Teaching Tip Tuesday: Students Love Variety/Change it Up

Changing Up Your Teaching- Adding Variety to Your Classroom and Lessons

1. Break it up: listening, activity, listening, activity

In the article, "Use Variety to Engage Students" by Marie Amaro, she states that young people listen for about half their age (example: age 12- 6 minutes, age 16- 8 minutes, etc.), so change the activity up.

2. Work in groups of 2, 3, 4, or on a team instead of individually every time. 
How can you decide who is going to be in your group quickly? Use Flippity Name Picker by pasting names into a spreadsheet, and Flippity will automatically group students into pairs, groups of 2, 3, 4, 5, or teams.

3. Make jokes every so often. 

Add some humor to your lesson. It breaks up the lecture when humor can be added in.

4. Use stories- 

According to educator and psychologist, Annie Murphy, you should try to capture your ideas in a narrative when presenting ("The Science of Attention..."). 

Why should you use stories, and how should you incorporate stories in your lesson? 

Read this great article by Edutopia here.

5.  Use a startling fact or bring in a quote. 

Use something that will capture your audience.

 "Lincoln really was a wrestler. Lincoln was documented as taking part in wrestling bouts. We don’t think he wore a mask or had a manager."

6. Hold your class in a different location. 

This is easy to try! Why not hold class or part of class in the library, auditorium, cafeteria, outside, in an unused room, or in the hallway?

Need more ideas?
*add a game
*use new or a variety of resources/materials
*student choice- let students choose how to show they understand the lesson, let students choose how they learn, etc.
*hook your students in the beginning of the lesson
*team teach with students
*have discussions
*let students move around


Check out these great sites on changing it up.
https://blog.gaijinpot.com/5-ideas-for-freshening-up-your-lessons/
https://www.edutopia.org/classroom-student-participation-tips
https://blog.tophat.com/10-proven-ways-engage-students/
http://pedagogy.merlot.org/TeachingStrategies.html
https://sites.google.com/a/brenhamk-12.net/instructionalawesomeness/edcamp-evaluation/strategies