Never bore your students again .

5 Strategies to make learning interesting

I'll bet you've been there. You start a class by beginning to read information to your students, and you are met with bored, disinterested stares. It's obvious the students can't wait to be done with your class.

What do you think went wrong?

One reason is that your students don't see how what you're saying is relevant to them. And if they don't see from the beginning how your lesson matters, they may not be interested in what you have to say.

Your students are asking themselves: How do all these abstract concepts in Chemistry, Further Math, or Economics matter in Real Life?" Or, perhaps, "why does school even matter?

It’s a question of Why? Often times we are quick to going into the What of our subject, giving our students information about the subject, without taking time to explain "Why" the subject matters.

And not just for subjects, we must also do this for the topics that we teach under the subjects. We owe our students the duty to make them see the relevance of that topic.

For example, if you teach economics and you want to teach the topic, "Inflation", rather than merely reeling out an academic definition of inflation, you could start with a question, "what's your favorite imported biscuit?" Is the price you bought the biscuit last year, the same as this year? What do you think caused the price increase?

In doing this, your students begin to see how Inflation matters in their day-to-day lives, and you will more likely secure their interest in the topic. Once you have their interest and a bit of conversation going, you can then begin your lesson.

There’s a quote I love that aptly summarizes this principle, "a child’s mind is not (first) a container to be filled, but rather a fire to be kindled"

To more effectively teach students, our first goal should be to spark a fire of interest in them regarding the lesson, before we than progress to filling their minds with knowledge about it. And one way to spark their interest is to make them see why the subject matters.

So before you take your next lesson ask yourself: why should my students listen to me? How can I make them see the relevance of what I’m saying?

Once you establish why a subject or lesson matters to them, make sure to regularly repeat it over the course of time, particularly for subjects. Your students may forget with time why that subject matters, so you may need to remind them again and again until it sticks.

Remember, when you give knowledge to students who have no desire for it, it’s like putting a clothe on a line with no peg to hold it; it easily falls away when the wind blows.

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