Use a range of teaching resources to grab your students attention
With the on-going development of modern-day technologies like tvs, computer games and game consoles, grabbing children’s interest with the ‘standard’ classroom lesson has grown into a far more difficult task. Nonetheless, with the addition of a range of teaching resources to the classroom, this task turns into something which is simpler and much more achievable.
So, why begin using teaching resources?
Teachers should deliver both lively and stimulating lessons to make sure that their pupils not only engage in the learning process, but want to engage in it. Needless to say, a teacher’s ability does play a large role in lesson quality and also enjoyment. Nevertheless, the added help of teaching resources raises the teacher’s odds of getting students more active in the lessons, and learn more from them as a result. By undertaking plenty of research on the internet, teachers will discover a wide range of teaching resources available that will give their lessons the excitement, variety as well as the ‘interest’ factor.
Teaching resources will be advantageous not just to the pupil, but to the teacher as well. The definition of ‘teach’ is to ‘show or explain to (someone) how to do something.’ Consequently, if the students don’t understand what they’ve been shown, then in theory, the teacher has failed in their job. With the help of teaching resources, there is some level of guarantee that the student will grasp at least some fundamental degree of understanding – consequently increasing not only student satisfaction but teacher satisfaction likewise.
What teaching resources are on the market?
There’s a wide range of teaching resources out there, for different subjects, different age groups and different ability levels. Discussed below are a few advice on what type of teaching resources should be used (and how they should be used) for young groups of learners.
1. Teaching resources should imitate things which interest children.
If you try to teach your students numeracy with ordinary numbers or literacy with the standard alphabet only, young children especially aren’t going to see any good reason why they should learn about these subjects. They’ll immediately view them as boring or useless, and have no motivation whatsoever to get involved in the learning process.
Nevertheless by utilizing teaching resources that imitate their favourite food or favourite animal for instance, they should want to pay attention and also show some interest into what the lesson is actually about (definitely more so than if they saw a normal number or letter on a standard white board anyway.)
Try food for example. We all love food (youngsters especially) and it’s something they come face to face with every day. Using teaching resources that imitate their favourite sweets, cakes or ice-creams will stimulate their minds (it’s something they’re familiar with) and grab their focus instantly. What’s more, the learning process continues outside of classroom time whenever they see or experience those certain things. Additionally it is worth using teaching resources that imitate healthy food also, such as vegatables and fruits, so as to promote the healthy eating concept.
2. Teaching resources should be bright and colourful
Through life, whatever age, colourful objects will always be much more eye-grabbing as well as interesting to observe compared to objects that are dull and drab (and therefore unexciting.) This fact applies even more so to younger children. So that you can bring about the learning process, eye-catching teaching resources should be put into use by the teacher.
When teaching numeracy for example, a number line with plenty of different colours (perhaps a different colour for each number from 1-10 or 10-20) is going to be a much more appealing teaching resource than if it was in black or white only. A multiplication table could be colour coded, helping children remember different sets of their times tables. Without the colour factor, children just aren’t going to want to learn.
The same applies for teaching literacy – a bright and colourful alphabet on the wall is going to be a lot more interesting to look at than an alphabet that is plain and ‘text-book.’ Reading verbs or short sentences (which can be quite challenging for young children) is made more exciting with a variety of colours. If a teacher wants to succeed, then he/she must employ teaching resources that are vibrant, vivid and full of colour.
The article author works closely with Sweet Counter, a company that design colourful child-centred teaching resources to teach specific key concepts. They are designed as a fun as well as hands-on approach to learning to bring lessons alive.
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