Increasing student interested is the critical to any effective classroom. Without this component, both students and teachers lose out on a chance to really create something together in the classroom. Getting students to "buy in" to their own learning is the eventual reward of increasing their interest level.
Goodwin and Hubbell (2013) give us many ways in which we can do this.
1) Hook Students Interests:
4) Build lessons around mysteries and puzzles: Build suspense and pique curiosity instead of coming right out with the answers.
Anecdote: One of the ways that I make history more exciting is sharing “This day in history” tidbits in class, either verbally or placing them on the board after the learning objective. I recently purchased a book entitled Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories from History by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie that is essentially a collection of stories of some known but mostly unknown women who did remarkable (see daring/unusual) things in history. Imagine the intrigue if I were to start a class with “Once upon a time, there lived a beautiful princess who wasn’t afraid to cheat, deceive, seduce or murder anyone who got in their way”? More and more our jobs have become a form of “edutainment” where students will lose interest if they do not find what they are learning interesting (Medina, 2008). If I can find facts or stories related to what we are currently studying, I can hopefully get students to stop tuning out some of the uninteresting content and look at more than the “lion under the tree” (Goodwin & Hubbell).
Goodwin and Hubbell (2013) give us many ways in which we can do this.
1) Hook Students Interests:
- Ask questions: at the beginning of a lesson ask a question that might pique students interests and curiosity (ex: "Whats wrong with this picture?", "what will happen next?", "What do you think?")
- Issue a challenge
- Use Novelty
- Sing a song
- Ask a question
- Change the lesson format
- Provide multiple ways to present information (song, Google PPT, Prezi, Poster, etc)
4) Build lessons around mysteries and puzzles: Build suspense and pique curiosity instead of coming right out with the answers.
Anecdote: One of the ways that I make history more exciting is sharing “This day in history” tidbits in class, either verbally or placing them on the board after the learning objective. I recently purchased a book entitled Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories from History by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie that is essentially a collection of stories of some known but mostly unknown women who did remarkable (see daring/unusual) things in history. Imagine the intrigue if I were to start a class with “Once upon a time, there lived a beautiful princess who wasn’t afraid to cheat, deceive, seduce or murder anyone who got in their way”? More and more our jobs have become a form of “edutainment” where students will lose interest if they do not find what they are learning interesting (Medina, 2008). If I can find facts or stories related to what we are currently studying, I can hopefully get students to stop tuning out some of the uninteresting content and look at more than the “lion under the tree” (Goodwin & Hubbell).