We all have our favorite ways to engage students in the classroom, but there is always room to find more in classroom activities that will get your students excited about learning. Whether you are a new or experienced teacher, there is no replacement for finding activities that your students will actually want to participate in. The key is not to reinvent the wheel. You can still use the same content, just repackage it in different ways to get students engaged and moving.
In classroom activities, they don’t need to be extravagant. They just need to get the job done.
What I have learned over years of trial and error is that students crave structure, but they also crave the freedom to think inside that structure. A great way to think about this is to imagine your lesson plans as a set of building blocks. You provide the frame, and they provide the ideas. When students are given a clear task, whether it is working in small groups to solve math puzzles or participating in a whole class game that reviews quiz questions, they stop waiting for you to give them the correct answer and start figuring it out themselves.
That shift is where real student learning experience begins. It is also where classroom management becomes less about policing behavior and more about facilitating discovery.
From the Front of the Room to the Side: Lessons from the Classroom and Beyond
I started my career as a high school social studies teacher in 2007, and for over a decade, I stood where you are standing now. I taught in two very different school environments. My first position was at a nationally ranked academic school, where students were laser-focused on grades and often terrified of being wrong. Later, I moved to a Title I CTE school, where my students were balancing part-time jobs, family responsibilities, and deep skepticism about whether the content I taught had anything to offer their futures. Between those two settings, I taught over 1,700 students.
Since 2018, I have shifted entirely to training K-12 teachers in implementing student-centered learning. That transition has given me a unique vantage point. I am no longer in the trenches every day, but I spend my time watching hundreds of other teachers navigate those same trenches, and I get to see what works across different classrooms, different grade levels, and different communities.
What I can tell you with confidence is this: the in-classroom activities that work in one setting often flop in the other, not because the activities themselves are flawed, but because the student groups bring completely different perspectives to the table. A great activity for a room full of high-achievers who need permission to be creative might be a disaster for a room full of students who need to see a direct connection between their lives inside and outside of the classroom. The common thread across both environments, however, is that students at every level respond to hands-on activities that respect their time and their intelligence.
Building Structures That Spark Discussion
When I train teachers now, I emphasize that lesson plans should not be a rigid script but a flexible framework that allows for moments of discovery. A great way to structure this is to think in terms of chunking your class periods into three distinct phases: instruction, collaborative exploration, and synthesis. The collaborative exploration is where the magic happens, and it is where I have found that hands-on activities are non-negotiable, especially when you are working with elementary students all the way up to high school seniors.
For example, when teaching historical events or complex concepts, I train teachers to use a modified inner-circle and outer-circle discussion format. You place four students in the inner circle to role-play as famous people or stakeholders, armed with index cards of quotes and motivations. The remaining students in the outer circle have open-ended questions on their desks and are tasked with noticing who is dominating the conversation and which different perspectives are being ignored. After ten minutes, they swap.
What I love about such activities is that they build communication skills and social skills simultaneously. A student who would never raise their hand in an entire class discussion will lean in, focused, when they are in that outer circle with a specific observation task. It gives them a reason to listen beyond just waiting for their turn to speak.
Keeping It Simple: Hands-On Learning That Works
One of the biggest misconceptions I encounter in professional development sessions is the idea that classroom activities need to be complex to be effective. They do not. Some of the best game ideas I have shared with teachers came from pure necessity, like a rainy Tuesday in October when an indoor recess games bin became the foundation for a lesson on the water cycle. One teacher I worked with had a hula hoop in her closet from a physical activity training, and she used it to create a living diagram. Students held building blocks labeled evaporation, condensation, and precipitation, and had to physically move through the hula hoop as water molecules, explaining their journey.
The kinesthetic element forced them to think about the sequence in a way that a slide presentation never could.
For formative assessments, I rely heavily on exit tickets and quick writes, but I also train teachers to use a card game called Concept Connections. Give each small group of three to four students a stack of index cards with key terms, famous people, and quiz questions from the unit. Their task is to arrange them on their desks to show relationships.
It is a great activity because you can walk around and immediately see where the student groups have misconceptions. Are they connecting a cause to an effect that does not align? Are they putting a key event next to the wrong historical figures? It transforms quiet desk work into a noisy, productive workshop where problem-solving skills are being built collectively.
Letting Go of the Podium: Shifting Your Role
I want to be honest with you. Transitioning to this style of teaching requires a shift in how you view your role. When I first started implementing student-led learning myself, I had to unlearn the idea that the teacher is the sole dispenser of knowledge. That was a hard adjustment for me, as it is for anyone who has been taught a more traditional method of teaching. The reality is, when you implement student-centered learning, your classroom management changes. It is not about quiet rows. It is about structured chaos. You become a facilitator, moving from group to group, asking probing questions rather than providing immediate answers.
For a teacher who has been in the profession for twenty years, this can feel like a loss of control. For a new teacher, it can feel terrifying. BUT the trust you build is unparalleled.
I remember a specific case study from a teacher I mentored early in my training work. She was struggling to get her automotive tech students to engage with writing skills in their English class. We designed a scavenger hunt where they had to find different perspectives in a repair manual…the technical writer’s perspective, the customer’s perspective, the mechanic’s perspective…and then they had to build a slide presentation arguing which perspective was most important for a successful repair. They did not even realize they were practicing critical analysis and writing skills. They were just excited to win. The winning team got a small prize. The engagement was immediate because we started with their expertise, not ours.
The Right Group Size for the Right Goal
When I think about the classroom activities that have stood the test of time across age groups and class sizes, I come back to a few core principles. First, the group size matters immensely. A larger group of six or seven students can work for a brainstorming session, but for deep critical thinking and problem-solving skills, I have found that student groups of three to four are the sweet spot. In small groups, it is harder for a student to hide.
Each team member has to contribute, and the communication skills they develop, like learning to disagree respectfully, to build on a peer’s idea, or even just admitting when they do not understand something, are the skills that will serve them long after they have forgotten the quiz questions from your unit.
A great way to mix this up is to use what I call clock partners at the beginning of the semester. Each student gets a piece of construction paper with a clock drawn on it, and they find a partner for each hour. Throughout the school year, when I want them to share a new idea or engage in critical analysis, I say, “Meet with your three o’clock partner.” It immediately gets them up, moving, and talking to someone who is not their best friend. It builds social skills and ensures that different perspectives are heard consistently, not just when I randomly call on someone.
Game-Based Learning That Builds Community
There is a fun way to teach even the driest of basic material while also building community. One of my favorite rainy-day games that I have adapted for high school social studies is a version of beach ball toss. I write icebreaker questions like “What is your favorite food?” or “What is a skill you want to learn?” on one side and review questions about historical events or course material on the other. We stand in a circle, and when a student catches the beach ball, they answer whichever question is under their right thumb.
The first day of school is a low-stakes way to build connections. At the end of a unit, it becomes a fast-paced whole-class game that forces them to recall additional information under pressure.
The laughter it generates is a great way to lower anxiety, especially for elementary students who are still developing their writing skills and confidence. I have also trained middle school teachers to use this with classes that were particularly squirrely, and the simple act of moving and tossing a soft ball regulated their energy better than any settle-down directive they could have given.
Escape Rooms and Deeper Engagement
I also want to talk about escape rooms because they have become a popular trend, but they often get implemented poorly. A good classroom escape room is not just a set of flashcards hidden around the room. It is a narrative-driven challenge that requires critical analysis and problem-solving skills across multiple stations. When I train teachers on this, I emphasize that the key is for each station to present a puzzle that requires collaboration to solve. One station might have math puzzles that unlock a code. Another might have primary source documents that require group discussion for interpretation. A third might include a card game in which students have to sequence events correctly.
The end of the activity is not just about the winning team getting a prize. It is about the debrief that happens after. I always tell the teachers I train to gather the entire class and ask what moment they got stuck and how they work together to get unstuck. That reflection is where the learning process solidifies. It is where students articulate that they had to listen to different perspectives to see the common thread.
It is a good idea to have a few of these prepped for the end of a unit, but they do require significant prep time. I usually recommend working with a colleague to split the building blocks of the activity and share the load of gathering materials like construction paper, puzzle pieces, and hula hoops for physical challenges.
When Plans Fail: A Case Study in Flexibility
Let me give you a case study from my own classroom before I moved into training full-time. I had a high school social studies class that was, for lack of a better term, a group of lone wolves. They would not talk to each other. They would barely look at each other. Small groups were a disaster of silence. I knew I had to get them interacting, but forcing them into group discussions was backfiring. So I pivoted.
I brought in a stack of index cards and ran a snowball fight on a seemingly simple question: “What is the purpose of government?”
Each student wrote their answer on a piece of paper, crumpled it, and for exactly forty-five seconds, we had a controlled chaos of paper being thrown around the room. The laughter was immediate. Then everyone picked up one snowball that was not theirs. We went around the room reading the anonymous answers. That was the crack in the armor. They were suddenly interested in what their peers thought, but without the social pressure of having to say it aloud.
From there, we moved into a gallery walk where they analyzed different forms of government posted on posters in each corner of the room. They started talking, not because I told them to, but because the hands-on activities gave them a shared, low-stakes mission. By the end of the class periods that week, they were functioning as a really large group for the first time.
That experience taught me that sometimes the new ways we need to challenge students come from being willing to throw out the lesson plans and meet them where they are.
Building Your Toolkit: Versatile Structures for Any Subject
Building out a robust repertoire of in-classroom activities is not about having a massive binder of game ideas you never use. It is about having a toolkit of versatile structures you can adapt to any subject matter. One structure I rely on heavily in my training is the gallery walk I mentioned above. Instead of presenting information via a slide presentation, hang primary sources, images, or student work on the walls. Students move in small groups, adding sticky notes with their observations and open-ended questions. It forces physical activity, critical analysis, and collaboration.
Another is the card-game structure, in which you use building blocks or puzzle pieces to represent concepts. I have even trained teachers to use Jenga blocks, writing quiz questions on them. When a student pulls a block, the entire class has to answer the question before the next student takes their turn. It is a fun icebreaker activity that turns review into a tense, engaging whole-class game. The common thread through all of these is that they move the cognitive load from the teacher to the students. They become active participants in their own student learning experience, rather than passive recipients of additional information.
The Goal: Working Yourself Out of a Job
Ultimately, the in-classroom activities you choose should serve two masters. They must engage students in the moment and build the skills (communication, problem-solving, critical thinking, social) that will enable them to be independent learners beyond your classroom sessions.
I tell the teachers I train that their goal should be to work themselves out of a job. By the end of the school year, your students should be able to walk into a room, look at a case study or a complex problem, and instinctively know how to form small groups, how to listen to different perspectives, how to challenge an idea respectfully, and how to synthesize new ideas into a coherent conclusion. That does not happen by accident. It happens because you intentionally designed hands-on activities that required them to practice those skills repeatedly.
It happens because you gave them the freedom to fail in a great activity like a scavenger hunt, where the winning team was the one that showed the most improvement, not the one that got the “most” correct answer first. It happens because you made the learning process transparent, showing them that the skills they were building with building blocks, hula hoops, or escape rooms were the same skills they would need in a job interview, in a college seminar, or in navigating a difficult conversation with a friend.
Moving Forward: One Small Change at a Time
So, as you look at your lesson plans for next week, I would challenge you and your students to pick one lecture and replace it with a structure from this list. Try a snowball fight to generate questions. Use exit tickets to gauge understanding and then let them teach each other in different groups based on where they are struggling. Do not worry if it is not perfect.
I have trained hundreds of teachers who have told me about gallery walks that flopped because they did not give clear enough instructions, and icebreaker questions that led to tangents they had to gently redirect. The good idea is to reflect afterward. What worked? What did not? What would you do differently? Keep those index cards of game ideas that worked and toss the ones that did not.
Over time, you will build a collection of activities that are uniquely yours… ones that draw on your knowledge of the subject matter, your understanding of age groups, and your connection to your students. The best classroom activities are not found in a book. They are built from the messy, wonderful, and deeply human work of showing up every day, trying something, listening to the results, and trying again.
This article was originally published on August 26, 2021.
