Every now and then, you may get a class that you just can’t seem to keep interested. No matter what you do, it seems like all of the students are bored out of their minds.
If students aren’t paying attention, and their minds are wandering, then they are not absorbing any of the information that you are giving them to pass your class. Here are Six teaching strategies that you can do to keep your class interested and engaged.
1. CLARITY IN TEACHING
As a successful elementary teacher, explaining with clarity is the first and the foremost requirement. Clearly explaining the goals and purposes of any lesson; clarifying both during and before and after the lesson, is essential. Students tend to be inquisitive at this stage. Hence, students raising any kind of questions should be clearly answered by the teacher and this should be done with patience.
2. Make it Interactive
A traditional classroom setting, where the teacher is standing in the front of the classroom lecturing to students as they take notes, is boring. If you want your students to be interested in what you are teaching them, you must make it interactive. Get them involved in everything that you are teaching. Try the jigsaw cooperative learning method, where students work together as a team to learn and complete a task. Each student is responsible for their own part, but must work as a group in order to complete the task. By involving students and making it hands-on, you are engaging them and making them interested in the content that they need to learn.
3. Give Students Choices
Choice menus aren’t just for elementary and middle school students. High school students will be just as happy when they get the opportunity to choose what, and how they will learn content. Choice board menu options are endless. You can create a menu for any subject, topic, or concept that you want. You can create different choice boards based on the student. Struggling students can work on one board while more advanced students can work on another. It’s not only a great way to differentiate learning, but it keeps students interested and engaged as well.
4. Relate Material to Students’ Lives
Try and create a real-world connection to what students are learning, so that it will give them a better understanding of why they need to learn what you are teaching them. If your students are constantly asking you why they need to learn something, and you always are answering with “because” you will soon lose your credibility with your students. Instead, try giving them a real answer like “You are learning about money because in the real world you need to know how to use it if you want to survive. You need to know how to buy food and pay your bills.” By giving them a real answer you are helping them connect that they must learn what they are learning for their future.
5. Use Technology
Technology is what students live and breathe every day. If you want to make your class the most interesting class that everyone loves to go to, then you must incorporate some kind of technology. Instead of lecturing and having students take notes, use a smartboard and have students come up to the board and interact. Instead of giving students a quiz on paper, use a computer or a tablet. Instead of having students work on a project together, have them video conference with another class from another country and work with them on the project. Utilize technology in your classroom and your students will be interested and engaged in what they are learning.
Overall, talk less and involve students more. The more you make your class interactive and the more that you utilize technology, the more your students will enjoy what they are learning.
6. FEEDBACK
Feedback, both of the learning procedure and the teaching procedure, is essential and should be provided by every elementary teacher. Teachers should provide for both individual and whole group feedbacks on patterns that lead to, not only individual but collective growth of the class as a whole unit. Students should also be provided with an opportunity to give feedback with regard to the teaching procedure, so that as the teacher you can flexibly adjust your teaching process, the materials you provide and other instructions in accordance with the student’s need.
INDOSS provides you a Teaching Courses, The first of which you are taught Teaching Strategies.
Teaching Profession 