Four Corners
Table of Contents
Bloom's Level
Use
Setting
Activity
Technology
Related Strategies
Description
Four Corners is an active learning strategy that uses movement and discussion to support student engagement and cooperative learning. The teacher presents a discussion topic or question to students and posts a particular opinion or response in each of the four corners of the classroom. Students express their position or response by moving to the corresponding corner of the room. Once all students are in place, they discuss why they chose that particular corner. Teachers can use four corners to facilitate a variety of activities, including debates, discussions, community building, and formative assessment. This strategy helps to develop communication, critical thinking, and decision-making skills.
When To Use It
As a learning strategy, use four corners when you want students to:
- share and discuss their opinions on a particular topic
- practice communication and cooperative learning skills
- demonstrate their understanding of a concept or topic
- build relationships and get to know their classmates
- get out of their seats and move around the room while maintaining engagement in the lesson
As an instructional strategy, use four corners when you want to:
- introduce a new topic through conversations that activate prior knowledge
- gauge students’ reactions to instructional material such as short readings, videos, or images
- assess students’ understanding of a concept or topic
- support students with relationship building and cooperative learning
- stimulate discussion on controversial topics
How To Use It
Advance Prep
Four corners can be used for discussion or formative assessment.
To prepare for a discussion:
- Identify a debatable statement related to the unit of study.
- Label the four corners in the room with signs representing the four choices for students to express their opinion (e.g., strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree).
- If desired, prepare a handout for students to record their initial responses, reasoning, and evidence before they move into their corner to discuss with their group. The handout may also include space for students to write down new ideas or reasons from members of their group. Additionally, students may use this document to reflect on the discussion after listening to other groups’ opinions and record whether their views have changed and why or why not.
To prepare for a formative assessment:
- Identify an assessment question and four answer choices.
- Label the room’s four corners with signs for A, B, C, and D representing the answer choices. Project the answer choices for A, B, C, and D for all students to see.
Implementation
- Introduce four corners by having students participate in a simple activity to demonstrate how they should move and the expectation for discussion. For example:
- Label each corner of the room with the four seasons and ask students to move to the corner of the room that represents the best season of the year.
- Once in the corner, instruct students to discuss why it is the best season and come up with three reasons to share with the whole class.
- Give them 2-3 minutes for discussion.
- Ask each group to choose a speaker who will share their group’s reasoning with the class.
- After all groups have shared, allow students to move to a new group if their opinions have changed based on what they heard from the other groups.
- After students are familiar with the flow of the activity, introduce the statement or question related to the topic.
- Label each corner of the room with one of four opinions (e.g., strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree) related to the statement or four possible answers to the question (e.g. A, B, C, D).
- Give students 1-2 minutes to think about their response, reasoning, and evidence to support their ideas. You may ask them to write down their response and why they made that choice to prepare for their “corner” discussion.
- Ask students to walk to the corner of the room that corresponds with their choice.
- Once students are in place, give them 2-3 minutes to discuss their reasoning and supporting evidence with their “corner” group. Explain that they will share their ideas with the whole group.
- Have students choose one person to share a summary of their group’s ideas.
- Let groups take turns sharing and then ask if anyone would like to change their position based on what they heard from the other groups.
- Allow students to move to a new group and ask them to explain why they changed their mind.
- Debrief the activity through further discussion or individual reflection. Students may share how their opinions or answers were changed or strengthened through dialogue and listening to other viewpoints.
Four Corners can be adapted for different grade levels and content areas. It can also be adapted to meet the needs of diverse learners with additional support, including graphic organizers, sentence stems, and pairing students within the “corner” groups.
Pros
- Promotes decision-making, critical thinking, and reasoning skills
- Provides an opportunity for all students to have a choice and share their viewpoints
- Reinforces listening and verbal communication skills
- Keeps students engaged by allowing them to move around the room
- Encourages peer communication and relationship building
Cons
- Teachers and students must manage time closely to stay on track.
- The teacher must circulate to monitor group discussions and gauge understanding.
- Students may get off task if norms and expectations are not established for movement and discussions.
Culturally Responsive Application
Four Corners aligns with culturally responsive teaching because all students have a choice and an opportunity to share their viewpoints with others. When used to stimulate discussion on controversial topics, there are no right or wrong answers, and all students’ opinions are valued. Working cooperatively to defend a viewpoint, gather evidence, and articulate a rationale helps to build community among students. During the whole group discussion phase of the activity, students are exposed to alternative viewpoints, which helps them develop empathy and respect for diverse ideas.
Teachers have an opportunity to teach students how to respectfully disagree and see value in learning from different perspectives. Teachers also have an opportunity to choose culturally relevant topics for discussion that elicit multiple perspectives for students to consider.
Emerging English Language Support
It promotes listening, verbal communication, critical thinking, and decision-making.
Students with Disabilities Support
It stimulates student learning through movement and discussion.
Subjects
1.1 Literature, 1.2 Informational texts,1.4 Writing, 1.5 Speaking and listening, 1.7 Reading in science & technical subjects, 1.8 Reading in history & social studies, 1.9 Writing in history/social studies, science, and technical subjects, 2.1 K-8 mathematics, 2.2 High school number & quantity, 2.3 High school algebra, 2.4 High school functions, 2.5 High school geometry, 2.6 High school statistics & probability, 3.1 Earth and space science, 3.2 Life science, 3.3 Physical science, 3.4 Engineering, technology, and application of science, 4.1 Civics, 4.2 Economics, 4.3 Geography, 4.4 History, 5.1 Computing systems, 5.2 Networks & the internet, 5.3 Data & analysis, 5.4 Algorithms & programming, 5.5 Impacts of computing
Why It Works
This active learning strategy promotes debate and exchange of ideas among students (REF40) This strategy built student’s motivation, cooperation, collaboration and student helped students to practice speaking up (REF41) Four corners enhance students’ interaction and encourage high –level cognitive talk. It is a good warm up or team building strategy that can also provide information about the students’ knowledge and attitudes at the beginning of a lesson or unit (REF42)