Small Changes in Teaching: The First 5 Minutes of Class

In the article “Small Changes in Teaching: The First 5 Minutes of Class” from the Chronicle of Higher Education, James M. Lang provides four strategies for immediately engaging students in your course material. These four strategies—opening with a question, asking students what they learned during the previous class, revisiting prior knowledge and low-stakes writing assignments—can be adapted to fit in any course context. This is a great example of a small change you can make in your teaching that can lead to a large change in student engagement, interest, and participation.