Good Day!

The Ten Minute Trainer

150
Ways to teach It Quick
And make it Stick!
By
Sharon L. Bowman
And Foreword by Dave Meier

Why is this topic important?

It is because of the need to create learning experiences
that are built on two fundamental learning principles of
the twenty-first century: shorter segments of instruction
are better than longer ones, and learners remember
more when they are involved in the learning. Educating
others becomes more effective, and less costly, when
trainers use their time—and their learner’s time—more
efficiently. Involving learners before, during, and after
short segments of instruction is also the basis of brain-
compatible training, that is, teaching in ways that the
human brain learns best.
What can you achieve with this book?
The Ten-Minute Trainer helps you make the most of your
training time. This practical, grab-it-and-go book gives
you 150 ways to use teachable moments—snippets of
time in which you can reinforce the learning in powerful
and memorable ways. This resource also gives you a
simple and practical blueprint, based on how the human
brain naturally learns, for designing and delivering
training quickly and effectively. You will discover the
brain research that supports short, quick instructional
methods, and new ways to motivate learners and
increase their ability to remember and use what they
learn. With The TenMinute Trainer as your guide, you will
involve training participants in their own learning
without sacrificing any training content. Best of all, you
will be an expert at teaching a lot in a little time.
How is this book organized?
Part One contains 150 ways to use short segments of
time to help learners review, remember, and apply
important information. From the collection of “Got a
Minute?” activities to the “Take Five!” games, these
hands-on strategies increase learner motivation, interest,
and involvement. They also help move learning into long-
term memory. All the activities are from sixty seconds to
ten minutes in length. Part Two gives you the practical
brain research upon which this book is based. It also
explains two powerful instructional tools—the Learning
Compass and the Training Map—to help you design and
deliver training in less time and with better long-term
results. Finally, Part Two shows you how to include the
book’s concepts and activities in your own training by
using five Power-Hour Training Templates. Part Three
offers you four “Get a CLUE!” elements to increase
learner motivation and retention, “What’s a Picture
Worth?” suggestions for making your training more
image-rich, ways to check for understanding, and a
unique training activity called “Station Rotation.” You’ll
also find a collection of Remarkable Resources to
complement The Ten-Minute Trainer.
 Opening and Connections
What’s in It for You?
With The Ten-Minute Trainer, you will polish what you
already do well by using shorter segments of instruction
followed by quick, learner-centered review activities. You
will consistently turn passive listeners into active
learners. You will design and deliver training that is both
timely and terrific. You will tie everything you do to these
two fundamental training principles: shorter segments of
instruction are better than longer ones, and learners
remember more when they are involved in the learning.
To that end, welcome to a “teach it quick and make it
stick” learning experience!

Part One
When They Do It, They Get It!
150 Activities to Make the Learning Stick

So what’s the bottom line? Simply this: these 150

activities aren’t about the trainer. They are about the
learners—including them, involving them, honoring
them and what they already know, and making sure
they remember the concepts the teachers or trainers
are teaching them. For the trainers it is very important,
that while using these activities during 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. Choose an activity or two from this
part of the book, include them in your next training,
and watch what happens.

Got a Minute?
Sixty-Second Activities to Help Learners Repeat,
Review, and Remember
 Connections
an opening activity that helps learners focus on what
they know or want to know while also introducing
themselves to the other learners.

What Does a Connection Do?

• Form a safe learning community with the other
learners in the room.
• Remind themselves of their own personal learning
goals.
• Become aware of what they already know about
the training topic.
• Focus their energy on learning from the moment
they enter the room.
• Feel a sense of belonging as well as safety.
• Relax into the learning experience.
• Feel a shift of energy in the room from the quiet,
passive feeling that most people have when sitting
with a group of strangers to a higher-energy, more
open feeling experienced when sitting with new
friends.
• Recognize that they are respected and honored by
you and the other learners.
 • Get a sense of positive expectation about the
learning experience to come.

 Time Sponges
a short, topic-related activity that soaks up time that
would normally be spent on nontraining things.

What Does a Time Sponge Do?

A Sponge activity will

• Focus learners on the topic and what they already

know or have learned about it.
• Accommodate both early and late arrivals.
• Build a safe, productive learning community.
• Give learners activity options during nontraining
minutes.
• Make participants self-directed learners, that is,
they choose a topic-related follow-up activity to do
on their own. Because the Sponge activity
instructions are posted where everyone can read
them, learners can do the activity with no direct
instruction or help from you.
 • Engage learners’ minds from the moment they
enter the room.
• Increase the actual amount of training time that is
content-related.
• Review material in interesting, thought-provoking
ways.

 Pair shares
the quickest, easiest, and psychologically the safest
way to invite learners to participate.

What Does a Pair Share Do?

A Pair Share helps learners

• Review information in an easy, quick, low-risk way.

• Remember what they just heard.
• Connect what they just heard with what they
already know.
• Connect with each other in order to build a safe
learning community.
• Become more comfortable with interaction and
active involvement in the learning.
 Shout Out
an activity that encourages learners to state what
they already know or have learned by responding to
a topic-related question or comment.

What Does a Shout Out Do?

A Shout Out is a quick way to

• Elicit verbal responses from a group of learners.

• Structure learners’ statements so that they say a
specific type of response (facts, questions, answers,
words, phrases) or a specific number of responses.
• Make the group responsible for thinking up the
answers to a topic-related question.
• Involve more learners so that the same people
aren’t always answering the questions.
• Increase critical thinking about the topic by
eliciting a certain number of “right” answers from
the group.
• Validate what the learners already know about the
topic.
• Transform a lecture from a monologue into a
dialogue.
 • Eliminate the total silence that follows when you
say, “Are there any questions?”
• Check for understanding (if you see a lot of blank
stares, you know that you need to reteach the
information).

 Think and Write

During this activity, learners take a moment to think
about what they have learned and then write down
their thoughts, as per instructions.

What Does a Think and Write Do?

With one minute of quiet reflection and writing,
learners can

• Deepen their own understanding of the concepts

learned.
• Link what they are learning with what they already
know.
• Experience a moment of quiet energy as they
reflect on what they’ve learned.
• Discover what they may still have a question
about.
 • Relax and take a break from interacting with other
learners.
• Begin to internalize the information they are
learning.
• Move the information more into long-term
memory

 Signals
a hand or body motion, or a choral response, used
by learners to answer a question or demonstrate
their understanding of a concept.

What Does a Signal Do?

Signals help you, the trainer, to

• Check your learners’ understanding of important

material.
• Decide what, if anything, to reteach.
• Add a small degree of levity to your lecture.
• Involve your learners in your lecture without
sacrificing time or informational flow.

Signals also help the learners to

 • Remain awake and involved in the lecture.
• Think about what they’ve heard.
• Make some opinion-based decisions about what
they’ve learned.
• Interact with the new information in quick, low-risk
ways.
• Stay focused on material being presented

 Doodles
With sixty-second Doodles, learners simply create
images—icons, lines, shapes, drawings, cartoons,
symbols, stick figures, or logos—to represent a topic-
related fact or concept.

What Does a Doodle Do? (Doodlee-Do!)

Creating images to represent concepts is one of the
most powerful ways of moving information from
short-term to long-term memory. With a Doodle,
you enable learners to

• Use both hemispheres of their thinking brain to

learn.
 • Remember information longer than they would if
they just listened to a lecture and then wrote down
words.
• Begin to move learning into long-term memory.
• Take a right-brain (visual or picture-based) break
from left-brain (linguistic or word-based) material.
• Represent concepts in a more interesting, creative
way.
• Have a little fun with the learning, thereby creating
an “endorphin release” of pleasure chemicals in the
brain.
• Deepen their understanding of the material by
representing it with another medium.
• Access the power of the visual image.

 Pop-Ups
is a kinesthetic activity that increases physical energy
while learners review material.

What Does a Pop-Up Do?

With a Pop-Up, learners will
 • Stand while responding to a question or comment
from you.
• Increase their own physical energy while talking.
• Link what they are learning to what they already
know.
• Enjoy a little friendly competition that makes the
activity feel different from other review strategies.
• Think—literally—on their feet, standing and sitting
quickly.

For strong kinesthetic learners—those who need to

move their bodies while learning—a Pop-Up is a
lifesaver.

 Mark-Ups
is an activity in which you instruct learners to mark
their written material in certain ways so that they
will remember the information longer.

What Does a Mark-Up Do?

With a Mark-Up, learners will
 • Remain focused on the written material in front of
them.
• Think about the information as they read it.
• Analyze the new information while reading it.
• Make the written material more meaningful and
memorable.
• Find the written key points more quickly after the
training is over.
• Review written information more easily later.

 Tickets Out
is a written comment or verbal statement from the
learners about what they have learned, what parts
of the information are still confusing to them, a
question they may still have, or what they consider
to be the most important concept or main idea from
the material presented.

What Does a Ticket Out Do?

A Ticket Out helps you, the trainer, to
• Check for understanding, that is, find out what
material is most or least understood.
• Decide what material you may need to reteach.
• Answer questions that learners may not feel
comfortable asking in front of the whole group.
• Get a feeling for where your learners are both
intellectually and emotionally in the training.
• Know whether you’re on track or not with both the
information and the learning needs of the
participants.

A Ticket Out gives learners an opportunity to

• Assess their own understanding of what they have

learned.
• Ask questions or make comments about the
material anonymously in case they are shy about
doing so in front of the whole group.
• Decide what has been most important to them.
• Become aware of any confusion that they may be
feeling.
 • Give the trainer honest feedback about the
training.

 Action Plans
is a participant’s verbal or written commitment to do
something with what he learned.

What Does a Sixty-Second Action Plan Do?

By making an Action Plan, learners will

• Review what they have learned and what they feel

is really important to them.
• Remember their personal learning goals from the
beginning of the training.
• Evaluate whether or not these goals have been
met.
• Decide upon a course of action to take with what
they have learned.
• Make a commitment to follow this course of
action.
• Apply what they have learned to real-life
experiences.
 • Realize that true learning involves doing something
with what they have learned.

 Celebrations
a closing activity that ends the training on a positive
note, often with a burst of energy and enthusiasm.

What Does a Celebration Do?

With a sixty-second Celebration, you can

• Create a burst of positive energy and connections

among the learners as they leave.
• Strengthen the learning community of the group,
which is especially important if group members work
together or if they have more training days in front
of them.
• Reconnect learners to each other, to the topic, and
to you.
• Remind learners of what they have learned.
 • Encourage learners to make a commitment to use
what they’ve learned.
• End the training on an upbeat, positive, and
memorable note.

 Sprinkling your lecture with sixty-second activities

is a powerful way to make your teaching stick.You’ll
never look at a single training minute with the
same mindset again. Instead, it will become a
magical moment in which you turn passive listeners
into active learners—over and over again.
 Take Five!
Five and Ten-minute games That Help Learners RAP It
Up: Reinforce, Apply, and Practice

What “Take Five!” Games Can Do?

With these games, you can reinforce a lot of learning in
a little time, especially when you don’t have time to
play longer games.
Five or ten minutes of active participation will help
learners
• Repeat and review, in a variety of fun and interesting
ways, what has been learned in the training.
• Remember the information for longer periods.
• Link what they are learning to what they already know.
• Increase both short-term and long-term memory of
important information.
• Remain alert and involved throughout the training.
• Keep their minds involved and their bodies energized.
• Share best practices with each other.
• Challenge each other with content-related questions.
• Brainstorm together, linking additional information to
what they just learned.
• Explore many ways to make the training content
practical and useful in their own lives.
• Engage in higher-order thinking skills (examples:
categorization, application, judgment, problem solving,
evaluation, synthesis), as well as simple memorization of
important facts.
• Practice a skill related to what they just learned.
• Coach each other during the skill practice.
• Give each other feedback about the skill being
practiced.
• Apply what has been learned to real-life situations.
• Evaluate the usefulness of what they are learning.
• Synthesize old learning with new to create new ways of
using what they’ve learned.
 Postcard Partners
an opening game that connects learners to each
other and to the topic in an entertaining way

What Does a Postcard Partner Do?

With the Postcard Partner game, learners

• Connect with each other and the topic.

• Begin to form a learning community for the
duration of the training.
• Focus on the topic, what they already know,
questions to answer, or issues to discuss.
• Begin a dialogue about the training concepts.
• Move physically around the room, thus raising the
energy level of the group

 The Gallery Walk

is a powerful opening, closing, or review activity. In
this activity, participants write on various pieces of
chart paper that you’ve taped to the training room
walls.
What Does a Gallery Walk Do?
Depending upon your purpose in using this activity, a
Gallery Walk can

• Connect learners to both new and old information.

• Help learners focus on what they already know and
what they want to learn.
• Build a strong learning community by connecting
learners to each other and to the topic.
• Gather a large amount of topic-related information
to be used later in the training.
• Be a pre- and post-training self-assessment for
learners.
• Act as a needs-assessment for you so that you can
make sure participants’ learning needs are being
addressed during the training.
• Provide learners with an opportunity to physically
move around while reviewing material.
• Encourage learners to use higher-order thinking
skills (example: analysis, evaluation, synthesis) while
engaged in a review.
 • Provide time for learners to respond to topic-
related issues that they might not otherwise have
had the time to address.
• Allow learners to be completely honest because
their written responses are anonymous.
• Give learners the opportunity to make written
commitments to use the new information.
• Become a thoughtful, high-energy way to either
open or close a training.

 Take a Stand
In traditional training sessions, learners remain
seated while participating in small group discussions
about topic-related issues. With Take a Stand,
learners move around the room and choose a
designated place to stand before engaging in small
group discussions. In effect, the activity includes
kinesthetic (movement) and spatial (visual) ways of
learning as well as linguistic (verbal).
What Does Take a Stand Do?
Take a Stand can be as intense, rich, and thought
provoking as time and the topic allow. With this
activity, learners can
 • Recognize important, topic-related concepts and
issues.
• Analyze their own perceptions of these concepts
and issues.
• Take an instant position on a topic-related issue.
• Refine their own opinions based on the small
group discussions about the concepts and issues. •
Evaluate the perceptions and opinions of others and
whether these will be useful to know.
• Synthesize what they’ve discussed into new ways
of perceiving, thinking, and acting.
• Use both kinesthetic (movement) and spatial
(visual) learning to increase retention.

 Grab That Spoon!

Grab That Spoon is a quick review game with a dash
of friendly competition. Learners sit in small groups
and take turns asking each other questions for points
or tokens.

What Does Grab That Spoon Do?

Grab That Spoon is a high-energy way to
• Review material quickly and easily.
 • Add friendly competition to the review.
• Allow learners to generate the review questions.
• Include physical action in a seated learning activity.
• Give learners time to discuss their own
understanding of the training concepts.
• Take a topic-related, competitive break from the
lecture.

 Place Your Order

Place Your Order is a review game in which
participants work together to put a series of cards in
the correct order. Each card describes a specific step
in a topicrelated procedure.

What Does Place Your Order Do?

This game gives learners an opportunity to

• Review the sequence of steps for topic-related

procedures.
• Analyze the out-of-order sequence with the goal of
putting it in order.
• Work cooperatively together toward a common
goal.
 • Evaluate information and make decisions based on
the evaluations.
• Decide whether they agree with what other
learners perceive as the correct order.
• Discuss differences of perceptions and opinions.
• Apply what they have learned to specific, job-
related situations.

 Metaphor Magic!
This activity uses the power of metaphors and
analogies to capture the essence of a training
concept. Metaphors and analogies are phrases that
compare one thing with another thing that is unlike
the first.

What Does Metaphor Magic Do?

When you use metaphors, you create mental images
that stick in a learner’s mind.

 Let’s Trade
 In Let’s Trade, learners write a comment, question,
or piece of information, as directed by you, on an
index card. Then learners walk around the room,
trading cards a number of times.

What Does Let’s Trade Do?

With this activity, learners can

• Write comments, questions, or concerns

anonymously without fear of sounding “stupid.”
• Analyze and rank order important training
concepts or learner-created questions.
• Review what the whole group considers to be the
most important information.
• Discuss learner-created questions and issues.
• Demonstrate their understanding of the training
concepts.
• Move around the room while reviewing,
questioning, and discussing.

 Each One Teach One

This activity gives learners the opportunity to teach
and coach each other.
 What Does Each One Teach One Do?
With Each One Teach One, expect to see learners

• Demonstrate a new skill.

• Give each other feedback about how well they are
modeling the skill.
• Coach each other as they practice the new skill.
• Discuss what they learned.
• Ask each other questions.
• Encourage each other.
• Provide mutual support for ongoing learning.

 The Walkabout
Based loosely on the idea of an ancient aboriginal
walkabout in the Australian desert, a Walkabout is
simply a way to give learners the opportunity to walk
and talk at the same time.

What Does a Walkabout Do?

By participating in a Walkabout, learners can
 • Take a topic-related break that includes exercise
plus a review of material already learned.
• Ask topic-related questions of each other as they
walk.
• Get some fresh air and exercise while reviewing
course material.
• Make action plans (how they plan to use the
material learned) and share them with each other as
part of a closing activity.
• Discuss best practices and learn from each other as
they walk and talk.
• Stay interested, motivated, and awake during long
training sessions.

 Blackout Bingo!
With Blackout Bingo, each learner makes his own
bingo card, fills in the bingo squares as directed by
you, and then collects signatures from other
participants by defining or by giving examples of his
bingo card items.

What Does Blackout Bingo Do?

 Besides being a great review game, Blackout Bingo
helps learners

• Decide what training concepts are really important

to them.
• Individualize the training results by making their
own bingo cards
• Define training concepts in their own words.
• Give real-life examples of the information they
learned in the training.
• Choose what they want to remember and use after
the training is over.
• Celebrate the learning with a high-energy,
connecting, closing activity.

 With “Take Five!”games, learners RAP (wrap) up

the learning by reinforcing, applying, and practicing
what they learned.These activities help make the
learning stick; that is, learners will remember
information longer because they’ve had time to use
the information in various ways.These games also
save you time that you might have had to spend
 reteaching the same material later.With these
games, the probability increases that participants
will use more of what they learned and will
remember it longer.

Part Two

 Heads Up!
Brain-Based Learning and Training
Ultimately, Part Two is all about learning—how we learn,
what keeps us learning, what happens when we don’t
learn, and how to use this information to help the
training participants learn. The more you as professional
educators and trainers know about how the human brain
learns, the better you can do what you do—and the
better off learners will be for it.
 Attention Maker, Attention Breaker The Reticular
Activating System and Learning
The learning strategies and training methods to keep
learners’ reticular activating systems engaged are limited
only by trainers own beliefs about teaching and learning.
If the trainers have the perception that learning takes
place when they talk and learners listen, trainers will
probably deliver most of their information in lecture type
formats. If that’s the case, trainers run the risk of
creating for their learners what we have too often
experienced—a learning environment in which the
learners’ conscious minds slip away even if they seem to
be listening. If the trainers will understand the
importance of the RAS in training, they will change their
instructional methods and learning activities regularly to
accommodate the Attention Maker’s need for
stimulation. Trainers will accept that, in order to really
learn something (as opposed to just hearing it), the
conscious mind must be fully and completely present.
But in the learning stage, the Attention Maker must
engage the thinking brain. And the best way to make
sure that happens is to include regular changes in both
instructional methods and the activities we use to involve
learners.
 Three Brains in One The Triune Brain and Learning
The human brain is hard wired to keep us both
physically and psychologically safe. All three parts of
the brain—survival brain, emotional brain, and
thinking brain—work together best when the need for
safety is met in a class or training. As you have learned,
one of the surest ways to create a feeling of emotional
safety is by connecting learners to each other and to
the content in fun, safe ways. When you include a
variety of ways learners can make those connections
throughout a training, you create a safe learning
community for the duration of the learning experience.

 Let the Compass Be Your Guide The Learning Compass

and Learning the Natural Way

When people learn the natural way, they can’t help

but be successful in the learning experience. Put
 another way, if your learners are successfully learning
what you are teaching them, then you are already
using Kolb’s natural cycle of learning—whether or not
you are aware of it. You are already including the
metaphoric Learning Compass with its four steps:
north–self, east–others, south–information, west–
action. Just as a real compass is necessary to create a
map of the physical world, the Learning Compass
forms the basis of the Training Map. The two tools—
compass and map—go hand-in-hand.They are like two
sides of the same coin. Understanding the Learning
Compass will deepen your understanding of the
Training Map. When you understand how people
learn, you can use that knowledge to become better at
teaching them in ways that make the learning stick.
The next chapter explains the Training Map and
shows you how to use it to transform your training
into a more learner-centered, time-efficient
experience.

 Mapping Your Message Making It Stick with the

Training Map
Most trainers, having gone through educational
systems that used primarily teacher-centered, lecture-
based methods of instruction, don’t realize that there
is a more successful model of teaching and training.
The Training Map is that model. Once you begin to use
this tool, you’ll never train without it again. It won’t
make sense to teach in ways other than the natural
way people learn. The map will become so second
nature to you that you won’t even realize you’re using
it. Both the Learning Compass and Training Map are
navigational tools to guide you toward your training
goal of making your message stick. The Power-Hour
Training Templates that follow are practical examples
of how to use the Training Map and how to include
activities. After you read through the templates, you’ll
have a clear picture of how to design an hour-long
training using what you’ve learned here. All you need
to do is insert your own content pieces into the
templates. The templates will help you create learning
experiences that are brain-based, motivating,
memorable, and completely learner-centered—exactly
what you’re aiming for.
 The Power-Hour Training Templates will help you
become comfortable with the concepts and activities
in The Ten-Minute Trainer. They will also save you
design time while you become proficient at using these
new training tools. Once you do that, you’ll be creating
your own training templates in no time.

Part Three

 More Timely Training Tools

- These training tools are timely because you are now
ready to add them to your growing list of effective
training methods. As a consciously competent
trainer, you’ll fine-tune them so that they save your
time in both designing and delivering quality
programs. They are reminders of what you already
know, of what you have learned, and of what you
can do to make your training even better.
 Get a CLUE! Four Elements to Increase Motivation and
Memory in Learning
- When you make your training creative, linked,
useful, and emotional, you not only motivate
training participants to become involved in their own
learning but you also help move that learning into
long-term memory. Probably the best benefit from
the four CLUE elements is that learners will associate
learning with positive feelings and want more of
what makes them feel good. It’s a win-win for
everyone—for you, the learners, their company or
school, and for the larger world they inhabit.

 You Said It But Did They Get It? How to Check for
Understanding
- When you check for understanding, you make sure
that learners not only hear the concepts but also
understand them and are able to apply them to
specific work situations. When learners say and do
something with what they’ve learned, they will feel
confident that they have the skills to use the new
 information when they need to—which is what real
learning is all about.

 What’s a Picture Worth? The Importance of Imagery

in Learning

- The human brain and television both have one great

commonality: imagery. One relies on images to
learn. The other relies on images to educate,
entertain, and persuade. As trainers, we need to use
image-rich language and training methods to make
our training more interesting and more memorable.
When participants use both sides of their thinking
brain to learn, the probability increases of
remembering and using the information later. In
other words, we can teach it more quickly, and make
it stick longer, with imagery.

 So Now You Know! Celebrating Your Journey with The

Ten-Minute Trainer
What a paradigm shift! From instructor-centered
training to learner-centered training. From old, sit-down-
and-listen instructional methods to new, standup-and-
talk learning strategies. From monologue lectures to
dialogue learning. From learning is delivery, to learning is
creation. A profound shift in perception! The ideas and
activities in this book are yours to experiment with, learn
from, train with, and teach to others. They are meant to
help you become better at what you do, fine-tune what
you already do well, and create new ways of teaching
and training that are even more successful for both you
and your learners. Above all, this book is meant to inspire
and celebrate you, your learners, and those you share it
with. Happy teaching and training! Good Day and God
Bless.