• The interactive classroom offers many benefits for your students. When your lesson plans hold everyone's attention, students learn quicker, and memory retention improves. Elementary teachers have caught on to this trend, planning art projects, having students participate in role-playing and playing educational games--but many high school teachers continue with the same, old lectures year after year. Some teachers might fear that high school students are "too cool" for interactive activities, or that their subject matter is too dense to transition into an activity. No matter what grade or subject you teach, there is an interactive activity suited for your classroom.
  
  

Dragon Genetics

• Liven up a dry genetics lesson with this interactive activity: Dragon Genetics. Students quickly bore of worksheets filled with "blue eyes, brown eyes, blond hair, red hair" for humans. Give them an edge of fantasy and a relevant learning experience at the same time. Tell your students which traits are dominant or recessive for an imaginary race of dragons, and let them calculate the probabilities for the offspring of a specific mother and father. Better yet, let them create their own species with their own dominant and recessive characteristics, and then have them present their charts to the class.
  
  

Algebraic Calendars

• Assign everyone in your class a partner, and give each group a calendar. One partner chooses four dates that form a square, adds up the total sum of those four dates, and gives his partner that number. The partner's job is to figure out the four dates. There is an easy formula to solve this riddle. The first number is N, the second number is N+1, the third number is N+7, and the fourth number is N+8; therefore, 4N + 16 = The Sum. Once you solve for N, simply add 1, 7 and 8 to find the other three numbers. Let your students experiment on their own before you give them the solution; their problem-solving skills might surprise you.
  
  

The Literature Museum

• English teachers, start planning for the literature museum projects on the first day of school. Have sign-up sheets ready for each novel you plan to teach in that school year, and ask the class to choose groups, and sign up under a specific book. Each group is responsible for creating a museum for that piece of literature. Give each group a sample grading rubric with specific expectations for their project. Tell them exactly how many exhibits they need for their museum, and what kind of exhibits you are expecting. Examples include a booth on the political atmosphere, a booth on the fashionable clothing at the time, or a film or slide show presentation. The assigned group is responsible for the entire class period, and they should designate tour guides to lead their classmates through their creation.
  
  

The Stock Market Game

• Teach social studies students about the stock market by awarding them each with a fictional $100,000 to invest in stocks. Provide the class with an abundance of information on how to best choose their stocks. Teach them about high-risk stocks, as well as which investments could bring a more consistent result. Set aside time in every class period to track stocks, and report gains and losses.