Thumbs Up-Thumbs Down

Purpose
This quick method of polling keeps everyone involved in a lesson and lets you quickly assess student understanding or opinions.

Breaking It Down
■ Ask a yes-or-no, agree-or-disagree type question.
■ Have the students give thumbs up to respond in the affirmative, thumbs down for a negative, and sideways if they aren’t sure.

Fine-Tuning the Technique
For simple questions, or to assess class comfort level, you do not necessarily need to provide think time between the question and the students’ response.

For other questions, however, you might want to allow the students
several moments to think about their answer before giving thumbs
up or thumbs down. To guide the class, use hand signals: Ask the
question, and then point to your temple and say “Think.” After
a suitable amount of time, fl ash a thumbs up signal to elicit the
class response.