Check-in Activities to Engage Students

The importance of check-in activities

Engaging students using check-in activities are really important because they help build relationships, which can be key to success in the classroom. It doesn’t matter what subject you teach, and it doesn’t matter what grade level your students are in; you want them to feel cared about, valued, and genuinely interested in the material you’re teaching. Check-in activities are perfect opportunities to make that happen. “Go slow to go fast.” If we want to create a productive and safe learning environment, getting to know students and building relationships is vital. When students develop a sense of belonging and trust with the teacher and their peers, they are more likely to take risks in learning and feel motivated to achieve their learning goals. Here are six check-in activities that will help you do just that!

Emotion check-in

If a student is upset and can’t explain why, it will be hard to engage them in learning and productive conversation. Emotion check-ins are one of those things that seem silly but turn out to be incredibly effective. One thing every teacher wants is a positive and supportive classroom environment. Identifying students’ emotions at the beginning of the lesson shows that we care about them. If anything bothers students, causing them not to concentrate in class, teachers can also intervene in time. Helping students name their emotions is an effective strategy to cope with their negative feelings. Shifting Schools provide many creative ideas for check-in activities. Check out their resource library and locate Protocol Collection and Five Fresh Entry Tickets. “Where are you on the playground today?” is a very quick way to survey how students feel at the beginning of the lesson. FunRetrospectives.com also provides several check-in activities. ESVP – Explorer, Shopper, Vacationer, Prisoner is a short activity like “Where are you in the playground today?” to measure students’ engagement before content learning. Readers can find English resources directly on their websites. I have translated these two protocols into Chinese to share with Chinese-speaking teachers with permission.

Another simple idea is to have students circle an emoji and share their current feelings briefly.

Self-affirmation

Self-affirmation is a simple technique that can significantly improve your relationship with your students and help you to get to know them. The act of taking a few minutes to think about what you value and appreciate about yourself has been shown to reduce stress, improve self-confidence, and can even make you more forgiving. This makes it easier for you to approach conversations with students with an open mind and a positive attitude. I was a product of traditional Taiwanese education. As a child, I had never learned how to appreciate own strength. For students to become perseverant and resilient, I believe it is necessary to help them identify their strengths and believe in themselves. If you search the key phrase such as ‘affirmation sentence starters’, you will get plenty of examples. I created an affirmation activity via Jamboard. I hope teachers might want to use it with their Chinese-speaking students.

Social emotional learning conversations

Every day, we have conversations that may seem small but add up to make a big difference. These are called Social Emotional Learning (SEL) conversations. They range from sharing information about what happened during your day, to asking students about their feelings on something and exploring them together. These interactions show we care about what is happening in their lives and help them feel safe, so they can then take risks and try new things with us in their learning. This can have a tremendous impact on academic success! In my previous post, “Social Emotional Learning Questions to Students”, I created a scratch card via Jamboard to bring SEL conversations into the classroom. The idea here is not just having one conversation but also making them part of how we learn every day together. I translated some of the questions into Chinese as well.

Creativity booster through mini brainstorming

We can also integrate short brainstorming to boost students’ creativity during the check-in. I sometimes hear teachers complain about students who like to doodle on Jamboard. What if we provide them with the opportunity to draw with a focus for fun? I put the famous IDEO 30 Circles Exercises on the Jamboard. Just for fun, I also created 16 squares for students to turn into recognizable objects. ‘Word Up!’ is another excellent way to help students exercise their creativity in the Protocol Collection. The activity is easy to implement. The teacher can allocate 3 minutes, and students work in groups or in pairs to come up with as many words as they can using the letters provided. Teachers can set up different creative constraints for students to think creatively. Scattergories is another fun game that my students enjoy a lot. Swellgarfo.com is a scattergories list generator, and it also allows users to set up a timer when playing the game.

What do students enjoy these days?

With students spending so much time online, it’s easy to overlook one of the simplest ways to engage them: asking them what they enjoy. A quick activity that teachers can do to engage students during the check-in is to invite them to share a song, movie, book, etc., that they have enjoyed and would like to recommend to others. Knowing about students’ hobbies and interests will make it easier for teachers to bond with them. It will also allow students to identify common interests and make personal connections.

The power of quotes

I love James Clear’s 3-2-1 Thursday newsletter in which he shares 3 short ideas from him, 2 quotes from others and 1 question for readers to ponder. I made connections with some of his quotes. A good quote can be motivating and inspirational. Quotes are an easy way to get started when thinking about motivating students. When quotes come from students, you know who and what inspires them. It increases positive interactions with students and gives us opportunities to learn from them.

Conclusion

Doing a quick check-in activity with students when we welcome them into our classroom allows teachers to build stronger relationships with students over time. It also engages every student right off the bat and encourages them to be involved for the rest of the class. Don’t rush into teaching the content. Remember, “go slow to go fast”.

Jamboard templates

I design these activities with online learning in mind, but teachers can also use them for in-person class. Make a copy of the Jamboard templates if you would like to try these check-in activities with your students.

• Chinese templates
• English templates

Resources

The following two resources can not be missed. Both educators have curated and created great check-in activities and shared them with teachers generously.

• @MrsParkShine shares many great Jamboard templates in English on her website.
• @mguhlin (Miguel Guhlin) also curated a list of relationship building tools and activities on his website, technotes.