Engage Students
Use visual aids: Introduce as many visual aids as possible into your lessons. These will give students a more concrete example of the things which you are discussing. Complex concepts are often difficult to imagine and having an image to work with will help many students stay engaged with the material, rather than tuning out because they can’t follow the discussion.
Employ activities: Generally, it is better to never lecture for more than 15 minutes at a time. You will want to constantly be getting your students active in the material and learning process. You can do this by having hands-on learning opportunities like games, peer-to-peer discussions, or question and answer time (where either you ask the questions or they do).
If doing questions and answers, create a system in which everyone knows they are on-deck. This will keep students from tuning out while others engage. One method would be to keep a jar with student’s names written on a popsicle stick. Pull from the jar at random and the student will be required to either ask a question or answer one. Intersperse with open questions where anybody can ask or answer.
Relate material to the outside world: Since the point of learning is to gain real-world skills, you will want to constantly relate the skills and information in your class to the student’s lives and things which will affect them in the future.[1]Students should never question why they need to learn the material they are learning and if you can’t come up with a real-world example then maybe you shouldn’t be teaching it.
Math skills should be related back to things like paying bills, getting a good mortgage, and future work tasks. English skills can be used to write cover letters or grant proposals. Science skills can be used to fix clogged sinks or evaluate illnesses. History skills can be used to determine political values and voting decisions. Sociology skills can be used to help hypothetical future children, friends, or strangers.
Allow Independent Exploration
Get your students outside: This isn’t just about getting them active or getting them out in the sun (although those are good things!). The point of going to school isn’t to build skills for passing some test, it’s to teach people how to exist better in the real world. Get them out of the classroom to put their skills to use.
Take a science class on a field trip to identify animals and plant life or geological features. Take an English class to an early-stage play rehearsal, so that they can see how dialogue choices and changes affect perception of events and characters. Take a history class to interview nursing home residents or a sociology class to interview prison inmates.
Let them experiment: Allow for creative interpretations of assignments. Allow students to pose questions and follow other routes. Letting them guide their own learning will help them learn better and keep them interested in what they’re doing.
For example, in a lab experiment about putting mice in mazes, if your student suddenly wonders what would happen if mirrors were introduced into the maze, let them do that. An assignment does not have to be strictly adhered to in order for students to gain valuable knowledge from it.
Encourage innovation. Let your students create new things. Give them broad assignments with specific goals and let them come to their own method of reaching that goal. This will let them design a learning method which is best suited to their style and interests, keeping them invested in the assignment and encouraging success.
For example, you can have an English assignment where a student must write a certain number of words on a particular, broad topic. However, tell them that how those words are arranged is entirely up to them. They can make a comic, write a song, do a stand-up routine, write an essay, make a presentation... anything that speaks to them
