Guest Post By Jessica Robinson

“A good teacher can inspire hope, ignite the imagination, and instill a love of learning” – Brad Henry

As teachers, you aspire to handover all the knowledge you have, to your students. Not only this, you also wish to open their hearts to learning, so that they become lifelong learners, who learn not only from books but also from everything they experience and everyone they meet. But, for your mission to become successful, your students must be interested in learning. If they don’t have a keen interest in learning, they won’t gather the knowledge you shower on them, properly. Also, they’ll not put forth any effort to learn by themselves. So, to make your students capable of gathering the knowledge you shower, you should first ignite their interest in learning. Now, let’s discuss how you can do that successfully.

1. Make classroom learning fun for your students

Children always want to do something fun. They never refuse to perform a task, if some fun element is present in it. This implies that you can easily ignite your students’ interest in learning if you make it fun for them. Now, the question is how can you make classroom learning fun for your students? There are different ways to do so and the most effective one is to teach via gaming.

For example, if you are a Science teacher, you can play Pictionary with your students to help them learn different diagrams. To play this game, you just have to divide your students into two or three teams and then you have to draw science diagrams on the board. After this, you have to make the teams, guess the name of the diagram one by one. The team who guesses the answer correctly earns a point. In the end, the team with the maximum number of points wins the game. This is one example, other than this, you can also play charades with your students. If you are an English teacher, you can tell some of your students to enact the different characters they have read about in their textbook and others have to guess it. This is another example of how you can incorporate gaming in teaching.

These are just two examples of games but there are many others which you can play with them. To learn about more such games, you can search the internet and find suitable games to play with your students according to your subject.

2. Assign game based homework

Now, after discussing how you can make classroom learning fun for your students, let’s discuss how you can make home learning fun for them. Although making homework fun for your students seems to be a daunting task, it is actually not. You can easily make homework interesting for your students by making it game-based. This is simply because playing games is perhaps every child’s favorite thing to do. So, you can ignite your students’ interest in learning by assigning online game based homework to them. For this, you can visit different online educational gaming websites and note down the different games which you can assign as homework to your students, according to the subject you teach. FunBrain.com, ABCYa.com, and Commonsense.org are some online educational gaming websites that you can visit for this purpose.

3. Connect with your students on an emotional level

Students naturally become interested in learning what you teach, if you are their favorite teacher. To become your students’ favorite teacher you don’t have to do much. All you have to do is to develop an emotional connection with them. By doing so, you can captivate their hearts and their love for you will make them fall in love with learning too. Further, you can utilize the tips given below to connect with your students on an emotional level:

● Have cordial interactions with your students and try to know them individually:

To connect with your students on an emotional level, you should have cordial interactions with them. By doing so, you get to know your students well and they get to know more about you too. This leads to the formation of an emotional connection between you and your students.

Further, to enhance the impact of these interactions, even more, you can narrate your childhood experiences to your students. This will stimulate them to share their childhood experiences with you too. As a result, you and your students will connect with each other at an emotional level.

● Let your students know that you are always available for them:

Sometimes, children are going through a lot in their personal lives. For example, some of your students may be stressed about family problems going on in their lives. Although they may seem normal from the outside, such problems may actually be impacting them on a deeper level within. They may be too stressed from the inside. But, they may not express it to anyone and keep suffering silently, which is not good for them. It can hamper their overall well-being for life by exposing them to chronic stress and anxiety.

So, to prevent this from happening, you should lend a helping hand and let them know that you are always there for them. They can share their life problems and troubles with you in person. By doing so, you’ll stimulate the formation of an emotional connection between you and your students. Along with this, you’ll also get the opportunity to soothe troubled little hearts.

4. Make use of smart teaching tools

The use of technology is an interesting way to ignite your students’ interest in learning. This is simply because technology fascinates everyone, both adults and children alike. So, with the usage of technology, you can easily captivate your students’ attention in class and incite their curiosity in learning. Further, Smartboards, Tablets, and Document cameras are some examples of smart technology tools that you can utilize while teaching in class.

5. Portray an influential body language

We all are made up of energy. We receive energy from others and also transmit our energy to them. So, if you appear lazy or inattentive in class, your students will receive your energy and they’ll not be interested in learning. Now, you may say that the vice versa may happen too i.e if your students are lazy, you may catch their energy. But, at most times, if we are conscious, we have the choice of whether we wish to let certain energy impact us or not. As adults, we have the power to make this choice consciously. Even if your students appear lazy and inattentive, you can keep radiating your enthusiasm to them. As a result, they’ll soon start matching your enthusiasm and become interested in learning.

Further, portraying an influential body language is the most powerful way to appear energetic and enthusiastic in front of your students. To cultivate an influential body language, you can watch YouTube videos on this subject and also try reading at least one good book on body language. The Definitive Book of Body Language, What Every Body Is Saying and The Dictionary of Body Language are three of the most popular books in this genre.

6. Show them the practical applications of what they learn

Have you ever wondered why students are more interested in visiting the computer lab and then, learning there about computers rather than reading a computer book in class? It is because, in the computer lab, they can actually see the practical applications of what they are learning, in front of their eyes. This ignites their interest in learning. Similarly, if you show them the practical applications of everything you teach, they’ll naturally become interested in learning. For this purpose, you can make use of YouTube videos. Whenever you teach a concept, you can play a YouTube video of one of its interesting applications and fuel your students’ interest in learning.

These are some smart tips that can help you open your students’ hearts to learning. They are easy to implement and really fruitful. Hoping that soon you’ll end up making your students actually interested in learning. Wish you a Happy Teaching!