Passion. Passion is
important for engaging students. If you
are not passionate about a lesson, your students will more than likely not be
either. Dave Burgess talks a lot about
passion. The thing that I liked best
about his views on teaching and passion is that you will be teaching things
that you are just not passionate about.
In this case, he suggests using
your professional passion for teaching.
You can be excited about your students learning the content even if the
content itself does not excite you. You
have to make a conscious effort to do this.
I think this is something that I can start working on right away. I have forgotten how much showing your
excitement can get students excited as well.
Being innovative is one way to have passion for teaching. Doing something different or in a different
way can recharge you as a teacher and that will show to your students. Students seeing something new is another way
to hold their interest.
Another thing Dave Burgess talks about is having a safe and
supportive environment. I agree
wholeheartedly that for students to take risks, show enthusiasm, and to be
creative, they must feel safe from being embarrassed.
One thing to remember, in particular working with younger
students, is that kids can only focus on a lecture for a small amount of
time. Cochrane Collegiate
Academy, in Charlotte, North Carolina has developed a list of non-negotiables
for interactive learning. One of them is
to have limited lecture time. If a
lesson is going over 12-15 minutes, it needs to be broken up by another
activity for a t least 2-3 minutes. Students
can only sit for about the same number of minutes as their age plus possibly
one or two minutes. (http://www.edutopia.org/stw-school-turnaround-student-engagement-tips)
This is important to remember when trying to engage
students.
On the page from the University of
Texas, http://ctl.utexas.edu/teaching/engagement/active_interactive_class,
How to Make Class Active and Interactive it states,
‘To keep students engaged you can build variety into your delivery by “chunking” the class into sections of around 15 minutes. Use a shift in energy, change the focus, change the stimulus, or change the means of delivery.”
On the Knewton Blog at http://www.knewton.com/blog/teacher-tools/five-ways-to-make-math-lessons-more-engaging/ there are some great suggestion on how to keep math lessons engaging. Telling a story was a great one. You can teach things like probability with a story to make it more meaningful and interesting. You can make up characters or even use real people to show scenarios where probability is used. I’ve always seen probability explained with things like what is the probability of pulling out a certain color sock out of a drawer. How does that show the usefulness of probability?
Of course, I cannot leave out the use of technology. Technology often times will engage students better than other methods of instruction. Social networks are a great way to keep in touch with families about what is going on in the classroom. Many classes are using Twitter and Facebook for that reason. Skype is a great tool that can be used in many different ways. Classrooms can have guest speakers or virtual field trips from all over the world. They can also connect with other classrooms and learn about different places. This is just a couple of ideas given in Ten Tech Tools to Engage Students at http://www.informationweek.com/mobile/mobile-devices/10-tech-tools-to-engage-students/d/d-id/1110775?page_number=11.
I'm SO glad you included the concept of attention span for students. Not everyone learns the same, as I am finding! With all my experience and training as a teacher, I have a difficult time understanding my oldest daughter (she's 4). I like to describe that she "lives outside the box of the status quo." She doesn't look that same as other students when she's learning. She has a very difficult time sitting in a seat, she just wants to get up and dance what she learned. Building blocks make far more sense to her than coloring or playdough. And even though she doesn't look at you and or give you social cues that she's listening, if you ask her to repeat what you just told her, she can tell you word for word. FRUSTRATING... but amazing all at the same time.
ReplyDeleteAnd the things that interest her the most are things that excite others. And if she's able to share that experience with others, she owns that learning!
Great points. I'll ditto Tiffany: "Students can only sit for about the same number of minutes as their age plus possibly one or two minutes."
ReplyDeleteThe other thing I really enjoyed was the "story" aspect. Keeping in mind some of the basic narrative elements (build up, challenge / conflict, overcoming, ride off into the sunset) has been really a lifesaver for me just while writing in the past year. When I get bogged down in some nitty gritty detail and can't see my way out of it I try to either throw in a story as an example or else I'll make the entire piece a story in its own right. I think that it helps the reader, but I know that it helps me.