The Ten-Minute Trainer: 150 Ways to Teach it Quick & Make it Stick!

By Sharon L Bowman and Dave Meier

Discover 150 job training room–proven exercises & activities sure to reduce delivery time, increase retention and improve knowledge and skill transfer.

Do you want to create a lot of training in a little time? Do you wonder how to involve your learners without wasting their time, or yours? Do you want to use your training time wisely and well?

The Ten-Minute Trainer is just what you need. Written for the busy training professional, this practical, grab-it-and-go book will show you how to design and deliver effective training programs in less time and with increased learner retention. Based on two major concepts—shorter segments of instruction are better than longer ones, and learners remember more when they are involved in the learning—this book provides 150 quick, high-energy ways to involve your learners without sacrificing content. This timely resource will also help you organize your training time so that your learners get the most from your instruction. With The Ten-Minute Trainer as your guide, you will be able to:

·       Choose from 140 “Got a Minute?” activities proven to help learners review, repeat, and remember important information

·       Use ten short “Take Five!” games to RAP up the learning—Reinforce, Apply, and Practice—so that learning is moved rapidly into long-term memory

·       Soak up ordinarily wasted instructional minutes with thirty Time Sponges such as Quick Starts, Take a Break, and Early to Finish activities

·       Apply two powerful instructional tools—the Learning Compass and Training Map—to shorten your training design and delivery time

·       Include four “Get a CLUE!” elements to increase motivation and memory

·       Use five Power-Hour Training Templates to create a custom training session on any topic, for any size group, and any age learner

·       Change your concept of training time as you use small but mighty seconds and minutes in creative, interesting, and memorable ways

·       Become a more time-efficient training professional and be able to explain the what, why, and how of it all to your training colleagues

Sharon Bowman, a thirty-year veteran teacher and trainer and author of seven popular training and motivation books, welcomes you into her world of fast-paced, shorter-is-better, high-energy, “teach it quick and make it stick” training!

“An awesome guide for anyone who wants to spark engagement and learning. Its nuggets of wisdom, creative suggestions, and reader-friendly format make it a perfect resource for promoting effective training. Thank you, Sharon!” —Mel Silberman, author, 101 Ways to Make Training Active and Training the Active Training Way

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jan 13, 2011
• ISBN: 9781118046661

Book preview

Part One

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When They Do It, They Get It!

150 Activities to Make the Learning Stick

Quick Start

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Mark-Up. All the activity names in Part One are listed below. Circle any that sound interesting to you or that you think you might be familiar with. As you read the chapters in Part One, you may discover that these activities are similar to ones you use or ones that you know by other names.

Sometimes in your work as a training professional you have probably felt as though your job is at warp speed, with each training looming on the heels of the one before. You seem to stay one step ahead of where you have to be. You find yourself squeezing in moments (instead of hours) of study time in order to become even better at what you do. You often skim training books, looking for the activities you can put to use immediately and promising to read the rest of the material when you have the time.

With that thought in mind, you’ll find the practical, how-to activities listed in Part One up front, where you can get to them quickly. Later, when you have more time, you can read Part Two, which covers the brain research and training design tools that support using these short, quick activities in your training.

A Bird’s-Eye View of 150 Activities

Here is what you’ll find in Part One:

• An introduction to the Got a Minute? activities. This will explain the rationale for these sixty-second activities, what you can accomplish by using them, and some tips to keep in mind as you experiment with them.

• 140 Got a Minute? activities to help learners review, repeat, and remember important information.

• An introduction to the Take Five! games. This will explain why these fiveand ten-minute activities are important, what you can accomplish by using them, and some tips to keep in mind.

• Ten Take Five! games to help learners RAP up the learning: reinforce, apply, and practice.

Here is a more detailed list of the sixty-second activities and how you might use them in your training:

• Connections. These are opening activities that connect learners to each other, to what they already know about the training topic, and to what they want to learn.

• Time Sponges. Use these to soak up time at the opening, during a break, or when participants finish an activity or game early. Use them also as connection activities to connect learners to each other and to the training topic or concepts.

• Pair Shares. Use these as quick review exercises throughout the training.

• Shout Outs. Use these as opening activities to find out what learners already know about the topic. Use them also as quick review exercises.

• Think and Write. These are introspective review activities you can use throughout a training.

• Signals. Use these to check for understanding or as yes or no answers to verbal questions.

• Doodles. These are visual, right-brain ways of representing important facts or concepts.

• Pop-Ups. These are kinesthetic review exercises, that is, they include movement in the review process.

• Mark-Ups. With these, participants interact with written material by marking the text in various ways.

• Tickets Out. Use these as closing activities to help participants think about and evaluate what they learned.

• Action Plans. These are closing activities that encourage participants to make a commitment to use what they learned.

• Celebrations. These are closing activities that celebrate the learning with a high-energy, enthusiastic end to the training.

And here is a more detailed list of the five- and ten-minute games, along with how you might use them in your training:

• Postcard Partners. Use this as an opening activity to connect learners to each other and to the training topic or concepts.

• The Gallery Walk. This can be an opening activity, a review activity, or a closing exercise. Or use it as an ongoing activity throughout the training or during training breaks.

• Take a Stand. This is either an opening activity or a review activity when you want participants to discuss topic-related issues.

• Grab That Spoon. As a closing exercise, this is a competitive game for a general review. Or include each game round, that is, one question and answer, at various times throughout the training to review specific concepts.

• Place Your Order. Use this to review procedural concepts during the training, that is, information that needs to be learned in a certain order.

• Metaphor Magic. This is a creative, right-brain way of reviewing concepts, which makes learners think about what they have learned in unique and unusual ways. It can also be a creative closing activity.

• Let’s Trade. Use this as a closing activity in which participants make a commitment to use what they have learned.

• Each One Teach One. Use this as a kinesthetic exercise to help learners practice skills or review information in an active, hands-on way.

• The Walkabout. This is a closing kinesthetic activity that is also high-energy and celebratory.

• Blackout Bingo. Use this as another high-energy, closing activity. It is also a kinesthetic review exercise.

Chunk It

In order to use these 150 activities in ways that will make them work best for your learners, you will need to chunk your material, that is, divide your information into shorter lecture segments. If you’ve never done this before, then the easiest way to begin is to cut your material in half. You will deliver both halves, but you will also include a sixty-second activity in between each half.

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For example, if you’re used to lecturing for an hour, lecture for thirty minutes instead. Then stop talking and lead the participants in a sixty-second review activity. After that, continue with the next thirty minutes of lecture. You can also include a sixty-second activity at the beginning of the first thirty minutes and at the end of the last thirty minutes.

If your normal lecture time is about a half hour, take two thirty-minute lecture pieces and divide that material into four fifteen-minute segments. Include sixty-second activities at the beginning, the end, and in between each of the four segments for a total of five short, quick activities in an hour.

Your goal in chunking your material is to get close to the ten-minute mark, not only because of the television-affected, shortened attention spans of your participants, but also because the human brain learns better that way (see Part Two for the brain research that supports the ten-minute lecture).

Remember, ten minutes of information delivery is the goal, not the rule. You decide what’s appropriate for you, for the material you’re teaching, and for the learners who attend your training. Sometimes your lectures will take a little longer, sometimes they will be a little shorter.

Not sure about how long you lecture? Use a timer while rehearsing portions of your material. Or have a friend time you as you talk. Be aware that time seems to fly when you’re the one standing in front of an audience. But for those who have to remain seated for long periods without doing anything except listening, time often seems to crawl.

Wrapping It Up

So what’s the bottom line? Simply this: these 150 activities aren’t about you. They are about your learners—including them, involving them, honoring them and what they already know, and making sure they remember the concepts you’re teaching them. When you use these activities in your training, the underlying message you give learners is a powerful one: they are important, they matter, and the real learning comes from them.

As with any skill, the more you practice it, the better you are at doing it.The more you use these activities—varying them and experimenting with them—the better results you’ll get in terms of learners’ increased interest, involvement, and long-term retention of important information.

Go ahead—jump in.The water’s fine. Choose an activity or two from this part of the book, include them in your next training, and watch what happens. And by the way, in addition to learning more and remembering it longer, your learners will think you walk on water!

Most people tire of a lecture in ten minutes.

Clever people do it in five.

Sensible people never go to lectures at all.

—Stephen Loncock

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Early to Finish

Action Plan. Go back to the Quick Start at the beginning of this chapter. Choose two of the items you circled and write them in the space below. Then flip to those activities and read them first. Plan to use them in your next training.

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Got a Minute?

Sixty-Second Activities to Help Learners Repeat, Review, and Remember

Quick Start

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Think and Write. Time one minute. If you have a watch with a second hand, look at it for sixty seconds. Or count a slow sixty seconds out loud. Then decide: did the minute feel like a long or short time to you?

What kinds of learning activities could learners do in that length of time? Make a list of at least four things learners could do with sixty seconds:

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As you read all of Part One, notice whether the activities are similar to the items you listed. If you can’t think of any sixty-second activities, choose four from Part One and write them down on the lines above.

Picture This

You are feeling a great deal of work-related stress so you decide to take a one-hour stress management workshop offered at your local community college. You walk into the classroom and immediately notice the large screen in front of the room on which is printed:

Quick Start.

After reading this, introduce yourself to three people seated near you.

Tell them what you want to learn in this