Do you ever notice your students staring blankly during class? You may have an excellent lesson plan for your students. Despite that, they may not concentrate and be in a hurry to go out for lunch. So it is necessary to use some strategies to grab their attention and make them retain as much information as possible.
Educators have devised several teaching methods that can make teaching and learning exciting and enjoyable. Let us have a look at a few of them.
1. Add an Element of Mystery In the Lessons
Learning can be fun when students do not know what is going to come up next. You can incorporate an element of mystery and surprise in teaching lessons. When you are about to start a new topic, start giving clues to the students a few days in advance and let them guess what will happen in class next.
2. Do Not Be Repetitive
No doubt, it is necessary to review the lesson. But do not repeat it exactly as youdid the first time. You can play a game that will help you to put forth the matter in a completely different way. Ask the students to make a pyramid and write three things that they learned. Then they should note down two things that they found to be interesting. Finally, they can write one question that they would like to ask.
3. Devise Classroom Games
Learning with the help of games is fun and keeps the kids happy. You can play the spelling bee to enable your students to learn spellings and the math bee to encourage them to learn math in class. In both games, those who make a mistake have to leave the game.
4. Give Students a Chance to Choose
When you give the students a chance to choose, they feel more motivated and independent. You can plan to do an activity in class. Write a list of 9 tasks that the students should complete. They can choose to do any three things from the list.
5. Make Use of Technology
Kids love electronics. Try to incorporate technology into your teaching. For example, you can use videoconferencing to connect to classrooms in other cities or countries.
6. Do Not Be Too Serious About Teaching
You have to teach effectively, but there is no need to be serious all the time. Be relaxed, acknowledge the different interests of students, and allow the class to be fun.
7. Conduct the Class in an Interactive Manner
Involve the students at every step of learning. Let learning be interactive. Use the Jigsaw cooperative learning activity, make each student responsible for their part of the learning activity, or make them participate in science experiments.
8. Relate the Subject Matter to Students’ Lives
Connect the lesson to real-life situations that the students may come across. For instance, you can tell them that it is necessary to learn about money as they should know how to pay the bills and buy things in real life.
9. Flip the Lessons
Allow the students to learn new things at home then reinforce their concepts in class. It will enable them to study at their pace and interact with their classmates in a meaningful way.
10. Do Some Extraordinary Things
You can invite someone to come and speak to the students about a particular topic, take them for field trips, or teach them outdoors.
Use different creative ways to present the study material. It will enable the students to remain focused during the class. What did I miss?
