Three tips on how you can engage or excite kids for learning.
- Use topics/context that is part of their world
- Get them involved
- Use Incentives
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It is really important that we have kids excited and engaged in the lessons that we are delivering. The more excited and engaged the child is, the more likely they are to learn. The more likely the lessons are to stick and of course less behaviour, which is really what we are about.
1. Use topics/context that is part of their world
Firstly, when you are preparing your lessons, I want you to think about this, you need to use topics, context or interests that are part of their world. For many years I was a teacher in a classroom and had to work with pre-prescribed curriculums that come from education systems. Many times the people that write these curriculums are so out of touch with where students are at in their world. The examples they use and the modes of learning they use are really disconnected from the way the students interact.
You need to take the time to understand how students interact in their world. What are the things that they are interested in? How do they learn? Then when you understand that you’ll have them more engaged.
A little example for you, I was teaching a unit on song lyrics, it was part of an English curriculum. We had to study and analyze songs. So the curriculum asked us to play a song, the children would listen to it and read the lyrics. Then we would have a discussion about analyzing the lyrics. Well about halfway through this activity one of the students piped up and said sir can you put it on youtube. I said but we’re listening to a song, we’re analyzing the lyrics you don’t need to watch the video clip. The class responded to me and said no sir we don’t listen to music, we watch music.
You see there was a disconnect between the way that i and the curriculum writers understood music to be consumed for young people. They don’t consume music by purely listening to it. They consume music by watching it, that gives them context that helps them to understand the lyrics better.
So that was just a little example of how I got them more engaged. I used youtube clips instead of audio clips which the curriculum prescribed. That had them more excited and engaged. Use modes of learning that they understand. Have context that is in their world and use examples that mean something to them. Try using Songs or content that matters to their world, not yours. As an adult, you live in a different world and quite frankly they don’t care about it. So if you want them excited, use their world to keep them interested.
2. Get Them Involved
The second tip is to get them involved. Involve them in the learning process. I have talked a lot about this with boys. You need to be hands-on in your learning process. One of the ways that you can do this is to design lessons that require them to interact physically. You’ve got a lot of kinesthetic learners in your class that don’t just learn by looking at things. They actually have to engage and feel what’s going on. Charles Pollock says that if you want a boy to learn the life cycle of a frog, he has to be able to touch the frog. He has to be able to examine it up close.
Find ways to engage them or get them involved in learning in a physical and interactive way. You can also involve them in learning by asking them what they understand about what you’re trying to teach them. You might be surprised at how much they actually know. A little exercise I use is three, two, one to try and gauge their understanding of the topic. Three people give me one thing that you know or understand about this topic. Then two people give me something that you think is really amazing about this topic, a fun fact. Then one person asks me a question about something you don’t understand about the topic. You will be amazed at how many classroom discussions come alive.
3. Use Incentives
The third way that you can get kids excited about what you’re learning is incentivizing your lessons. This is a controversial topic. Incentives need to be used judiciously, you can’t just give incentives for everything. Kids need to learn how to self-regulate. They need to learn how to bring themselves to the learning experience without necessarily having a reward. Especially for your reluctant learners, you’ve got to give them some kind of motivation that will get them going or spark them up.
So for some of your reluctant learners or some of your learners that take time to get excited or engaged in the lesson use incentives such as iPad time, football on the oval, reading time or some quiet time. This will get them excited about what they are doing. Bill Rogers talks about the “if-then” strategies. If you complete the work then you get to do what you want to do. So it’s not a matter of saying no you can’t do that, it’s just a matter of saying I need you to have a look at this. Engage with this first then we’ll let you do the things that you want to do.
If you think about it even as teachers and as adults we always work to incentives. We come to work because we get paid, that’s an incentive. Yes, we put in extra effort and we put in extra time because we love the kids and we want them to do their best. But we also work for the incentive. If somebody said you have to come to school and teach but I’m not going to pay you any more, well I guarantee most of you would never turn up.
So the whole notion of trying to get kids to work without some kind of motivating incentive is a little bit of a misnomer in my opinion. At the same time, I understand we don’t just reward willy-nilly. They have to put in some effort. This is where the “if then” strategy can be really helpful in that regard. So that’s three tips on how you can excite or engage kids in the classroom.
The first one was to use their interest. Connect to their world the way that they engage with content. The second thing is to get them involved. Give them hands-on interaction with the content that you’re teaching and also elicit their understanding. So look for their feedback on how you are teaching them. The third idea is to use incentives. I think the best way to do this in a balanced way is the “if-then” strategy. If you want to know more about that I recommend you search for Bill Rogers on youtube. He’s got a bunch of videos out there and he has some great content.
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