Concrete Practice: Teach-Back Activities
What Is a Teach-Back?
A Teach-Back is an activity in which learners teach each other what they have learned. They can do this many ways—verbal explanations, demonstrations, skits, and skills coaching, to name a few.
Besides helping participants learn and remember new information, a Teach-Back is an excellent way for a trainer to check for understanding. You don’t truly know how much your learners understand or remember until they explain, demonstrate, or teach what they have learned. With a Teach-Back, you obtain a clear idea of their level of understanding and whether or not you have to re-teach certain concepts.
A Teach-Back differs from a Jigsaw activity (see Part Two) in that the former reinforces material that has already been learned, whereas the latter is a method for introducing and learning new material. In both the Teach-Back and the Jigsaw, the trainer steps aside and allows learners to teach and learn from each other.
A Turn and Talk (see Part One) is a mini-version of a Teach-Back, with a one-or two-minute timeline to the verbal exchange of information.
What Does a Teach-Back Do?
For learners, participating in a Teach-Back can
• Deepen their understanding of information already learned.
• Increase their long-term memory of important facts.
• Clarify any misconceptions or confusion about the information.
• Make them aware of how much they have learned and what they still need to know.
• Increase their confidence as they teach someone else what they have learned.
• Help them to master what they teach.
By observing learners as they participate in a Teach-Back, a trainer can
• Check for understanding and clarify what learners know and don’t know.
• Assess what areas of learning need more direct instruction or more review.
• Give constructive and encouraging feedback to individuals and groups when necessary.
• Make notes on the progress of each learner and tailor some of the later review to specific learning needs.
Getting Ready
• Materials: Provide standard training materials. For specific activities, see the instructions for additional materials.
• Setup: There must be enough space in the room so that learners don’t get in each other’s way as they do Teach-Backs. Use breakout areas in addition to the training room, if possible.
• Group Size: Any size group is fine.
• Time: This will vary, depending on the amount of information or the complexity of the skill being practiced. Usually, Teach-Backs last from five to twenty minutes.
Five Teach-Back Activities
1. Paired Teach-Back
Ask learners to stand, find partners (triads are acceptable if there is an odd number of participants), and do one of the following:
• Take turns explaining the need-to-know information from the training.
• Take turns demonstrating the skill being learned and giving each other positive feedback, suggestions, and encouragement.
• Take turns asking each other questions about the material covered.
• Together, create a short, one- or two-minute skit demonstrating the need-to-know information or skill learned, and then perform the skit for the whole group.
2. Table Teach-Back
Do the following:
• Assign each table group one specific content segment to teach to the class.
• Each group prepares a short presentation of the material. These can be summaries of about one to three minutes in length or longer presentations of five or ten minutes, in which table groups use different media: visuals, slides, charts, interactive strategies, or demonstrations.
• Table groups make their presentations and receive rounds of applause from the class.
3. One-Legged Teach-Back
Learners form standing groups of three to five people per group. Each learner summarizes what he has learned, but there is a fun twist to the summaries:
The person speaking must stand on one leg while talking. This ensures that the summaries will be short and adds a note of humor to the Teach-Back.
4. Improv Teach-Back
Improvisation is a role play, jazzed up with more spontaneity and less structure. When you say to learners “We’re going to do Improvs” you won’t hear the groans that you might when you say, “We’re going to do role plays.” The Improv Teach-Back instructions are as follows:
• Explain to learners what an Improv Teach-Back is and that, as a whole group, they will need to have eight Teach-Backs done in two minutes. This means that each Teach-Back should last between ten and fifteen seconds.
• Choose a timer who will signal when fifteen seconds are up.
• One participant volunteers to begin the activity by standing and talking about what he has learned so far. While talking, he can be as dramatic as he wishes, using gestures and voice tone to emphasize the information and to add humor to it.
• In the middle of a sentence (or when the timer signals that fifteen seconds have passed), he abruptly stops talking and calls out another learner’s name.
• This next participant stands and immediately picks up the Improv where the first participant left off. The second learner talks for ten or fifteen seconds, then stops mid-sentence and calls out another name.
• The rounds continue until the number of Improv Teach-Backs has been reached within the time allowed, or until the two minutes end.
For an Improv Teach-Back with skills practice, do the following:
• Again, establish the number of Improv Teach-Backs the whole group must accomplish within a certain time limit. Choose a timer.
• One volunteer begins to demonstrate the skill.
• She stops in the middle of the demonstration, and the next person has to continue the demonstration where the first one left off.
• If learners can demonstrate the skill in two or three rounds, the skills demonstration starts over, with the next learner repeating the beginning of the skill. Rounds continue until learners have demonstrated the designated number of Improv Teach-Backs or until the timer signals to stop.
• For skills practice, learners can choose to be quite dramatic in their demonstrations, which adds humor to this type of Improv Teach-Back.
5. Circle Teach-Back
Do the following:
• Learners stand in a circle around a volunteer. If the whole class is large (twenty or more), learners form smaller standing circles of about ten people each.
• The person in the middle of the circle holds a soft, throwable object (such as a Koosh® or Nerf® ball). This person gives a quick summary or demonstration of what he learned, then tosses the ball to someone else.
• The next person moves to the middle of the circle (the first one joins the circle and the activity repeats itself).
• If the circle is small enough, everyone has a turn to stand in the middle and do a Circle Teach-Back. If the circle is large, or if there is only a short amount of time to do the activity, you can limit the number of Teach-Backs to just a few.
Your Turn
Make a Concept Map of your own Teach-Back ideas. I’ve included one on the next page for the Teach-Backs in this section.
Concept Map for Teach-Back Activities
..................Content has been hidden....................
You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.