keeping students engaged
When we teach exciting tasks or lessons, it is easy to keep students interested. As the excitement wears off, keeping the student engaged is a challenge. We can keep the interest by keeping less interesting lessond intertwined with the exciting ones.
I find it very important to keep your students engaged, if your students are borded, they will not learn. Reading body language is very important when you are teaching, I find it's an excellent way to find out if you are engaging your students.
Hi Jennifer,
You are really doing a good job of targeting your instructional delivery to your students. The change of pace and physical activities that you are using help to keep your students focused.
Gary
I like to keep my students engaged by providing lots of hands on activities. Most of my students are at a technical college because they are physical learners. This is not a traditional learner. Many of my students have commented that they like the hands on activities. I also follow the 10 minute snooze rule for lecturing, by power point or otherwise. I try to break up my lectures into 10 minutes at a time and then do an activity. I also often make them get out of their comfort zone seating and move to a new part of the room to work with new students in a group project.
Jennifer Vest
Hi Ralph,
Good point about how to use stories in lectures. They need to be to the point, have clear applications and not be a walk down memory lane. The need to meet an objective or they shouldn't be used.
Gary
I agree with Tanner that keeping students engaged can be difficult. Stories can be helpful to bring relevance to a discussion, but they can also be overdone. I've seen students glaze over when an instructor began yet another story of how it was, back when. One technique I have found helpful is to get the students to participate in a lecture by asking them their point of view on a topic. What tends to happen is when one student participates, others do as well.
This is a very important point! keeping the lesson on track and relevant is one thing. Drawing there attention to the second and third layer of instruction is the goal..
Hi Ashley,
These are the teaching strategies that we all need to share with each other. The more "tools" we have in our toolboxes the more effective we will be with our teaching and student outcomes.
Gary
I think this is an extremely important aspect of teaching. It is key to watch your students and determine if they are engaged or not. If not, you need to change up what you are doing. I know that I once had a teacher that when it looked like the students were not engaged, she made us all stand up, find another person across the room, and tell them one thing that we had learned in class that day. Although this seems very simple, this got the students up and moving and were able to refocus.
Hi Tanner,
You are on to something with the stories. Students like to hear them because they start to see how the content they are learning is going to have application to their lives.
Gary
Keeping the attention of the students is one of the most difficult things I find in teaching. One effective tool I have found useful is stories. Applying what I am teaching to real experiences that myself or others around me have had has helped to keep the attention. It breaks up the monotony of a straight lecture for hours.
I agree this is a good key. The instructor has to be excited about what is being taught as well as the students. I believe that a key is to spice things up, for instance don't letcure for the whole 4 hour class, you will lose the students after the first 30 mins.
