Now that you have everyones attention, keeping it can be problematic. What do you do when they get off track? If what’s-his-pickle is talking off topic to someone else, how do you reel him in? If what’s-her-name is trying to squeeze in 5 more minutes of sleep, how do you get her to wake up without embarrassing her?
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Blah, blah, blah… This may be all the students hear if the teacher has been lecturing for a long time, usually about 10 minutes or more. I find that if the teacher allows time for students to talk, move around, and/or ask questions during the lecture that the level of engagement will invariably increase.
Thanks Rob, I definitely agree with you. Even in the short time I have been teaching, I’ve really noticed a change in students attitude’s when I lecture for a long time, or if I stagger lecturing with activities to get students moving around and engaged
An obvious idea here would be to try and incorporate different activities throughout the class period. That doesn’t mean you plan different activities for every single class, but allow for students to “switch gears” to stay focused.
Don’t become stagnant while teaching at the front of the class. “Walk and talk!” Moving around the room to different locations helps create that proximity effect (subconsciously). Hopefully, students will be engaged with the material you are discussing about and not distracted with their own conversations!
Some good tips here. I find that connecting classroom material to high-interest current events, popular culture or issues that are relevant/important to the kids always piques their interest more than lessons or concepts that are delivered decontextualized or separated from the realities of the students. Creating situations that allow this personal connection to occur helps foster an emotional investment in the material that keeps engagement strong.
I also found that inevitably, some lessons will have longer lecture time than others. Simply giving the students an outline of the day and reminding them that if they just stick with you for a few more minutes, they can go on to something more interesting/fun/engaging really helps students to “stick it out”.
Good point Alex! And on a related note, often just having a consistent way of approaching lessons sometimes assists with this. Not that you want to be ‘predictable’ with the format of your teaching, but if in general your students know what to expect from you, it often allows them to settle in to your classes with relative ease.
Keep the comments coming!!!!
It also helps if you break up the lesson with things like videos explaining the lesson. For example Heritage minutes for Social Studies classes are a good break between delivering content and helping students solidify in their minds what they just learned. My students loved watching the videos on the underground railway, the CPR and the war of 1812 in order to understand what events happened. It also helps as a refresher for students when they do not know (because they are new to Canadian history) or they cant remember.
Excellent comment Kiran! Further to your point, this is a great way to utilize your iPad during your practicum: there are some extremely good apps out there that are really applicable to the units/lessons that you will all be teaching, so make sure to keep an eye out for them (and if you find any, don’t forget to post them to our Apps page!) Rob Young pointed out a really neat app that has been released on the War of 1812 – that’s just one possible resource for you to consider.
Another video source is the “Crash Course” series (available on YouTube – they have a channel) which provides world history basics in a creative and very engaging manner. Definitely worth checking out if you’re in the social sciences.
I agree with many of these ideas. I feel it is important to keep students engaged by offering them a variety of activities. I like getting them up and out of their seats to keep their interest, but also to keep them moving and awake. I also agree with moving around while you are teaching. Standing in one place is monotonous, but if you are moving, it varies the pace of the lesson. Getting them up to participate also helps to keep them engaged.
From my experience, I think it’s important to keep a high pace, and not let students to drift off to the stratosphere. In music, just like P.E. I think, you just need to keep students doing something from the start to the end to make the class not boring. I also agree on keeping a tight schedule, or writing out the schedule on the board for the students. But it might be difficult to keep in terms of a music class because it also depends on the level of skills that the students have on their instruments.
Limiting teacher talk and incorporating student-centred activities is vital to an effective lesson. Having varied “groupings” is very useful — students can work in pairs, small groups and then discuss as a class. I find that when I talk for more than 20 minutes, the students get restless, so I break up “lectures” into mini-lessons no longer than 20-30 minutes. I use a lot of the strategies in a book called “Beyond Monet: The Artful Science of Instructional Integration”. This book may be familiar to many of us already, but in case there are some who haven’t heard of it, it has lots of great tactics and strategies on how to make instruction more engaging.