In the words of my high school world history teacher, “Chalk. If it’s good enough for Socrates, it’s good enough for me.” I’m sure many of us feel the same way about lecture as a primary way to teach. Lecturing is a tried-and-true method for teaching complex topics. However, it can often become monotonous for both teachers and students. To combat this, I use Whole Brain Teaching’s strategy called “Turn and Teach.” I’ve found it significantly elevates the effectiveness of chemistry lectures. This method increases engagement, enhances student understanding, and ultimately allows more time for practice and application of concepts.
The Challenges of Traditional Lectures
But because chemistry is so abstract with many interconnected concepts, it can be hard for students to learn by lecture. Students may struggle to stay focused. Especially those that aren’t interested to begin with! Plus, of course you have to consider the needs of all students. Some of them simply CAN’T learn just by listening. Plus, I’m sure for some lessons you simply find yourself repeating information over and over without seeing significant student understanding.
Traditional lectures can be a double-edged sword. On one hand, it’s a straightforward way to deliver large amounts of information efficiently. On the other hand, they can become monotonous, leading to disengaged students and a lack of deep understanding. Especially if you’re like me and get so excited you forget to ask if anybody has questions…
Introducing Turn and Teach
I learned the “Turn and Teach” method, when I first read Whole Brain Teaching. While I don’t recommend much else from the book for high school students, I LOVE this concept. This strategy involves breaking up the lecture into smaller, more manageable segments. After explaining a concept, the teacher prompts students to turn to a partner and explain the concept in their own words. This active engagement helps reinforce understanding and allows students to process information more deeply.
You get to walk around the room and ensure student understanding and address any misconceptions as they pop up. Then you go back to your teaching. Just a few minutes at a time. Then partners switch roles. Now the second student will explain a new concept to the first student.
Benefits of Turn and Teach in Chemistry Lectures
- Increased Engagement: Turn and Teach transforms passive listening into active learning. When students are required to explain concepts to their peers, they become more engaged in the material. This increased engagement leads to better retention. (Meaning less study work for students and less reteaching work for you!)
- Enhanced Understanding: Explaining a concept to someone else is one of the best ways to solidify understanding. By verbalizing their thoughts, students can clarify their own understanding and identify any gaps in their knowledge. Believe it or not, this does happen. Students will ask you WAY more questions!
This peer-to-peer interaction also allows students to learn from each other, providing multiple perspectives on the same topic.
- More Efficient Use of Lecture Time: You’d think this would take more time. I felt the same way before I started Turn and Teach. But Turn and Teach allows you to deliver content more efficiently. Instead of spending the entire class period lecturing, teach in tiny digestible chunks. With strong student understanding, you won’t be (over)explaining. It’s a “quick to the point” lecture! With all that leftover time, students get more practice actually working with the content. The balance between instruction and application is crucial for mastering complex chemistry concepts.
Implementing Turn and Teach in the Chemistry Classroom
- Plan Your Lecture Segments: Break down your lecture into key concepts and plan short segments around each one. Aim for 5ish minutes of lecturing followed by 2-3 minutes of Turn and Teach.
- Prompts: Create clear prompts for students to discuss with their partners. Here’s two for your lesson on molarity. 1) Define concentration/molarity. Then later for student 2) Explain how to calculate molarity of a solution. Prompts are especially important when you and students are new to Turn and Teach.
- Monitor and Facilitate: Circle around the classroom as students teach each other to ensure everyone is participating and to address any misconceptions. This also allows you to gauge the overall understanding of the class and adjust your lecture as needed.
- Self Assessment: After each Turn and Teach segment, check in with your students to see how they are feeling about the concept.
Conclusion
I designed my chemistry curriculum based on this teaching method. Each one of my guided notes pages teaches the key points of a chemistry concept. Students spend a lot of time in my classroom teaching each other. Because the notes sheets are so short, the lessons move quickly. This gives my students plenty of time to work on their self assessment questions and get more practice with the content.
In my classroom, the practice portion of the lesson is far more important than the listening part. I mean, you can “learn” just about anything on YouTube. The athletes our students look up to didn’t watch hours of sports to be the best – they got in the game and practiced! I’m not sure my classroom would be as fun as it is without the time saved thanks to Turn and Teach as a way to enhance my lectures.
