5 Ways to Use the Help Zone with My Students

The Help Zone is ideal for experimenting with the flipped classroom method. Before discussing a new topic in class, ask students to submit questions on the Help Zone. There's no such thing as a silly question. In fact, it's by asking questions that students will be able to identify gaps and misconceptions about a subject. This way, they can brush up on their previous knowledge, setting the stage for deepening their understanding of concepts during the next day's class.

The Help Zone allows students to receive quick feedback on exercises. Once students have solved an exercise in class or for homework, you can encourage them to look up the answer on the Help Zone. This way, they can compare their answers with those suggested to get feedback or a helping hand.

The Help Zone can be used as a collaborative problem-solving platform. When working on a problem situation, encourage students to work together to find solutions. This approach can be useful in contexts of cooperative learning, differentiated instruction and the creation of learning stations. For example, you could ask students to choose a topic, browse the Help Zone, and take notes on what they learned. Then, students explain what they've learned to their peers. Through teamwork, they build collective knowledge.

The Help Zone encourages peer mentoring by inviting students to offer explanations to their peers. This boosts their confidence and enables them to revisit the concepts they have learned. For gifted students and those with a thirst for challenge, the Help Zone is a golden opportunity to support their peers by sharing their knowledge. They can guide students who need help towards a concept sheet or an Alloprof video, or even answer the questions themselves.

Helping others has many benefits. It fosters positive leadership by encouraging young people to take the initiative in helping their peers. It can also create a positive and trusting atmosphere within the group. By working as a team, students develop empathy and solidarity as they begin to understand each other's needs and challenges.

The Help Zone is constantly receiving questions from students all over Quebec. A great way to encourage the development of collaborative skills in your students is to set up a daily or weekly routine in which an unanswered question is selected for resolution in class. The possibilities are endless: questions can be filtered and sorted by subject, level, age, with or without explanation, etc. Students can be placed in teams, with some responsible for solving the question, and others for writing the final answer, for example.