How to teach in class?

As we explored in our recent World Teachers Day blog post, teachers are a completely essential part of our society, but teaching can be a difficult and stressful job at times.

Particularly when working with children and teenagers, it can be hard to retain focus, manage behaviour, and encourage active participation. In addition, teaching adults can have its own challenges – it can be difficult for adult learners to absorb new things and change old thinking patterns.

One thing that may help you deal with some of these challenges is learning about the different teaching methods available. You don’t need to pick one method and stick to it, but you may find that certain methods and styles are perfect for different learning environments.

For example, you might find that student-centred learning is perfect for KS2 children, and game-based learning works wonders for KS3. You may discover that using technology such as VR can elevate history and geography lessons, while experiential learning methods can be effective during science experiments and group projects. To find out more, read about our top 6 most effective learning methods below.

Teaching online may not have been the norm for most teachers before the COVID-19 pandemic, but there have always been some teachers who prefer to work online. Online tutors often enjoy the freedom of working from home, choosing their working hours, and being their own boss.

But what exactly does teaching online consist of? Essentially, it’s the process of educating others using the internet, whether that’s through individual or group video calls, webinars, or messaging platforms. Normally it’ll be a combination of things to keep students engaged.

If you’re thinking about teaching online, or your current job requires you to teach online, you’ll need to be comfortable with technology and the internet. This is because all of your communication will be online, and you’ll need to create digital resources for your students. These resources might be presentations, lesson plans, worksheets, videos or audio lectures.

The great thing about online learning is that it’s accessible to many people. Not everyone is able to go to school, but more people have access to the internet. Of course, technology can be a barrier to education too, but as the years go by, this barrier is, fortunately, breaking down.

The best place to start if you want to learn how to be an excellent online teacher is our highly rated How To Teach Online: Providing Continuity for Students course. You’ll learn how to successfully move from face-to-face teaching to online teaching so that you and your students get the most out of learning.

If you haven’t heard of experiential learning before, it’s the idea that learning is a product of experience. If it sounds like something that you might be interested in, we have a whole article that explores how to apply experiential learning in the classroom and beyond.

We can only gain experience from interacting and engaging with the world and people around us. This learning theory comes from David Kolb’s experiential learning cycle, and considers the role of all our experiences in learning, from emotions and cognition, to our environment.

Kolb’s 1984 theory suggests that there are four main stages in the learning cycle:

Experiential learning is a great teaching method because it encourages creativity, helps students learn from mistakes, fosters reflective thinking, and prepares students for future experiences. It can be effective for several subjects, especially during science experiments, sports coaching, and group projects.

Some simple ways to encourage experiential learning in your classroom include encouraging students to assess themselves regularly and reflect on what they’ve learnt. As a teacher, you might want to record yourself teaching or keep feedback journals so that you can reflect on previous lessons.

You can learn more about reflective practices in our open step by the British Council or delve into learning from experience in our open step by the University of South Wales.

Differentiated learning is a teaching method that tailors instructions to students depending on their individual needs. This method could be a great option if you’re teaching mixed-ability classes and want everyone to get the most out of each lesson. To become a pro at this teaching method, you can join our Differentiation for Learning course by STEM Learning.

This is a fairly traditional approach to teaching mixed-ability classes, but it can be successful if managed sensitively. For example, some teachers may choose to teach entirely different content depending on student ability. However, this can cause students to feel embarrassed and teachers to feel burned out from trying to do too much at once.

On this note, it’s important for teachers to ensure that they create an inclusive classroom where students of all abilities are welcome, regardless of gender, race, sexuality or disability. Differentiated learning should never be used to make some students feel inferior to others.

A better way to approach differentiation is to teach in a variety of ways, including books, films, images, and verbal presentations. This gives different students the opportunity to get involved and understand the lesson content. You can even go further than that and offer differentiated class activities and assessment styles.

For example, if the class topic is a Shakespeare play, you could allow students to demonstrate their understanding in a number of ways. They could write an essay, give an oral presentation, create an illustration or comic, or play to any other strengths they have.

The next teaching method we’ll be exploring is blended learning. Essentially, blended learning is a combination of traditional face-to-face learning and technology-based learning. Although blended learning did exist before the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s become more popular with schools and universities in the two years. You can read all about it in our blended learning blog post.

Using a blended learning model can be great for both students and teachers because it forms a middle ground between traditional and technology-based methods. It uses enough technology to keep students focused and interested, but it also provides opportunities for students to talk in-person to teachers and fellow classmates, which can be invaluable.

Some great examples of blended learning include:

It’s likely that blended learning models will become more predominant as time goes on and our physical and digital lives become increasingly interlinked. If you’re looking for a short course on the subject, you might be interested in our Blended and Online Learning Design course by UCL, or our Making Blended Education Work course by the University of Edinburgh and EMBED.

You may also be interested in our Introduction to HyFlex Learning and Teaching course by the University of Southern Queensland, Australia, which focuses on the innovative HyFlex teaching approach, a combination of hybrid and flexible methods.

If you want to focus on making your lessons more fun, engaging and interactive, then look no further. Game-based learning, also known as gamification,  is a great way to engage students, particularly those in primary and secondary education.

The definition of gamification is a strategy that implements game-like elements into non-gaming activities to enhance motivation. Since children are very interested in games, from video games and mobile applications to simple playground and board games, this can be a great place to start.

As we explore in our blog post about gamification in education, playing video games has been linked to dopamine production. So, incorporating some ideas from video games into education can actually have positive effects on the mood of students, making them more determined to succeed.

However, it is worth mentioning that gamification shouldn’t necessarily be used in every context. Sometimes, lessons require more serious discussions. In addition, too much game-based learning is likely to remove some of the fun and increased motivation that children feel.

Here are some of the ways you can incorporate game-based learning into your lessons:

You can find out more about Learning through Play in our course by Federation University.

You can probably guess what this approach focuses on – your students. While the success and happiness of students is always a high priority for teachers, student-centred learning is different to more traditional teaching methods.

Teacher-centred learning, which is more common, requires the teacher to give classroom instructions and lead the class for the majority of the time. With student-centred learning, students are given more opportunities to choose what they want to learn and how they want to learn it. This is also known as personalised learning.

In student-centred learning approaches, students are encouraged to take an active role in the classroom, rather than taking part in more passive activities like listening to a lecture or writing an essay. They will have lots of discussions with their peers and teachers, and they’ll also be encouraged to ask questions, which is linked to inquiry-based learning.

Some great examples of this kind of approach include students taking part in debates, small group projects, and fun roleplay scenarios together. As a teacher, it’s your job to be an excellent facilitator. You should encourage open communication, curiosity, creativity and exploration. At the end of a classroom activity, the teacher should urge students to reflect on what they’ve learnt.

What makes a great teacher? Well, there are no hard and fast rules to make a great teacher and different approach to teaching work for different people. Some teachers are in favor of showering praise on students to motivate them to work harder; while some consider praise to be causing harm to a child’s learning process. Telling your students what to do does not alone, means teaching. It’s more than that!

What differentiates a good teacher from a great one is the passion for teaching. And the passion has to be genuine. Faking the passion would lead to nowhere. It is believed that students can get along easily with a teacher they think carefully about what they are teaching.

Knowing your subject isn’t enough to make you a great teacher. Know the people you are teaching- what all they like in what you teach, their requirements and what they need to learn from you. Teachers should not get lost in the very important step towards effective teaching, i.e. know your students well.

Promising a secure environment for your students is important, to let them acknowledge what they don’t know and allow them to learn things. You, as a teacher, can create a safe and secure environment which will allow your students to take the risk to learn. Simple things like decorating classroom walls with students’ works can develop faith in students for their teacher.

A very obvious step to follow. Make all effort to build up a strong relationship with your students and it definitely has a lot to affect learning in the classroom. Good environment in the classroom with a thriving teacher-student relationship is a sign of a progressive classroom.

A great teacher can also be categorized as the one who has the ability to simplify complex learning into something that’s easily graspable to students. The biggest problem with most teachers is that they fail to realize if students understand them or not. Keeping the learning method simple and clear is important.

Good knowledge about your subject and how you deliver it in class alone doesn’t make you a great teacher. Managing classroom behavior includes managing students behavior in the class, proper usage of lesson time and optimal management of learning resources. All these points are as important as your knowledge on the subject you teach.

Just as you need a good relationship between you and your students to build up, an equally good relationship is required on the professional front too. Timely communication with parents, being supportive to colleagues equally affect student learning. How? Good relation with colleagues can open up new teaching methods. Whilst, communicating with parents is highly important for a student’s overall development.

A lot of teachers have the opinion that each student is comfortable with their own style of learning and it’s always better to encourage them to learn in their preferred style. Moreover, being a teacher, you have to keep updated about the latest teaching styles that can optimize the learning process.

• Model as you teach.
• Make mistakes.
• Work as a team.
• Encourage learning from experience.
• Let the students teach.
• Integrate technology into the classroom.
• Try graphic organizers.
• Emphasize behavior management.

There are many different approaches you can use in your classroom. Which ones will work best depends on your and your students’ preferences, as well as your schedule. Let’s take a look at some of the best strategies you can employ.

When presenting a new subject to your class, it helps to include a demonstration. While some students will be able to grasp a new concept by hearing the information alone, others — particularly visual learners — will need to see it.

In certain classes, this is practically required. For example, when you’re teaching a math unit, you’ll usually need to display your work on the board, or else your students will be completely lost. This is how the class can follow along with better comprehension.

Some students will need to see more than one example to get a good understanding. Make sure that you include several different demonstrations for each new unit, as repetition is a big part of committing new ideas to memory. You’ll see a big difference in visual students’ test scores when you implement this method.

Teachers are the ultimate resource for students when it comes to learning. When you are presenting your lesson plans, you usually show the right way to do things. This is a great way to introduce a concept, but you also want to solicit a more in-depth understanding.

A great way to do this is to make intentional mistakes and ask the class to fix them. If you’re an English teacher, you can write an excerpt on the board and riddle it with grammar mistakes. Instruct your students to identify these mistakes and rewrite the passage correctly.

This method requires kids to apply the knowledge they’ve gained in class. It also gives you a chance to evaluate how well each student comprehends the subject.

Once everyone has completed the assignment, you can review it as a class. Show each student how the passage should be written and address any questions that may arise.

Splitting the class up into different teams to complete an assignment is a teaching strategy that works wonders, especially at age groups where students insist on always working with their tight-knit circle of friends. Group assignments encourage teamwork and help your class to succeed.

For instance, in science, you can split the class into small groups for lab-based assignments and give each person a certain job to complete. You might have one person perform the experiment, another write notes, and someone else read instructions, for example.

Make sure to pair children who need extra support with those who have a better understanding of the material. This way, those who are stronger in the subject can share their knowledge to help their peers understand it better.

All in all, group work is a fun and interactive way to teach a lesson.

The best lessons often happen outside of the classroom. Getting out into the real world offers a new perspective for children and can help them gain a more profound understanding of what goes on in the classroom.

Studying the different types of fish in a local pond is an excellent example of learning from experience. You would start in class, going over the different species and how each animal contributes to the environment around it.

Once you’ve completed the lesson, take the class to the local pond. Have them search for the different animals you discussed in class. After locating each animal, they will be able to observe the roles discussed earlier in class.

Field trips like this offer valuable, real-world experiences to students. They’ll gain confidence and motivation in class since they will be able to see that everything they learn has a connection to the world around them.

Letting students lead the class in teaching requires preparation and a deep understanding of coursework. You can assign this task individually or break up students into groups.

The goal of this strategy is to get your students to display the knowledge they have and to share it with their classmates. In order to give a quality lesson, they will need to put extra time into making sure they fully comprehend the project. If they struggle in some areas, they will be motivated to ask questions in order to get the grade.

You can help students prepare for this assignment by offering a rubric that outlines the areas in which they’ll be graded. You might give points based on lesson length, preparation, and creativity. The weight of each section will depend on the project and your preferences. Some teachers also allow the class to grade a section of the assignment. If you choose to go this route, it can be helpful to pass out a scoring guide to the class. This way, each student knows how to grade the “teacher.”

Technology is perhaps the most powerful tool you have at your disposal. It’s an essential part of modern jobs and has a lot to offer in the way of education.

Computers, laptops, and tablets can allow you to enhance your lesson plans with online educational activities. There are several free resources that you can access with a simple Google search. Try looking up educational videos or playing free math and science games.

Your students will not only enjoy the time they spend online but also gain a deeper understanding of your classwork. Use all the resources you have at your disposal to your advantage — you’ll have a more engaged and motivated group of students as a result.

Graphic organizers such as pie charts and Venn diagrams are a great way to display information visually. When you ask your class to create one, your students will have to apply their knowledge in a visual way. This will also help them form connections and understand similarities and differences.

Behavior management is a big part of being a teacher. Teaching strategies often give you plenty of structure regarding how to teach a class, but not how to control it. If you are experiencing some behavioral problems in class, programs like Classcraft can help.

Built by a teacher, Classcraft blends games and storytelling to motivate students and make learning more fun. Included in its many features is the ability to deliver teacher-designed curriculum in the form of games and Quests; a choose-your-own-adventure. With this game, teachers can align the objectives with the desired behavior in class. For example, if you want to solicit higher grades on homework, you can offer experience (XP) rewards within the game.

With XP, students can level up their character and acquire new accessories and abilities. This incentivizes the positive behavior you are looking for. If you’d like, you can also discourage negative behaviors by locking students out of the game or taking away XP points.

This method is a great way to get students excited about doing well in class. It makes following the rules fun and solicits long-term behavioral improvement for many students. Teachers can also let their students play the quests at their own pace, so no one feels left behind or forgotten and teachers can easily give students extra support.

Visual aids such as smartboards and projectors can ramp up your lesson in class. Some children can absorb information and have a deep understanding of it from hearing a lecture alone. Others are visual learners and need a little something more.

Since you need to appeal to those learners as well, a visual guide will be your best friend. Try displaying informative graphics that relate to your lesson on the board or projector. Reference these illustrations as you speak to allow everyone in your class to get what they need out of the lesson.

Inquiry-based learning is a technique used to appeal to your students’ curiosity. Implementing it in the classroom means allowing the students to identify questions that interest them and to explore those questions in an educational setting.

Once your students have identified a topic of interest, they’ll need to research their chosen subject and deliver a presentation to the class. You must be there to offer support, such as by helping your students identify reliable online sources for research.