Need a no prep but engaging lesson? Try Card Talk
Have you ever shown up to school and realized you did have your lesson totally prepared? Your slides weren’t done, your copies weren’t made, you forgot the supplies at home?🙋🏻♀️ I know I have. I usually batch plan my lessons in advance but on more than one occasion I have shown up knowing what I was going to teach but realized I hadn’t prepared the slides. Teachers have busy lives with school, committees, clubs and sports, second jobs, family, and sometimes it happens. So I am here to provide you with an easy no prep activity that you can use over and over again: Card talk!
The premise of card talk is so easy!
Give your students a piece of paper and a prompt.
Students write or draw to answer the prompt.
Talk about your students’ responses.
Card talk can be done with any level (I have used it with fourth graders!) and about any topic so you don’t have to stray from your current unit. Students are essentially planning your lesson for you and they are immediately engaged because the topic of the class is about them! It is such a great activity for building community in your classroom.
I want to help you out more so here are some prompt ideas by topic and talking points.
The ideas could go on and on! Card talk is a great activity to have in your toolbox. Some prompts lean toward simpler language and some towards more complex. You can level up or down your language to meet your students' proficiency level.
Card talk can be as simple as students writing a few words or drawing a picture on a piece of paper which is great if you need a no prep activity. Or, students could add images and a blurb to a single slide to take it up a level. To take it up another notch you could have students create a whole slideshow or comic strip to tell a story that you can project and talk about.
Because I want to help you out even more I created a simple Google Slides presentation you can copy and add to your LMS for students to add images and notes about their answer. To get the SlideShow just sign up for our email list below!