Published in
2 min readAug 14, 2017
Original published on TREAT — Teachers Redesigning Educational Activities with Technology
How to do a Brainstorm in your teaching
GOAL
The activity is a brisk exchange of thoughts and ideas leading to a joint solution. The students discuss without the teacher meddling, that is in a safe environment open for a free exchange of thoughts and ideas.
STEP-BY-STEP
- The students are introduced to a discussion topic, a problem or a dilemma — in writing. (1–2 minutes.)
- The students work in groups of 3–5 persons.
- The students write down their spontaneous thoughts and ideas on Post-It notes or in a Padlet. The students are not supposed to talk in this part of the exercise, but have to think and work on their own. All thoughts and ideas are welcome. The Post-It notes are placed on a wall or on a table. (5 minutes.)
- The group goes through all Post-It notes: Duplicates are discarded, and the remaining Post-It notes are put under suitable headlines. In this part of the process, new ideas may pop up and input already given can be adjusted. (10 minutes.)
- The group prepares a joint answer and publishes it on Padlet or a Google Docs (5–10 minutes.)
- All groups see one another’s answers, and the teacher wraps up. (5–10 minutes)
- The answers can be disseminated amongst the students and used in the following classes.
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