Hot+Seat+(2)

Joanna Denny Hot Seat Strategy

**Description:** This strategy allows students to act like a historical figure that they are studying. One student is selected to sit in the “hot seat” and has to answer questions given by the teacher, or the other students in the class. While sitting in the hot seat, the student must think, talk, and act like the selected historical figure. If the teacher decides to have each student do this individually, he/she can decide to select students ahead of time and give them time to prepare, or randomly select students each day. Another way to do this strategy is to select about five students to sit in front of the class together, and do it in a group panel style. This can allow the different characters to have conversations with one another.

**Strengths**
 * Allows students to have fun.
 * Allows teacher to measure the understanding that students have of people and events that are being studied.
 * Assessment is not done in a traditional exam style, which can take pressure off of the students.
 * Students perform higher level thinking when they can have conversations with other characters, and talk like they think those people would have back in their time.

**Weaknesses**
 * Students who do not know as much may become embarrassed when they cannot answer a question while being in the hot seat.
 * If students are chosen ahead of time for a certain person, they will focus on that one person, and not all of the information from the unit.

**Mini-Lesson**
 * The Hot Seat is set up in front of the class, facing the rest of the class.
 * The selected student comes up, and sits in the Hot Seat.
 * The teacher tells the student which historical figure they will be pretending to be.
 * The teacher models by asking different questions that allows the student to answer as if he/she were the person.
 * The other students in the class can then start asking questions as well.
 * This is repeated with other students until the end of the lesson.