Active Student Responding

A low-cost, flexible, evidence-based and effective instructional technique

Read on for definitions, rationale for use, practical tips, and video examples.

Photo credit: Mr. Noschese via Noschese 180 blog

What is it?

Active Student Responding (ASR) is a group of instruction strategies that require each student to respond multiple times during instruction.

Students' responses must be observable: You can ask students to write their answer or provide an oral response.

The teacher asks questions, or gives instructions to write and show answers throughout the lesson. The questions can be simple and answered chorally, or more complex and answered individually.

Key Features of Active Student Responding

  • Students respond multiple times during instruction

  • Students responses are observable

Why should I use Active Student Responding in my practice?

  • ASR increases student participation and engagement in learning. 

  • ASR helps students to rehearse and review material in the lesson. 

  • ASR allows you to quickly assess student learning and provide feedback immediately (another powerful teaching tool). 

  • ASR is formative assessment. It allow the teacher to make within session decisions about re-teaching and extension, or whether a different approach is needed.

    • Students are disengaged with learning and you can’t tell! 

      • Maybe they were looking at the page / board, but their mind was wandering.

    • Students did not grasp the concept you just taught and you don’t know until the end of the lesson.

    • You always end up calling on the same few students who raise their hands. 

    • Reluctant learners in your class have low confidence and don’t contact reinforcement for engagement.t goes here

An instructor leads a lesson on prefix and suffix meanings. She uses principles of ASR.

What does Active Student Responding look like?

See some video examples below!

Non-examples of Active Student Responding

See some video non-examples below

How do I use Active Student Responding in my own practice?

Many scripted programs have ASR principles built into them. If you’re creating your own lessons, look for places to break up your lecture, or emphasize key points.

It can be as simple as asking students to repeat something you’ve just said, or answering yes/no questions. 

  • Ask a yes/no question

  • Give students two options

  • Repeat what was said

  • Physical responses (e.g. thumbs up, show a certain number of fingers)

  • Break up a lecture and ask questions in between sections. 

  • Fast paced activities like Boardwork combined with choral responding result in tons of ASR opportunities. 

Tips & Tricks

  • For some reluctant learners, keep the responding opportunity low-risk or risk-free. This will increase their positive association with responding and ultimately increase the likelihood that they respond more often. 

    • repeating what you just said

    • answering a question you know they will get correct.

  • Don’t forget to positively incentivize and reinforce responding behavior with meaningful motivators!

  • Create a signal for response, like a snap or tap on the board. Teach students to answer on your signal!

    This allows you to hear incorrect responses in the choral response. Choral responding on signal is lower risk for students, because everyone answers together. Students who answer incorrectly are not singled out, but you can reteach or review after you hear an error.

  • Be sure to tell the students what their answer choices are, if you have options like yes / no, vowel / consonant, or positive / negative. See the example below from a Direct Instruction program.

Example from REWARDS multisyllabic word reading program.

(Students learned this rule previously and rehearse the rules before applying the strategy)

You say, When reading vowels in big words, first we try the sound. If it doesn’t make a real word, then we try the vowel’s name. When we read vowels, what do we try first, the sound or the name? (signal)

Students respond on your cue: [The sound]

Additional Resources and Further Reading