Teaching English without teaching English
Bring the Real World Into the Classroom
Students will engage more deeply in structuring lessons if
the classroom material relates to their real world/everyday life. Always strive
for high practical relevance. Students need to be shown concrete examples and
see how academic topics relate to them; thus making the concepts less abstract
and scary.
You can talk about your experiences, bring up current events
or ask students to talk about family values or beliefs. Current events are not
only tools for Social Studies teachers! Incorporate guest speakers to bring a
face to the subject and demonstrate how children can apply what they have
learned in the classroom to real life or a potential future career. Field trips
are among the creative ways to energize and engage
students to optimize learning.
Media is the main tool used by teachers to bring the real
world into the classroom. With the help of YouTube, streaming videos, podcasts,
and news feeds, it is much easier to bring the material to life and gain the
students’ interest. Students can satiate their natural curiosities by
researching related topics via the Internet. You may also want to use national
or international online news networks to discover topics of interest and open
the classroom to the wider world. Leverage social media to make their
interactions with the real world interactive. They can add comments to
articles, and tweet and blog their opinions on global and local issues. Seeing
their comments read by thousands, and having others respond – possibly from
across the globe – will empower them!
Your lessons plans should inspire creativity, imagination,
and the motivation to pursue self-initiated learning in the student. To this
end, the following points are all interconnected. They all have the same
objective – engaging the student. Making learning fun and meaningful for
students requires developing different strategies for each grade level. A high
school teacher requires different strategies from an elementary school teacher
to keep the attention of restless teenagers.
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