5. TRANSFORMATION. If children could skip classes as much as they wanted, would they attend yours? Do you have any classes in your arsenal that you could sell tickets to? The author invites us to answer these questions. And if many will answer “yes” to the first, then to the second... Burges suggests that we raise the bar to a level where people would be willing to pay just to be in your classes. You can’t say, yes, yes, I know you’re bored, but you need to learn all this in order to pass tests and get good grades. The hero of this article goes out of his way to present his classes as a wonderful place where unique events take place. Children constantly say that mathematics is boring, history is boring. No, it wasn’t history that was boring, but the way history was taught was boring.
6. ENTHUSIASM. The teacher should burn with enthusiasm - both in the first and in the last lesson. He must be able to light a fire in the hearts of children. You cannot cheat; the teacher must always be in “on” mode.
HOW TO MAKE A LESSON INTERESTING?
The main thing is to interest the child and attract his attention. And you can do this with the help of “attention hooks,” as Dave Burgess calls them. Here are the main ones:
"I LIKE TO MOVE IT, MOVE IT"- You have to move in class! Is it possible to throw, roll or catch something inside the classroom? Is it possible to use outdoor games or act out a skit? Is it possible to teach a lesson outside?
"LONG LIVE ART"– use painting, music, dancing, theater, modeling! What can children draw to better understand the topic? What music is best for the lesson? Can children choose their own music for the beginning of the lesson? Can children make a video about the lesson topic? Is there a suitable dance? Can the guys play the role of historical characters? What can students make that is related to the lesson material? How to use origami and make something else with your own hands?
“WHAT IS THIS BENEFIT FOR ME?”– show that you provide knowledge that is truly useful for life. How to use children's hobbies in presenting material? How will the knowledge you gain be useful in life? What inspiring stories can you use? Is it possible to give children the opportunity to work independently and create something original? What current ones are related to the lesson? What heroes of popular culture can be attracted to increase interest?
"THE WHOLE WORLD IS THE THEATER"– transform your office! How to change the classroom to create a suitable atmosphere for the lesson? Is it possible to decorate the walls, floor, ceiling? Maybe it’s worth rearranging the desks in some original way? Shouldn't you write some intriguing and unusual message on the board? Or maybe show a QR code? Would you like to teach your lesson in some cool costume?
"ADVANCED TACTICAL TECHNIQUES"– continue to interest! Let the children spend the entire lesson trying to solve some special mystery. Use ciphers, riddles, codes for this. Take advantage of children's love for technology and their savvy in it.
"FINAL TOUCHES"– we complete the preparation and turn the lesson into an adventure. Come up with a game to repeat the material. Turn classes into competitions. Can you do some trick or talk about an amazing phenomenon as part of the lesson?
BECOME A GREAT TEACHER
Burges believes that everyone can become a great teacher. You need to set yourself the highest goal, not be afraid of failures and criticism. It is much more important to be active, not perfect. And when should we start working on all this? Right now! There will always be doubts, but to overcome them, you need to take action. And the best way to do this is when you have a trusted team of enthusiastic teachers like you by your side.
What can I say, friends? This is an excellent book! This is brilliant work! It seems that while reading this work, trying to answer the author’s endless questions, more interesting ideas came to my mind than the whole year before. Burges gives a lot of ready-made recipes. But he asks questions even more actively. Questions that should awaken search, enthusiasm, and creativity in the teacher. The book is light and exciting, which you want to read from cover to cover as quickly as possible. Now it's a matter of small things. I am ready to implement her ideas with my students. Expect my report in two weeks. I'm sure we can do it!
Alikhan DINAEV, newspaper "Khiekharho"
Many children complain to their parents that they are incredibly bored in math lessons. They don't understand why they need to learn stacks of formulas and how they can be useful in real life. That is why we have prepared 8 ways that will help diversify a math lesson and interest the student.
1. Make the lesson meaningful
Most math lessons in school suffer from the following:
- Sometimes teachers themselves cannot explain why they teach certain topics to their students. It is difficult for such teachers to see the connection between mathematics and other subjects of the school curriculum.
- As a result, students also do not understand why they are studying these topics. A common question they ask themselves is, “Why should I learn this?” makes sense. Do you have a good answer to it, instead of the usual “It will be on the exam” or worse - “Because you need it”?
Several possible options to fix this:
- Show your student the practical importance of mathematics, explain how he can solve real life problems using the knowledge gained in your lessons.
- Check out the curriculum for other school subjects. After this, you can use examples in your lessons that are understandable and interesting to your students.
2. Start with concrete examples - leave abstract concepts for later
Modern mathematics looks like a science that studies abstract concepts. Practical ways to solve real problems that were solved by the great mathematicians of the past are today presented in the form of algebraic formulas, axioms and theorems. Students do not always understand how everything written in their textbooks can be useful to them in life. Help them understand this.
Instead of starting each topic with a formula, start with specific examples of problems that were originally solved by that formula. Help students see how theoretical mathematics can solve such problems by showing them the thinking process first and then the solution.
3. Start with an interesting, real problem (preferably local)
Most math lessons start like this:"Here's the new formula for today's lesson, here's how you should insert the values, here's the correct answer."
The problem is that this approach does not even attempt to motivate the student.
It will be great if you stimulate the students' interest. Use presentations, training videos and other aids. Search the Internet for interesting information and use it in your lessons.
Here's an example problem:10 most dangerous cities in Russia (the norm of air pollution in cities is exceeded from 11 times to 34 times).
(photo taken from flickr.com)
What can you do in class?: identify the main causes of air pollution, decide together what needs to be done to reduce the level of pollution. With the help of simple calculations, students will be able to calculate under what conditions the level of pollution can be reduced.
Or you could suggest the following topic:The world's largest telescope has been built in China .
(photo taken from topblognews.ru)
What you can do in class:find the area of a 500 meter telescope, discuss how the construction of the telescope affected the environment, and decide how much area was cleared to build the telescope.
4. Creativity and control over the situation
We believe that mathematics is an extremely interesting science that requires a lively and open mind to master. You should not reduce work in class to memorizing formulas and monotonously solving similar tasks using a ready-made algorithm.
We're all creative and love to be, but most schools don't encourage creativity (check out this great video from TED Talks,Ken Robinson: How Schools Stifle Creativity(there are Russian subtitles)).
There are many ways to encourage student creativity in math lessons. Use new technologies to describe math concepts: prepare animations, diagrams, or interesting infographics for class. Create something yourself or download it from the Internet.
Give students individual assignments that engage creative thinking and build confidence in their abilities.
5. Ask more interesting questions
Read the condition. Which answer is correct?
A boat with a lot of pebbles floats on the lake. Pebbles are thrown into a depression in the lake. At this time, the water level in the lake (relative to the shore):
a) will rise
b) will go down
c) will remain the same.
For many students, math questions are most often associated with problems in a textbook. The problem for them looks like a long sentence: “Here is the problem in words. Take the numbers, plug them into the formula, do the calculation, and move on to the next problem.”
An interesting condition of the problem will definitely catch the attention of students, in contrast to a task like: “There are these numbers, find one or more unknowns.” The example above will evoke more emotion than a typical question from a book.
Here's another example:
Imagine that you are jumping with a parachute. What would a graph of your speed look like versus time, from the time you jump out of the plane until you reach your terminal speed?
a) Concave down to increase
b) Concave down to decrease
c) Straight line with a plus slope
d) Growing and curved upward
When students get used to solving such problems, they themselves will begin to come up with interesting real-life examples related to calculations using the formulas they have already learned.
6. Let students create their own questions.
Students understand much more when they have to come up with their own questions. The easiest way is to ask students to write test questions on the topic.
You can divide the class into 2-4 groups. Each group must create a block of questions for the test. During the lesson, the children exchange sets of tasks and solve them.
If one of the components made a mistake or prepared a task that cannot be solved, you can figure out in class why this happened: what the component did wrong, what could have confused him.
7. Magazine
Invite students to keep a math journal, just as great scientists documented their progress toward solving a problem.
You should know that reflection is a key element of effective learning.
A math journal will help you and your students track how they perceive course material, what challenges they encounter, and what helps them succeed.
How to Keep a Math Journal:
- An entry is made in the journal after each problem is solved.
- All thoughts should be written down in a separate notebook.
- In a mathematical journal, you need to describe in detail all the difficulties and achievements.
- The time for recording in the log should not exceed 5-7 minutes.
- Math journaling can be done with both young children and adults. Younger students can draw a math problem in a journal.
- A mathematical journal should not be kept daily, but as you progress in solving individual mathematical problems or when moving to study a new topic.
- Be tolerant. Journaling takes a lot of time, but it is a good help for developing mathematical thinking.
8. Projects
The most effective way to interact with students is to give them the opportunity to do something on their own. Help students see mathematics around them: in the things that surround them, in natural phenomena and processes.
You can use modern teaching tools that will help you show students of different ages how interesting mathematics can be.
(photo taken from technabob.com)
Here are just a few ideas:
- Design Lego robots
- Create visual representations on the siteGeoGebra
- Create a dynamic presentation inPrezi
If you know what could be added to our list of tips, share your ideas in the comments. We are sure that thousands of teachers will be grateful to you for this.
Each lesson is time that the student should spend interestingly. Yes, yes, it’s interesting, not boring. As practice shows, interesting lessons allow schoolchildren to better master material in any subjects, including those that for many students seem extremely boring and not worthy of their attention. Please note, dear teachers, that you can make both a history lesson and an English lesson interesting. Despite the fact that these two subjects are completely different from each other, there are general rules that will tell you how to conduct a lesson in an interesting way.
History lesson
Every person should know the history of their country, the history of the development of our civilization. The study of history, as a branch of science, begins at school. It will depend on the quality of the lessons conducted on this subject. How much the student will love history. Perhaps this subject will become the student’s main activity in his adult life. Before you make the lesson interesting, please note that each of your lessons should be divided into three parts - checking homework, presenting new material, and working to check how students have mastered the material presented.
As you know, history is a set of historical events that took place in different parts of our country or the world (if we are talking about world history), so an interesting start to the lesson can only happen if you do not ask students for homework, but start presenting new material. Be sure to use maps and diagrams, all kinds of tables and other applied material in your report. Each school has a computer lab that you can use to give your students a presentation on a specific historical event.
Try to improvise more in your lessons, and, of course, you should know the material on the event not only what is presented in the textbook. If you don't know the answer to your students' questions, then the most interesting lesson can turn into a boring one, and at the same time, you will lose authority in the eyes of your students. Therefore, add new facts to the school history curriculum that are much more interesting than those presented in the textbook. Interesting facts can be found on the Internet, or by regularly watching historical films, because they describe not only events, but also the fates of individuals who changed the course of the history of our state.
English lesson
It doesn’t matter in which grade – first or ninth you teach English, you must understand that it is quite difficult for students. Therefore, your task is to conduct interesting games in the lessons that will allow you to learn new material and reinforce old ones. In addition, psychologists say that each child’s brain is deeply individual. And, if for one student it is enough to read a sentence once to remember it, then for another it will take an hour, or even more, to study the educational material. The most effective way to memorize educational material is through visual aids. If you are studying vegetables or fruits with younger students, try to bring them to class (you can use dummies instead of real fruits). By simultaneously hearing a foreign word and seeing it in reality, the child will quickly remember its name in English.
Find interesting English video lessons on the Internet to offer them to your students as additional material that will help them learn English faster. You can start each lesson with a small skit that you will develop yourself, and you will regularly give the children the words of the characters in the skit. Attention! When developing a skit, do not forget that all the words that you give to the students must be covered material. A dull lesson presentation will cause a student who didn't like English to dislike it even more.
Before you start a lesson in an interesting way, you can ask your students what they want your lessons to be like. And even though this will be a small survey among students, it will help you attract students’ attention to learning. Be sure to take into account the wishes of your students when developing your lessons, because if their interests and the methodology for conducting your lessons completely coincide, then learning will be much easier for them. At the same time, you will improve your performance in the classroom, which is important for every teacher and every school.
Of course, students will willingly attend the lessons of the teacher they like, in whom they see a person of interest to them. Both personally and professionally. You must make friends with the students, and then your lessons will not disgust them. These rules especially apply to education in high school.
I think I would not be discovering America if I said that every teacher should strive to make lessons as interesting as possible. The effectiveness of the lesson, the attention of students and your moral satisfaction with your profession depend on this:-) The level of your lesson delivery, its content and methodological parts, interesting content and an atmosphere of focus on the current topic determines the quality of students’ preparation in your discipline. In order for this level and quality to be at a sufficiently high level, it is necessary that in the process of preparing a lesson you try to make it a kind of work, with an idea, plot, culmination and denouement characteristic of each work.
How can we ensure that the lesson not only provides students with certain knowledge and skills, but also arouses genuine interest in students, sincere involvement in the learning process, and develops creativity? The tips and tricks below will help you prepare such a lesson.
Preparing for the lesson
When preparing for a lesson (when writing a lesson plan), you need to clearly define and formulate the topic of the lesson. Then you need to decide on the leading topics on which this lesson will be based, and identify that part of the educational material that can be used in further lessons - determine the prospects for the development of this topic. Mandatory definition and clear formulation for the teacher and separately for the students, the target setting of this lesson - is it necessary? It is also necessary to prescribe the teaching, developmental and educational functions of this lesson.
Layout of teaching material
We find literature on the topic, if the material is new for students, it is necessary to find complete information - a university textbook, a primary source (monograph), a popular science publication, an encyclopedic publication. From the available material, we select only that which most simply and clearly explains the topic of the lesson.
It is best to make a selection of educational tasks according to the following criteria:
- teaching new material
- playback
- application of acquired knowledge in a new situation
- application of acquired knowledge in an unfamiliar situation
- creativity
Educational tasks need to be organized; the best selection for students is “from simple to complex.”
Compiling three sets of tasks:
- tasks that lead students to reproduce the material;
- tasks that help students comprehend the material;
- tasks to help consolidate the material.
The highlight of the lesson
A good lesson should contain tasks and material that can cause amazement, delight, and surprise among students. This could be an interesting fact, an amazing discovery, a learning experience, a non-standard approach to existing and seemingly ordinary situations. Surf the Internet, ask your colleagues on forums and thematic sites. You'll probably find something interesting.
After you have found the necessary and interesting material, you need to group it correctly, think through the sequence of working with it, and prepare it for the lesson. It is necessary to find just such a form of presenting the material that will cause active work in the lesson and eliminate the passive perception of new things.
Planning for monitoring the activities and employment of students in the lesson
When preparing a lesson, you need to decide for yourself: what to control; how to control and how to use the results of control. Don't forget that the more often students' work is monitored, the easier it is to spot mistakes and difficulties and show that you, as a teacher, are seriously interested in their work.
Class preparation
Before starting the lesson, you need to prepare all the visual aids, equipment, additional literature, etc. necessary for the lesson. The material can be written down in advance (say, during recess or if there is a “window” before the lesson) on the blackboard in the form of diagrams, tables or a structured summary, highlighting particularly complex or significant points.
Preparing homework
Don't forget to do your homework in advance. Try to be original, come up with empirical tasks for which the children will need to use not only textbooks, but, for example, interview family members or experiment with household items. Prepare guidelines for homework and additional material for home study.
And of course, it’s not for me to tell you that for a properly planned, good lesson you need to draw up a lesson outline. Don't be discouraged if you don't meet your plan. Just analyze the lesson after it has been taught and decide what is best to focus on and what is not so important.
It has been proven that the more interesting the lesson, the higher the motivation and effectiveness of learning English. In this regard, there are three general types of classes: frontal, group and individual.
Frontal exercises
Frontal lessons are those in which the teacher gives new information to the students, the students listen, and then ask questions at the end of the lesson. The whole process is based on a monologue and a visual presentation of information. Usually this is not the most exciting type of lesson, but there is a frontal lesson option that can be considered an exception: an excursion.
For example, an English lesson on animals could be taught at a local zoo; The teacher can name each animal and give a brief description of it, depending on the level of knowledge of the class. To keep children more interested, the teacher can assign group assignments. For example, at the end of the excursion, each group should talk about their favorite animal ().
You can also use an interesting book as the basis for the lesson. Such, for example, as the popular book “Funny English Errors and Insights: Illustrated”. This book contains 301 examples of funny English mistakes made by schoolchildren, journalists, parents and even teachers.
You can read the mistakes to the class, and if someone doesn't understand what the humor is, you or one of the students can explain it to them. A child will learn a lesson much better if it is presented in the form of a joke.
Group classes
Group activities usually involve competition or teamwork. This type of class is recommended for advanced levels. An example of an interesting lesson in this case would be a theater competition, where each group chooses a play or a fragment of it.
Each group must make their own costumes and be as creative as possible in the decorations and implementation of the plot. You can suggest a specific theme, such as Halloween, the works of Shakespeare, or even a television series.
Another example is gaming litigation. Here the characters in the book can serve as a basis. One group of students may defend the character's actions, while another may condemn them; another may be the jury, and the teacher may be the judge. Have groups of “defenders” and “prosecutors” discuss their arguments, and then one or two speak and argue the group’s point of view.
The jury must listen to the parties and reach a verdict, and the judge will direct everything that happens. You can use classics like Charles Dickens's Great Expectations as a basis (and consider, say, whether Miss Havisham's actions are fair), as well as films or television series.
Individual lessons
Individual lessons depend on the level of each student. It is important not to impose anything, but only to give advice and offer interesting material for work so that it stimulates the child - for example, homework, structured in a playful way, or analysis of an interesting text for advanced levels.
Interesting English lessons are easy to teach; the only requirement is that they be creative and stimulate language proficiency.
What interesting English lessons do you know or have practiced?
