*This post is a guest post from Pornchanok Chalyata based in Thailand. She has been teaching English as an Additional Language, English, and Writing at Bromsgrove International School in Thailand for eight years.
Keeping students motivated, engaged, and responsive is a little tricky for even the best instructors around the world. It is simple to teach the same syllabi year after year without thinking about the current students’ interest level. However, the best curriculum still requires something new every so often to make both the teaching, as well as the learning, a fun experience.
In the present time of hi-tech advancements, almost everything has become digital. Nowadays, remote teaching is becoming a trend through which students from all over the world can acquire online lessons. This has become such a popular alternative that we can safely say that classroom teaching might become a thing of the past.
In a conventional classroom, teachers and learners arrive with a particular set of hopes and expectations shaped by past experiences. Although students might require some frequent or occasional reminders of what would be required of them, generally the experience for both the instructor and learner is familiar. However, for distant or online teaching, some completely new variables enter the equation. If those variables are not managed appropriately, they can likely cause frustration to both the instructor and the learner.
Therefore, it is important to make some learning strategies which are both fun and effective for the students. If teachers, as well as students, stay cognizant of refining the learning process, it becomes easier than ever to work in collaboration to keep lessons motivating and engaging. We will highlight some practical tips that can help remote learners and teachers engage with the learning process to make it fun.
- Employ the 5 W’s
These 5 W’s include who, what, why, when, and where. Challenge your learners to get creative and curious with 5 W’s. In this way, the students will not only learn, but will also have fun doing so.
- Ask for Opinions
Advance learning discourages cramming. Opinions about things and events are unique to everyone. Open up your syllabi and curriculum and have students select topics that relate to the required material. Invite them to explore the given subject and share their own opinions. In addition to fun, this activity will help your students become knowledgeable and conversant on the real-world happenings around them.
- Caption this
In the present time, students spend most of their time before screens such as mobile phones, desktops, tablets, and televisions. Through these different types of media, they are exposed to a lot of different types of information. Being an instructor, you can take the advantage of this. Challenge your pupils to caption the images that they see and get communicative with content.
4. Utilize Online Collaboration Methods
Teaching in remote areas can have a major advantage when you use online collaboration methods such as Belouga to help connect students and teachers from around the world. Online collaboration works well in making learning fun because it provides students with insight into other schools across the world and it also helps them to meet new people, especially when they’re learning from remote areas. There are many advantages of using online collaboration to make learning fun. These include:
- It allows students to see and learn about a different part of the world they may never visit.
- They get to meet new students and teachers from around the world.
- They are more engaged in the learning process because it’s different to the normal.
- They get to experience a much wider learning experience than what many other city schools may get to experience.
- They don’t lack in education or the ability to learn because online collaboration gives them this advantage and access to great resources.
Online collaboration is a great way to pique the interest of students in remote areas. Along with the other tips above, you can definitely incorporate all this and more to really bring the learning experience in a classroom to a whole new level. Learning can truly be a fun activity, for both instructors and learners. By incorporating some of these ideas, you can ensure that, through online learning and collaboration in Belouga, your students are engaged and that they will enjoy the learning process.