Power, fun and freedom. These are three little words that can take any lesson or classroom experience from boring to engaging with just a few minor adjustments.
As adults, most of us look for opportunities to have power over our choices and express our individuality. Additionally, we naturally perform tasks that are fun or interesting over boring, unengaging tasks. (Wouldn’t you rather surf Pinterest than fold laundry?!) Children are no different. Your students crave the opportunity to make their own choices and take responsibility for their own learning. They crave learning opportunities that teach, but that also allow them to have fun!
But how do you achieve this when you have curriculum to get through and teach a class full of varying ability levels and interests? Here are just a few ideas that will help you infuse power, fun and freedom into your classroom:
- Allow choice. Always. The easiest way to do this is to choose two or three tasks that all cover the curriculum standard that you are trying to achieve and allow students to choose between the tasks. For example, you might have students choose to do a presentation using a PowerPoint slide show, orally, or by writing an essay. Regardless of the option they choose, learning is being presented; however by offering diverse choices you allow students to tap into their multiple intelligences and choose the task that is most appealing to them.
- Run your classroom as a democracy. Rather than telling students the rules and consequences, develop them as a class. Rather than telling students what they will be learning, ask them what they want to learn about a specific topic. Students will be more receptive to what you want them to do when they feel that they are in control.
- Make learning fun! There is always a way, regardless of how dry subject matter may be. Incorporate cooperative learning, gallery walks, or interesting projects. The extra planning time that you put into this will pay off in the long run.
- Think like a kinesthetic learner. A percentage of your students will learn best in a kinesthetic manner, meaning that they learn best when performing hands-on tasks that allow moving around, manoeuvring objects or cutting/pasting/gluing. Despite the fact that not everyone is primarily a kinesthetic learner, this style of learning and teaching is very effective and will appeal to almost everyone. If you can start planning your lessons so that they utilize hands-on learning, you will immediately see higher engagement and fewer classroom management issues. Hands-on learning is fun!
So the next time that you are planning a lesson or trying to boost engagement in your classoom, think to yourself, “How can I incorporate power, fun and freedom into this lesson?” I promise you that you will be amazed how it changes your teaching.
Have a great day,
