This teaching strategy was originally designed for use in a face-to-face setting. For tips and guidance on how to use this teaching strategy in a remote or hybrid learning environment, view our Big Paper (Remote Learning) teaching strategy.
This teaching strategy was originally designed for use in a face-to-face setting. For tips and guidance on how to use this teaching strategy in a remote or hybrid learning environment, view our Big Paper (Remote Learning) teaching strategy.
This discussion strategy uses writing and silence as tools to help students explore a topic in depth. In a Big Paper discussion, students write out their responses to a stimulus, such as a quotation or historical document. This process slows down students’ thinking and gives them an opportunity to focus on the views of others. It also creates a visual record of students’ thoughts and questions that you can refer to later in a course. You can use this strategy both to engage students who are not as likely to participate in a verbal discussion and to help make sure that students who are eager to talk and listen carefully to the ideas of their classmates. After they participate in this activity several times, students’ comfort, confidence, and skill in using this method increases.
Use this strategy in remote settings to help students explore a topic in-depth, slow down their thinking, and focus on the views of others.
In a Big Paper activity, students respond silently to a text excerpt or image by writing their comments on a shared paper.
Students explore the ways in which historical evidence has been used to construct a narrative of the Armenian Genocide
Students explore the six steps of nonviolent social change that activists during the civil rights movement practiced.