If you feel like you need to engage your students because lessons have been falling flat or students just aren’t retaining the material presented well enough, here are some ideas on how to engage your students.
1. Arrange Interesting or Unique Field Trips
Getting out of the classroom is a wonderful method to re-energize students, spice up the curriculum, and promote active participation.
Plan fun field trips related to topics you are currently discussing or are about to introduce to the class. You may wish to visit some interesting venues, including local museums, farms, plants, factories, historical landmarks, sports stadiums, or colleges and universities.
The last two are most effective for the older students, and as with the tip above about guest speakers, this is an effective way to introduce students to the post-secondary experience. Younger students will enjoy a trip pretty much anywhere, as long as it takes them away from the school.
Museums, farms, and other locations allow children to interact with their environment, use a hands-on approach to learning, and possibly discover a new field of interest.
2. Bring in Guest Speakers
Welcoming a wide variety of guest speakers can be used to ignite students’ imagination or spark their interest.
When implementing thematic units or organizing a large class project for the lower grade levels, an educator may wish to recruit individuals who specialize in a particular study unit.
For example, if you are conducting a unit on Ancient Greece, bring in a historian; or a unit on dinosaurs would be a good opportunity to introduce a paleontologist to the class.
If teaching the higher grade levels, ask individuals of specific professions to come into the class to discuss their careers, how rewarding they are, and the education or training one needs to obtain that position. It is never too early to get students thinking about post-secondary education and career paths they may wish to pursue.
Bring guest speakers into the classroom to engage students - read more. #edchat #teaching Share on X3. Integrate Up to Date Technology
Students are very attracted to technology and seem to remain current on new and innovative devices. Therefore, podcasts, iPods, Twitter, YouTube, WebQuests, Facebook, and other related websites can be used as effective tools when connecting with, engaging, and teaching students, regardless of age group or academic level.
This goes hand-in-hand with the advice on differentiating instruction and ensuring that students can relate to the classroom activities. Students will be excited to use up-to-date technology, enhance their skills, and demonstrate their relevant talents.
Supplement or complement textbooks and literary sources with the apps and sites listed above.
Technology provides an extra dimension to classroom learning. When used properly and appropriately, it can be a wonderful tool to reach out to students and stimulate a desire to learn and advance. There are fabulous videos on edutopia.org
4. Integrate Engaging Manipulatives and Hands-on Activities
When students can actively participate in the learning process, they will comprehend and remember the information to a much greater extent.
For the lower grade levels, manipulatives are excellent. Include board games, counters, music, and Bingo to connect with students to engage them. Bring fun and excitement to the classroom while still retaining the core elements needed to learn.
With older students, activities such as hands-on labs, creative writing, group projects, and class Jeopardy can be useful tools for reaching out to each student and offering a rewarding and meaningful educational experience.
Learn what you can about using math manipulatives in the classroom. These hands-on approaches help students retain the information and recall it in the near or distant future via a fun or engaging memory.
If not now, then down the road, students will appreciate the effort you put in to make the classroom interactive, interesting, and inclusive.
On the heels of finishing a grad course to maximize engagement, and a poor eval from principal for teaching a scripted social skills lesson the way she had actually dictated – scripted- we ran out of curriculum and I was winging it teaching open minded learning to my 2nd graders, when this idea hit me. Using a page from another popular curriculum, showing color illustrations of brain eating monsters (bad classroom and poor learning habits). We cut out each character from printed sheets with its description, then paste onto colored paper I have cut into the size of Pokemon cards. Each student has 14 cards and makes a large colored folder out of same construction paper with staples as a personal holder. Next they make a grid to identify each monster and defense strategies – learning strategies to counteract each monster. They first identify the strategies, determine a name per defender, then draw a new monster onto index cards. These are colored with markers and glued onto same size cards. Since Pokemon the Game has just been banned in school, the students are eagerly making their rules for this interactive trading card game; the defender cards will be given higher points according to what monster eating brain learning problems they can counteract. Today 3 separate students took me aside to tell me privately this has quickly been promoted to their favorite class. Once I am confident they have each made a deck of 28 cards and play the game fairly, I will verathane each card, and set them loose to play elsewhere, and immortalize open mind learning theory for 7 year olds.
HI Candace,
Thanks a lot. I achieved much reading this website. I could have ordered for the eBook on classroom management but I don’t have credit card now. I will do so in the future. You are gifted. God bless you.
sincerely,
Tony