Activating "Anticipation" Using Polls and Smartphones

Poll Ev is an easy way to turn smartphones into student clickers

One school district I worked at was thrilled after purchasing hand-held clickers. These were all the rage then, and rightfully so.

All students can participate in an activity by simply clicking a button and answering poll questions projected on a whiteboard. So even shy students, or students concerned about speaking up in front of the class, could add their thoughts. There is also the element of the student doing something and it immediately appearing on the screen. 

But nowadays districts and schools need not purchase these expensive devices. Students’ smartphones can be the clickers, and that is because PollEv provides the software and the Web site.

After creating an account and logging in, simply create your first poll. You will notice that you can choose between multiple choice and open-ended.

Creating "Anticipation" 

One of the more powerful tools in teaching is building a students’ sense of wonder and anticipation before introducing a topic/idea/unit/etc. When I was earning my Colorado teaching license, one of the elements that was required in my lesson plans was an “anticipatory set.”

This started the lesson by activating students’ background knowledge. The idea with an anticipatory set is that you start by asking students a question that would be counter to what they think, or a shocking statistic, idea or something along those lines. Something that creates incongruence and entices curiosity.

I remember one of my mentor high school English teachers started a unit about equality. Ever committed to critical thinking, this teacher put a quote on the board that said: 

“As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.”

She asked students who this quote came from: Martin Luther King Jr., Ghandi, Someone I can’t remember, and Adolph Hitler. Of course, students argued over whether it was Ghandi or Martin Luther King. The most enlightened students pointed out that Ghandi was not Christian, so of course consensus started to form around MLK. To the students’ surprise, the teacher revealed it was Hitler.

The students were shocked, and that shock is the anticipatory set: they have activated background knowledge and are engaged with the idea because they obviously want to solve this incongruence. And the teacher used this to make the point that abstractions like “truth” and “justice” are different in the eye of the beholder, which moves students from a black and white understanding of a concept and encourages a closer, more critical examination of these expressed ideas and values. Using the quote this way also encouraged students to (re) consider their own biases and perspectives.

Poll Ev for Building "Anticipation" 

Poll Ev allows teachers to easily create a student’s sense of “anticipation” using smartphones and technology, thus increasing the engagement.  

For my example here, I talk about technology and its impact on society, and here students answer a question about how many people have smartphones. Students simply pick a percentage they think is right -- thus activating background knowledge -- and then we form our discussions. The answer is 81% according to Pew Research, and we can talk about why this number might increase. Why it is so high. What this means for society.

Back to the logistics of setting up the poll. 

After you have created the poll, you will see this page. One of the benefits of PollEv is you don’t even need a smartphone. As you can see, students can text message their answer, and this screen provides all the instructions as to how to do that.

However, using an internet browser makes it much easier. After creating your account, you can make a unique URL. As you can see, mine is <pollev.com/adamsesl>. Then when you have your URL and have created a poll, select the “push” button to the right of the “start poll” near the top right corner of the page. It will look like this when you have selected it correctly.

This makes the poll “live” so that when students enter your URL into their smartphone Web browser, they will see the poll. Then they select their answer, and it shows up on the poll, which you would likely want to have projected on your whiteboard.

Other Uses

The other poll option is “open ended,” which is fantastic for group brainstorming or quick correction or drafting exercises.

When you create the poll, select “open ended,” enter your question and “push” the poll live as we did with the multiple choice option. Then each individual response will appear in the poll.

This works great for brainstorming because you can ask students a general question like “Why is equality important?” and students can enter their responses on the board. This class brainstorming technique is common in classrooms, but usually it is the most vocal students who speak up. Here even the shy students can participate without having to physically speak.

Also, you will notice my example here I have students write a quick sentence. This would be an activity I do to start a class to connect the previous day’s lesson. For this example, we would have talked about the grammatical form and use of the present perfect tense, and I would use this activity to get students to practice and use the skills from the previous day. Many know about the “exit ticket,” but this is a sort of “entrance ticket.”

I am certain that you can find lots of ways to incorporate this into your classroom. My suggestions here are to create anticipatory sets and brainstorming. So, that means I primarily use Poll Ev as activating background knowledge activities at the beginning of a theme or unit.