Ensuring strong student engagement is always on a teacher’s mind as he/she is planning a lesson. One way to bring in active cognitive engagement is to plan for student discussions with a movement component. One activity that does this is the Four Corners strategy. This strategy allows students to answer questions or rehearse/practice skills in a safe, small-group setting so that every student participates and articulates his/her learning.
Four Corners Strategy Directions:
- Assign each corner of the room a title based on commonalities, such as vacation destinations, vocabulary word from the unit of study, types of genres, feelings towards a topic, etc.
- Ask students to make a choice based on their personal preference and then move to their favorite corner. The number of students in each corner does not need to be even.
- Once students are in their chosen corner, they form a duo or trio with two or three people who have selected that same corner preference.
- Teacher poses a question or task related to the content recently taught.
- Students work with their duos or trios to answer the question or rehearse/practice the skill by applying what they know, discussing appropriate processes/answers, and then justifying their response.
- Teacher sees and hears the students’ thinking and clarifies/verifies as appropriate.
When to Use:
- Bell ringers/warm up
- Closure activity
- Quick check during instruction
- Review activity for specific assessment questions students found difficult
- Add movement and discourse by layering it with another instructional strategy
Materials:
- Question or quick task prepared for students to complete.
- Signs for each corner with the appropriate titles.
Adapted from the Lead4Ward Instructional Strategies.
http://lead4ward.com/playlists/
Please contact your IC or Content Coordinator if you have any questions.