Then pull out a stick and call on that person.
Important: Ask the question first before calling the
name, so that all are trying to figure out the answer
before hearing who has to actual answer aloud.

15. Tactics for a Multi-lingual classroom
• Check out Patricia Richard-Amato, Making It
Happen, for a multitude of interactive
strategies.
Formats for generating deep
thinking
• Socratic seminar

16. Homework
• 1. Think about this in a critical way
• 2. Do not turn your whole class into a fight about
homework.
• 3. Do not assign homework that wrecks the next
day’s class if it has not been done. In other words,
do not plan a discussion on a reading that a lot of
students probably will not do at home.
• 4. One idea is to wait until the students love you,
before you make this into an issue.
• 5. The other idea is to teach so intensively that less
at home work is needed.