Cool-down activities for online group lessons

Some teachers neglect the importance of thoughtful lesson closure. However, cool-down activities are as essential as warm-ups as they effectively wrap things up in a way that will benefit your students’ learning. The lesson has a sudden and abrupt ending without such activities. Cool-down activities motivate students to summarize the lesson, help them to evaluate their progress. They should involve all students and bring up the discussion of common mistakes. If you teach a group, you should also remember to give feedback to the whole group.

What steps does a lesson end include?

There are five possible ways to end up a lesson:

“Now I can…” section with the discussion of the lesson results

• Students tick what they have learnt today, they compare their lists in pairs or in groups, explain the material to each other if necessary/possible. Then you can ask to give examples or ask CCQs to check if they understand the topic.

• If you work with the new vocabulary you can personalize the activity ask to name things using new words they have learnt. Divide students in pairs, ask to do the task and find something in common.

• To make it more fun you can use “Wheel Decide” tool.

Students’ feedback on the lesson

• You can ask students to share their opinions on what was easy/difficult/interesting/boring in the lesson. You can use online polls for that (read more about polls in this article).

• Students can self-evaluate how well they have understood the topic.

• Encourage students to remember what they did in the lesson and then sort that into two columns “I can” and “I need more practice” (Use learningapps.org for creating this online activity). Then give extra tasks and challenges to groups of students having the same ideas in “I need more practice column”.

Teacher’s feedback on students performance and result during the lesson

Use sandwich feedback method consisting of praise followed by corrective feedback followed by more praise.

Homework preview

Discuss open class what students should in their homework. That will help them understand the purposes of the tasks and how they should be done. If you’re short of time you can discuss only the most difficult tasks.

Hook to the next lesson

This step is really important as it motivates students to come to the next lesson. You can show a video, play some song, do a quiz or show a picture to interest students.

Which of these steps do you think are obligatory?

Vote below. We will reveal the answers in the comments section below a little bit later.

Loading…

What is the difference between cool-down activities for teenagers and young learners?

- Cool-down activities should be 4-5 minutes long for junior and 2-3 minutes for primary students.

- Cool-downs for juniors might include steps discussed above:

♦ Discussion of the questions “What have you learned today?”, “What was hard/easy today?” and “What did you like today?”;

♦ Error correction;

♦ Feedback on students’ work, praising for good work;

♦ Homework preview;

♦ Connection to the next lesson

— Don’t ask primary students to give feedback as it very difficult for them to self reflect yet.

— Therefore, cool-downs for primary should include:

♦ Games on lesson materials;

♦ Discussion of the lesson results;

♦ Setting up and explaining homework;

♦ Praise from the teacher;

♦ Goodbye song as part of the routine;

♦ Connection to the next lesson.

—There should be a reward system for primary students.

Keep this important part of the lesson in mind!