Are your students yawning, drooping, twiddling their thumbs, looking out the window, doing everything but paying attention in class? Here are some tips on how to get the class buzzing with enthusiasm and encourage participation:
- Warm up
A good start can influence students’ behaviour throughout the day. It would be good to start the class with a warm-up session every morning. This can include activities like asking one student at random to write on the board about what was covered in the previous class or assigning a little group activity.
- Clap-snap-march
Involving students in light movements in the middle of the class or at the beginning can improve their focus and attention. These light movements can be clapping, rhythmic finger-snapping, cross-crawls or a light march. The activity depends on the class you are handling. Also, these will wake up the students who are feeling sleepy.
- Peer discussions
Another way to energise and keep students attentive during your class is to make them ask questions to each other at the end of the lesson. Here, you get to analyse students’ thinking capabilities from the questions they ask and gauge their understanding of the subject from the answers given. You can also ask questions during the lessons. This will keep students alert throughout the class.
- Gamification
Learning is better absorbed with fun. Some of the word games that can be incorporated in all subject classes are:
- Education Bingo: a grid-based game with hidden words that students have to find. You can come up with your own grid or look for them in other sources such as books and the internet.
- Synonyms and Antonyms: Divide the class into two groups and ask one group to write synonyms for a word and the other group to write antonyms for a word. The more the words, the bigger the score. You can also bring in creativity games, team work activity and competitive games.
- Quizzes and polls
Once you have completed a topic, conduct quizzes by dividing the class into teams. Hold a poll to get feedback on the lesson. Make it impromptu and informal so that the children retain interest in these exercises.
- Project Work/ Group Activity
The more the merrier! Group leaning is as important as self-learning. When students are trained to think and work in a group, their decision making ability improves. They learn the skills of collaboration and team work. The choice of topic can be given to students or they can come up with their own ideas after conferring with their group members. You can define guidelines as per the subject and the topic.
- Flip it
This is a learning technique being adopted in many smart classrooms. Students are required to prepare for the lessons in advance by watching video tutorials on their own time, outside school. In class, this is followed by a discussion of the lesson by students, after which the teacher can take charge.
- Storytelling
More fun time! Story-telling works like magic, especially with younger children. You can introduce a new topic with a relatable story or bring in a story in the middle of lesson, helping students to relate some facts in a better way. For instance, while teaching students about planets and the moon, it is a good idea to share a story about the first human that landed on the moon or a folktale that features the moon and a child or anything similar.
- Quote-a-day
You can do this activity at the beginning of the day. This is a positive start where one student has to write a quote of their choice on the board and explain it to the class or give information about the person behind the quote. This can be done in turns.
- The anonymous question
The benefits of this activity completely depend on the relationship you share with your students. In this activity, you can ask your students to ask a question that can be related to anything. It can be about a student who is bullying another, it can be about a problem they are facing at home, anything that is disturbing them but which they are unable to share with anyone else. Keeping it anonymous or not is the child’s choice. Depending upon the question you can take action as required. Assure the children that they can believe in their teacher and that you will support and guide them for the best. The times that we are living in, we may overlook little things that are harming children in big ways.
