Finish the sentence

Students need to complete an unfinished sentence.
  • Individual
  • Pairs
  • Small groups (3-10)
  • <5 minutes
  • 5-10 minutes
  • Activating prior knowledge
  • Assessment
  • Creative Thinking
  • Understand
  • Apply

When to use it?

  • When you want students to apply their knowledge.
  • When you want to increase interaction amongst your students.
  • When you want to increase the feel of community.

Activity instructions

Preparation

  • Define what goal(s) you want to achieve with this activity: Do you want it to be focussed on content or on getting to know each other?
  • Come up with some specific questions in advance, like "I expect in this course to learn more about..." or "I still have questions on ..."

Activity steps

  1. Make groups
    Divide the students into pairs or small groups (or let them work individually).
  2. Ask
    Ask a student to come up with a specific question or statement.
  3. Formulate
    Change the question or statement into an unfinished sentence that the students need to complete.
  4. Think
    Let the students think about the correct response.
  5. Respond
    Ask the students to complete the sentence.

Tips for implementation & variation

  • Online teaching: You can collect the students' responses via the chat or built-in whiteboard of the video lecture tool or via a voting tool.

Supporting tools