Effective strategies to engage students in Learning

Effective strategies to engage students in Learning

Annapoorni Balan Principlal IUEF SECRETARY GENERAL for Pooma Educational Trust and The UN Volunteers.
                   
Real life examples

One of the easiest ways to make students feel personally connected to the subject they are being taught is to talk about how they can apply the concepts in real life. To gain full engagement of a student, it is important that students find the activities meaningful and interesting. Real life examples can be given for topics such as the formation of a rainbow, propagation of sound, projectile motion etc.

Establish a sense of competence

The thought of competence can be understood as a student’s current personal evaluation of whether they can thrive in a learning activity or a challenge. Many activities can strengthen a student’s sense of competence in learning activities. Like making students demonstrate the understanding through activity or including feedback that helps students to make progress.

Use students interest and fascinations

If we find out what students are interested and passionate about, then we can use those interests as natural motivators to increase engagement. Whether a student is focused on one thing or has a few areas of interest, there are many simple strategies we can use to engage them in learning activities. For example, if a student is interested in math we can ask him or her to draw the diagram or pattern that relates to his or her particular area of interest.
Questions and answers

When it comes to curiosity, it is the question that engages the students and not the answer. The answer should reward the student’s hard work because it is the solving that makes the result more satisfying and exciting. Curiosity starts the journey and motivates a student to keep going, no matter how hard the path.
Mnemonics

Students can learn and use special phrases that can help them remember certain information. For example, students learning the Periodic Table can remember the elements “He Li Be B C N O F Ne” using the following mnemonics:
Here Lies Benjamin Bones. Cry Not Oh Friend Needlessly.
This strategy can also help students in learning vocabulary. For example, a student can learn the scientific name of frog which is ‘Ranidae’ using the word ‘rain’ as a keyword imagining a picture of a Frog sitting in a rain.