I like to start classes with a quick drill to help student switch gears and review material. I’m teaching Greek this semester, and visual aids like flashcards or worksheets are really important because so many Greek forms and words can only be differentiated visually. It can get cumbersome, though, to keep writing or printing “flashcards” on filmsy pieces of paper, and worksheets can isolate students from one another. It’s also an awful waste of paper.
So I recently started using powerpoint for drills, and it’s working really well. I put the word or question on one slide, then the meaning or answer on the next. This makes it possible to flip through far more words and concepts than is possible by shuffling through papers. Students respond well to seeing the prompt, and the next slide reinforces visually what they hear when I, or one of their fellow students, call out the answer. Here are three examples (click on the image to magnify):
And because I don’t have to keep track of which questions are coming up, I can focus on watching the students and gauging which ones are really lost. It’s also really easy to revise the exercise and copy specific slides over to new powerpoint drills for another class.
Does anyone else have a favorite way to do drills?
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