Student teachers

Give small groups of students a problem to solve or a questions to answer.  Allow time for discussion, depending on the difficulty or complexity of the questions, and then have each group "teach" their problem to the rest of the class.  They should present the question and then explain their process for solving it in addition to the answer they came up with.  It's nice for the rest of the students to hear the process from someone other than the teacher, and the process of explaining to the rest of the class helps the student teachers solidify their understanding of the problem.

Best idea/Biggest Challenge

Either to start a large group discussion or to wrap up a small group discussion, have people share the best idea they come up with and what was the biggest challenge in the reading (large group) or discussion (small group).  This will tend to bring up a wide range of ideas from different people.  It also lets people air what they struggled with and get new perspectives on those challenges from other students.

Fact grouping

Give each student a fact on a notecard.  All the facts will be related to one subject.  Have a few headings within the overall topic, and have students get up and walk to the heading that they think their fact best fits with.  Students can talk to others who go to the same place to decide if they all agree with the facts being where they are.  Go around and have people read their facts and then talk about any that could have fit more than one place.  Students get a chance to get up and move and to talk to each other while practicing a skill they will eventually have to do alone.

Wall of Ideas

Use either a white board or a long piece of paper form a large roll on the wall.  Write about 2 questions on the top, which should be relatively open-ended.  Give each student a marker and have them write their own answers to the questions on the board or paper.  They should also read other answers and respond to those.  Whole conversations can happen on the paper.  This activity gives students a chance to have conversations even if they tend not to be very comfortable talking.  They also see many different responses to questions and get lots of perspectives.  It's usually a pretty quiet activity, and you can even tell them not to talk- only write what they want to say.

Human Venn diagram

This is a good activity for teaching how Boolean operators work.  Give the class statements like "people who like cats AND dogs" and "people who like cats OR dogs."  Have them stand up if they fit the description.  In this example, the first one would have only people who like both animals standing up, and the second would have anyone who likes either animal standing.  It helps to make the way Boolean operators work more clear by giving a clear visual of what the results are like when different operators are used.

Google document discussion

Have one Google Document for the class, and each group is assigned one section to fill in as they discuss.  You can see what other groups are talking about at the same time, so you can collaborate with separate groups in real time.  It also gives a final product that people can go back to for reference.

Gallery walk

After any small group discussion activity that involved groups writing notes on large pieces of paper, have the whole class get up and walk around to look at other groups' lists.  This lets people get a taste of other ideas without having each group presenting.  As they walk, they can also have conversations with people nearby if they see something particularly interesting.

Jigsaw

Each small group gets one part of an article to become “experts” on.  The groups read and discuss, then share their conversations with the whole group.  Once everyone has presented, then the sections of the article should fit together like the pieces of a puzzle.  It allows students to focus on one part of an article rather than the whole thing, which makes it a little easier to digest and helps focus thinking.

Musical shares

Write down a topic you want to research, the circle the room writing questions for other people’s topics.  When the music plays, move around, and when it stops, go to the nearest paper and write a question about the topic written at the top.  Do this about 5 times, and then each person will have suggestions for specific questions from 5 different people to help them narrow down their topic.  This activity is interactive, interpersonal and lets people move around the room.

Continuum

Students sort cards in a spectrum according to any criterion you want to set.  This can be done in small groups or as one large group.  One example would be sorting different teaching techniques from a reading assignment in order of how helpful you found them.