Learning is one of those things that people automatically think are no fun at all. However, learning doesn’t have to be something that is dreaded by students and teachers! Learning is a way of exploring new worlds, gaining new perspectives, and getting prepared for the future. In fact, everyone learns something new at every point in their life, so that education continues past your time in school, and one always values teachers who teach the skill of learning. There are some great ways that teachers can help students recognize this fact and the fact that learning can be fun. Read more about this down below.
- Discover New Things Together with Your Students
Even though you are the teacher and are supposed to be teaching your students new things, it’s a lot more fun when the discovery of new subjects is done together. Make sure to let down your teacher guard every now and then to allow your students to see that you don’t know everything. This will also teach them that educational discovery continues throughout their life, even at the age when they might be a teacher.
- Try to Incorporate Some Mystery in The Lessons
Learning is more fun when it’s like a murder mystery novel. You can easily cloud the answer to the questions you’re posing in mystery and make your students search for the answers. This is going to make things a lot more exciting for them and make them actually want to learn the answers.
- Don’t Be Afraid to Be Goofy
Just because you’re the “authority figure” in the classroom, this doesn’t mean that you’ve got to be so uptight and strict all of the time. Don’t be afraid to let loose and act goofy with your kids. Trust us when we say that they’re going to like you a lot more when they can laugh along with you, rather than being scared of being punished.
- Participate in The Projects
Make sure to take the time to step down from your teacher throne and interact with the students in their projects. It can be easy to sit back and relax once the students are working on their own stuff, but it’s much more fun for all parties if you involve yourself and help them out. And remember that experiential & practical exercise makes learning fun and memorable, so these projects should all be hands-on.
- Try Not to Go Through the Motions
As a teacher, it can be super easy to get into a routine of coming to class every day, teaching in the same way, and ending class at the same time. If you find yourself in this kind of rut, it’s important for your sanity and for the education of your students if you change up this routine every once in a while.
- Flip Your Lessons
A great idea to make the class more fun is to flip up your lessons. Instead of you teaching the material to the class, have students learn about the material at home the night before and devise a lesson plan so they can teach the class themselves. In fact, it’s been shown that when someone teaches new material, they are more likely to retain that information.
- Review Material, But Don’t Repeat It
A lot of teachers will spend class time repeating the material from the last class. This is often called “reviewing”. However, how much time do you really need to go over this material? Just do a quick review instead of repeating everything from last class so that you can figure out how much the students remember and understand.
- Share Your Passions with Your Students
A great way to connect with your students is to spend time sharing your own passions with them. Sure, they know that you enjoy teaching, but is there something else that they don’t know about you? Sharing these passions with them is going to give you that deeper personal connection with your students that will make learning enjoyable for them.
- Laugh at Your Student’s Jokes
You might not understand all of those young jokes and trends that are going around, but you can still laugh along! If you don’t, it might make things a bit awkward.
- Have Conversations Instead of Lectures
Nobody likes sitting through a lecture. Try to make your lecture classes more conversation based, ask questions and answer theirs, so that students feel as though they’re part of the teaching/learning experience.
Learning doesn’t have to be something that you dread with the same feeling of going to the dentist’s office. Make sure that you think of ways, like the ones outlined above, to make that experience more enjoyable for your students.