Teaching some moments might seem challenging, teachers have to deal with short attention spams, with technological devices, lack of interest on the subject, students lack of energy, stress, among others, so, can to engage them? How to ensure that they take the best of the learning experience?
My first recommendation is to understand that learning is a creation, is not consumption and that when we to teach what is important is what the student does and says is not what you as a teacher or facilitator do or say. This means that one of the key points to engage your students is to actually change the old teaching model of a teacher presenting and having the students remember to a new model where the teacher facilitates the students to do, experience and create knowledge! When students actually see that they are learning and progressing and making it their own, their perspective on the class might change. So, how does this look like in the class or in the design of the lesson? Here a tip: it looks like the teacher will be presenting a maximum of 30% of the time (doesn´t mean all together) and the other 70% will be on learning activities (doing!!!)
Though, it is clear that not activities engage all students. This happens for a very simple reason and that is that not all the students have the same learning style. According to Meier (2000) in his book The Accelerated Learning Handbook, there are 4 different learning styles:
Somatic – Learning by moving and doing (i.e. building a model or a prototype
Auditory – Learning by talking and hearing (i.e. create a song)
Visual – Learning by observing and picturing (i.e. room peripherals, slides, photos)
Intellectual – Learning by problem solving and reflecting (i.e. solving problems, answering questions).
Maybe if you look to yourself you might very quickly which is your learning style preference. So the second tip to engage your students is to ensure that you design learning activities that cover all the learning styles in each lesson. Always ask your self-¿What might be all the activities to support the Somatic learning style? The Auditory? The visual? The intellectual? and see which ones fit better your teaching content.
But this is not enough to really engage your students and ensure that they will actually have a learning experience that will stay with them for a long period of time. You need to ensure that you engage the student before the class starts, while you are in the class delivering the content, and finally after the class is over. There are different models that talk about this process, the one I like the most is the Torrance Incubation Model, designed be Paul Torrance (see Tab – Models for more explanation). He talks about three stages to engage the student:
Heightening anticipation: This is the moment where you prepare the student to learn and engage him in the learning process. When a student comes into class there might be lots of ways that they are facing the learning process: They might not see the benefit of the class, not be interested in the subject, feeling that they are forced to attend, might have personal problems or distractions or just be bored or feel that they already now the subject. This stage helps the student to remove this learning barriers, give them positive feeling about the learning experience and move them from a passive role into an intellectual active rol.
In order to heighten anticipation there are different ways prepare the student and engage them in the learning process: some of these are to give purpose and motivation, arouse curiosity and create the desire to know.
Deepen expectations: This is the moment when the anticipation needs to be fulfilled by acquiring new knowledge. The objective in this stage is to help the students to integrate and incorporate new knowledge or skill in a variety of ways. Here is where we talk about the 30% presenting and 70% practicing or doing. What might be some ways to help students to incorporate this new knowledge? Think about activities that involve real world simulations or realistic simulations, learner processing activities, Individual/group reflection, Action learning exercises and Collaborative teaching and review (teach backs). And don´t forget to include the different learning styles ..
Extending the learning: This is when the teacher helps the learner to apply and extend their knowledge outside the classroom into the real world, so the learning sticks with the student. This might be done by designing activities where the students has to do an immediate application, or has to creating and execute action plans this could be done with support material and also peer support or coaching support can be provided.
If everytime you design a lesson you consider these three key point, I ensure your students will be much more engage in the course, will have learning that lasts and finally you will have an enjoyable and creative moment designing the lessons.!
My first recommendation is to understand that learning is a creation, is not consumption and that when we to teach what is important is what the student does and says is not what you as a teacher or facilitator do or say. This means that one of the key points to engage your students is to actually change the old teaching model of a teacher presenting and having the students remember to a new model where the teacher facilitates the students to do, experience and create knowledge! When students actually see that they are learning and progressing and making it their own, their perspective on the class might change. So, how does this look like in the class or in the design of the lesson? Here a tip: it looks like the teacher will be presenting a maximum of 30% of the time (doesn´t mean all together) and the other 70% will be on learning activities (doing!!!)
Though, it is clear that not activities engage all students. This happens for a very simple reason and that is that not all the students have the same learning style. According to Meier (2000) in his book The Accelerated Learning Handbook, there are 4 different learning styles:
Somatic – Learning by moving and doing (i.e. building a model or a prototype
Auditory – Learning by talking and hearing (i.e. create a song)
Visual – Learning by observing and picturing (i.e. room peripherals, slides, photos)
Intellectual – Learning by problem solving and reflecting (i.e. solving problems, answering questions).
Maybe if you look to yourself you might very quickly which is your learning style preference. So the second tip to engage your students is to ensure that you design learning activities that cover all the learning styles in each lesson. Always ask your self-¿What might be all the activities to support the Somatic learning style? The Auditory? The visual? The intellectual? and see which ones fit better your teaching content.
But this is not enough to really engage your students and ensure that they will actually have a learning experience that will stay with them for a long period of time. You need to ensure that you engage the student before the class starts, while you are in the class delivering the content, and finally after the class is over. There are different models that talk about this process, the one I like the most is the Torrance Incubation Model, designed be Paul Torrance (see Tab – Models for more explanation). He talks about three stages to engage the student:
Heightening anticipation: This is the moment where you prepare the student to learn and engage him in the learning process. When a student comes into class there might be lots of ways that they are facing the learning process: They might not see the benefit of the class, not be interested in the subject, feeling that they are forced to attend, might have personal problems or distractions or just be bored or feel that they already now the subject. This stage helps the student to remove this learning barriers, give them positive feeling about the learning experience and move them from a passive role into an intellectual active rol.
In order to heighten anticipation there are different ways prepare the student and engage them in the learning process: some of these are to give purpose and motivation, arouse curiosity and create the desire to know.
Deepen expectations: This is the moment when the anticipation needs to be fulfilled by acquiring new knowledge. The objective in this stage is to help the students to integrate and incorporate new knowledge or skill in a variety of ways. Here is where we talk about the 30% presenting and 70% practicing or doing. What might be some ways to help students to incorporate this new knowledge? Think about activities that involve real world simulations or realistic simulations, learner processing activities, Individual/group reflection, Action learning exercises and Collaborative teaching and review (teach backs). And don´t forget to include the different learning styles ..
Extending the learning: This is when the teacher helps the learner to apply and extend their knowledge outside the classroom into the real world, so the learning sticks with the student. This might be done by designing activities where the students has to do an immediate application, or has to creating and execute action plans this could be done with support material and also peer support or coaching support can be provided.
If everytime you design a lesson you consider these three key point, I ensure your students will be much more engage in the course, will have learning that lasts and finally you will have an enjoyable and creative moment designing the lessons.!