The direct instruction portion of your lesson can turn stale in an instant. As students, we've all been there. We've all listened to teachers talk on and on during lectures as we slowly doze off or daydream to distract ourselves from how obscenely bored we are. It's important to keep our students interested and engages because that is when learning happens! Here are some toolbox tidbits for keeping your students engaged during instruction.
Keep Lectures Short and Sweet:
Make sure that your lectures are an appropriate length. How long is too long? Use the age of your students as a guide. 14 years old= 14 minutes, 10 years old= 10 minutes, and so on. This doesn't mean you can only have lecture time for 14 or 10 minutes total. This only means that if your students are 10 and you lecture or 10 minutes, you need to have students complete a task or activity to keep them engaged for the next 10 minutes. This formula helps you to evaluate the maximum amount of time you should give direct instruction or a lecture before switching gears.
The 80/20 Rule:
It may be hard to imagine only giving direct instruction for as many minutes as their age, but it makes more sense once you implement the 80/20 rule. Greater learning occurs when you have your students do most of the talking. As educators, our job is to facilitate learning and guide students to thorugh the learning process. Talking at the student for too long achieves very little. Instead, we should be talking with the students and encouraging them to talk to each other. Using the 80/20 rule simply means that the instructor should only be talking for 20% of the time while the students should be talking for 80% of the class time. Keeping to this ratio creates a more engaging and proactive class.
Open Board Technique:
When writing on a chalkboard or whiteboard, it is important to use open board technique. This is when you continue to face the class and keep your body open while writing on the board. Instinctually, we want to completely face the board while writing, but educators need to monitor the class at the same time. You might be asking "how can I monitor the class and write on the board at the same time? I don't have eyes in the back of my head!" By using open board technique, your body language tells your class that you're still watching them. It is when you turn completely around that students believe that you are not paying attention. Notice how in figure 1 the teacher is writing while being attentive to the class. In figure 2, the teacher is completely turned around and unable to attend to the class.
Hand to Ear Choral Response:
One way to keep students engaged is to pose questions. Aksing the whole class a question usually results in only one person's response. However, by having the class chorally answer questions, we can hear from more than one student at a time. Raise a hand to your ear to gesture that you want to hear from the whole class out loud. For the first few times, you may have to verbally tell your students that you want to hear the answer out loud in unison. However, after consistently using the gesture, students will start to associate the hand-to-ear gesture as a call to answer the question out loud.
These are just a few toolbox tidbits that can keep your students' attention and greatly enhance your instruction. Consider adding these to your teaching toolbox!😄
Keep Lectures Short and Sweet:
Make sure that your lectures are an appropriate length. How long is too long? Use the age of your students as a guide. 14 years old= 14 minutes, 10 years old= 10 minutes, and so on. This doesn't mean you can only have lecture time for 14 or 10 minutes total. This only means that if your students are 10 and you lecture or 10 minutes, you need to have students complete a task or activity to keep them engaged for the next 10 minutes. This formula helps you to evaluate the maximum amount of time you should give direct instruction or a lecture before switching gears.
The 80/20 Rule:
It may be hard to imagine only giving direct instruction for as many minutes as their age, but it makes more sense once you implement the 80/20 rule. Greater learning occurs when you have your students do most of the talking. As educators, our job is to facilitate learning and guide students to thorugh the learning process. Talking at the student for too long achieves very little. Instead, we should be talking with the students and encouraging them to talk to each other. Using the 80/20 rule simply means that the instructor should only be talking for 20% of the time while the students should be talking for 80% of the class time. Keeping to this ratio creates a more engaging and proactive class.
Open Board Technique:
When writing on a chalkboard or whiteboard, it is important to use open board technique. This is when you continue to face the class and keep your body open while writing on the board. Instinctually, we want to completely face the board while writing, but educators need to monitor the class at the same time. You might be asking "how can I monitor the class and write on the board at the same time? I don't have eyes in the back of my head!" By using open board technique, your body language tells your class that you're still watching them. It is when you turn completely around that students believe that you are not paying attention. Notice how in figure 1 the teacher is writing while being attentive to the class. In figure 2, the teacher is completely turned around and unable to attend to the class.
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| Figure 1 Open board technique! |
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| Figure 2 Closed board technique |
Hand to Ear Choral Response:
One way to keep students engaged is to pose questions. Aksing the whole class a question usually results in only one person's response. However, by having the class chorally answer questions, we can hear from more than one student at a time. Raise a hand to your ear to gesture that you want to hear from the whole class out loud. For the first few times, you may have to verbally tell your students that you want to hear the answer out loud in unison. However, after consistently using the gesture, students will start to associate the hand-to-ear gesture as a call to answer the question out loud.
These are just a few toolbox tidbits that can keep your students' attention and greatly enhance your instruction. Consider adding these to your teaching toolbox!😄