Are you struggling to keep your students interested during science class? Don’t worry, you’re not alone.
When you’re struggling with distractions, it can be a challenge to get your students to focus fully on your lesson. Finding ways to make learning authentic, valuable and relevant encourage students to be more engaged during science. Integrating blended learning tools into your curriculum will help keep your class interested.
Here are five tips that we have to help get and keep your students engaged:
- Role-play
When students engage in role-play, their self-esteem grows exponentially. They will gain scientific knowledge during the process. Learning to both think and behave like scientists allows them to experiment, ask you questions and to make informed decisions too. The experiments you engage in do not have to be lengthy or in-depth even the simplest experiments that don’t require a big budget will suffice. The possibilities are really endless and your students will be talking about their experience for days to come.
Role-play makes things more fun and interesting. It also gives your class the opportunity to explore topics they’re interested in. There are countless experiments to choose from, give your class a few options and allow them to choose the lesson for themselves. That will naturally keep their attention too.
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- Incorporate interactive technology
Interactivity has been proven to keep a student’s attention at any age. Transform passive reading or listening lessons to something more fun and engaging, such as video tutorials for various science classes. They offer activities, learning videos, quizzes, and much more that can make science more interesting. These activities also provide them instant feedback and the ability to ask questions when they may not be understanding the topic being discussed.
These videos incorporate multimedia content, which keeps students engaged. With videos, animation, and photos, the students will receive the information in a way that makes it more interesting. They also provide a way to get interactive feedback, which allows students to explore learning these topics and to feel more connected. They also allow you as their teacher to watch your students to be engaged in the lesson naturally. Talk about a win-win!
- Student-directed learning
Every student has a different learning style and will learn at a different pace. As a teacher, this makes things interesting. How can you teach topics that may not be the most interesting for the class and actually get them to retain the information? For some students, traditional lectures may be too fast and for more advanced students, boring and slow.
A good way of addressing this in your classroom is to mix in activities and assignments that students can work on at their own pace. Allowing your students to control how and when they work will help to make sure that all of your students feel engaged and no one feels left behind or overwhelmed.
- Connect your lessons to real life.
Science can provide a context to prior knowledge in a variety of topics. By finding ways to connect your lesson to real life, you can be assured that your class is retaining the lesson. A student has an “ah-ha” moment when they are able to connect new information to a past experience. This makes learning more meaningful for your students.
By finding a way to connect your lesson to your students’ daily lives, you allow them to be touched by these topics. When they understand what they’re being taught, they are naturally more engaged. Hands down! Use specific everyday examples. This is a great way to help your students to feel personally connected to what they’re being taught. This can easily be done by finding the right tutor flyer templates online, where you can put all the information needed for projects and then share it with others.
- Incorporate their interests.
When it comes to science, exploration is a major player in how students grasp and enjoy science. Create assignments that will peak your classes’ interests. For instance, many students enjoy playing on tablets or smartphones. Create assignments that pertain to this technology such as an assignment to create an app that would make their daily life easier. This opportunity can open their eyes to a variety of careers they may be interested in in the STEM field too.
Keep Science Fun
Ultimately, when you make an effort to engage your students in learning, they will retain the material much easier and will be able to focus on all of their classes much easier. This leads to a positive learning experience overall. We as teachers have an important role in finding ways to motivate our students and to encourage them to want to excel in their science studies. Attending online job training courses in the field of education could help you become an even better teacher. When your students see a teacher who is knowledgeable, passionate and excited about science, they will want to be too!
This article was written by Vincent Rubin.
He is a life coach with 7 years of experience with a focus on family relationships. In his free time, he likes to read and spend time with his family doing outdoor activities. Right now he is focused on sharing his expertise with a wider audience through his writing.