Teachers are the pillars of the education system. A teacher can never be taken out of the equation and they play a pivotal role in shaping the future generation. Students are an equally important part of the equation and it is important that they understand the concepts, become practical, and learn the necessary life skills. How can teachers cater to all their students and make learning more effective?
Innovative teaching methods and creative strategies must be employed by teachers to make the classes interesting. Classroom activities are a great way to increase student engagement. If you teach online, some games and activities are specially designed for online classrooms.
Without further ado, let’s take a look at some of the activities that you can do to improve student engagement.
Classroom Activities To Increase Student Engagement
Regular classes can be boring and drab. This might make students doze off. Now that classes have moved online, it is even more difficult to capture your students’ attention. While teaching aids and presentations can add colors and appeal to the classroom, activities that would get your kids up and about are great to increase their critical thinking and participation.
This will help to bring a sense of satisfaction to both the students and the teachers.
1. Dumb charades
This is a popular game all over the world. As a teacher, you can create a list of the concepts that you have discussed in the class. If you are teaching online using an online teaching app, you can choose one student and then send them the concept. Ask the selected student to turn their video on and act out the concept using facial expressions and hand gestures (no talking). For the student to act this and for the other students to understand it, they must have a basic understanding of the concepts discussed in the class. Through this fun and interactive activity, you will be able to make the class more interesting and the students will pay more attention. It is a win-win situation.
2. Teacher Says
This is a spin-off of the famous game Simon Says. If you are teaching online, you can ask your students to turn their videos on for this game. The point of the game is to increase the concentration of students. Several orders are given by the teachers and d\the students are supposed to do them. The catch is that they should only follow the orders that start with “Teacher Says”. For example, if it is “Teacher says, pick a book”, everyone has to pick a book. At the same time, if it is just “pick a book” the students are not supposed to pick a book. The ones that do, are out of the game. This is fun, engaging and adds a little zest to the classroom.
3. Who Am I
Now that classes have moved online, the connection between the students might be less. They may not know their classmates well and the bonding might not be up to the mark. To curb this issue, you can play ‘Who Am I’. Make sure to conduct an introduction session where all the students introduce themselves. Post which, you ask questions based on the introduction. For example, if Student A is from Texas, has dark hair, and loves reading, you can give these clues and ask the class to guess who the person is. This way, the students would know about each other and is a great team-building activity.
4. ‘Ad’ hoc
This is a super fun activity that teachers can use in the classroom. Let us look at it through an example. If you are an English teacher and say, you are teaching Julius Caesar. You can ask your students to create an advertisement for Brutus or Brutus’ knife. This would require them to understand the character traits of Brutus. They should also understand the plot of the play. This way, the students learn and it is fun as well. This can be altered according to the subject that you teach.
Classroom activities are a great way to make the classes fun and interactive. A lot of teachers think that online classes cannot be made interesting. This is a misconception. You can always make the classes more engaging by being creative and thinking outside the box. Some of the ideas were discussed here. We will be back with more interesting content. Stay tuned.