What are ''whole class activities"?

“Whole-class activity” is an activity when all the students . in a class participate in discussion to share their views and opinions on some certain concepts. In this type of activity, students do not do pair or group work; rather, they interact with the whole class. For example, a teacher is teaching critical thinking skills in a class. He can ask each student “what is a pen for”: One student might answer, “a pen is used to write down”. Another can say, “a pen is toy; students can play catch with it”; Another can say, “a pen can be used as weapon; people can hurt others by it”. By this way, teachers can have a nice whole-class discussion on thinking differently. 

Whole-class activity can be very effective after pair and group work. For example, a teacher may ask to do pair work on an exercise; next, he can ask students to form groups of six and share their answers. And the last task would be a “whole-class activity” when all the students share their answers with others. Students can check if they made any mistakes while they were doing pair or group work.