Teach...Tease...Treat

Saturday, 17 September 2011

Make Learning Fun

If you’ve been teaching students, young and old alike, you have probably encountered the greatest drawback in teaching history – boredom. Boredom can be a teacher’s greatest insult.


Imagine having to stand in front of a number of students, you’ve been talking on end, and your students aren’t listening. You start to think if you’re the reason why they’re bored. Maybe you are the one who’s boring and not the topic. More often than not, it is the approach to learning, and not you that’s making learning boring.


Making learning fun is an art as much as it is a practice. It is a practice because it requires a skilled and knowledgeable teacher with the right attitude to teach a number of students and to teach them well. It is an art because it sparks your imagination; it opens up your creativity, and makes use of your talents to make it fun as well as knowledgeable.


1)   Incorporate lively examples in your lessons. These examples have to relate to the type of students you’re teaching. If you keep throwing them with examples that are not only funny and true to life but full of content as well, you are stimulating their brains to think. If the brain is stimulated, it won’t stagnate and become bored.

2)   Motivate your learners. Making learning fun entails that students have to feel rewarded from the lessons they are absorbing. Generate interesting and open-ended questions that require their brains to think of an answer, rather than a yes or a no. Come up with great games that incorporate the lesson for the day in it. This allows students to get up and about rather than remaining seated for a whole hour or more. Games also allow students to apply what they have learned into real situations and are great evaluative tools for teachers.


3)   Turn your attention on the students rather than the student’s attention on you. Students develop a greater appreciation to learn when they know their teacher is concerned about their wellbeing. It is in this type of situation that students learn that learning is fun and have fun in learning.



4)  Evaluate your students’ capabilities and where they are at in learning. This will help you generate ideas and methods that all students will learn from rather than just a certain group. Some students take more time to learn than others, this shouldn’t be a hindrance for them to enjoy your lessons. Make sure that when you discuss the subject matter, everyone will learn and not a select few. If your methods are directed to those who only learn fast, those who take some time may feel discouraged and will choose not to immerse their selves in your discussion.


Perhaps the greatest secret all great teachers share is that no matter how boring the topic, if your students have a deep appreciation to learn, they will have fun. The secret then is to inculcating that appreciation in each of your students. If you have done that, then there is no limit to making learning fun for them. 

No comments:

Post a Comment