The importance of effective teaching methods can never be overemphasized. These are methods that help teachers create an enjoyable and productive classroom experience for students where they can conveniently learn academically and socially. There are many approaches that a teacher could use to support students who have diverse interests, learning capacities, and abilities.
Therefore, if you’re a teacher or an expert in the education realm, learning about new instructive strategies would greatly benefit you in maximizing your students’ chances of success in your classroom.
In this article on Ngschoolboard.com, we’ll explore what teaching methods are, the five types of effective teaching methods, and the benefits of these methods. So, sit back and get ready for a value-packed reading!
What are Effective Teaching Methods?
Effective Teaching approaches are several ways to teach and instruct students in a learning environment, assisting them to understand and remember what they’ve been taught. Some of the best teaching approaches allow you to convey information clearly and succinctly while ensuring that your students retain that information over the long term.
If your students can understand facts on a deep level and practice their teachings properly in the classroom, they will be able to apply that wisdom and those abilities and skills to their daily l lives and their future careers.
Moreover, the use of unique teaching techniques can help students learn in an enjoyable, motivating, and engaging way. They aid you in fulfilling your responsibility of guiding the social and emotional development of your pupils.
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By using the appropriate strategies, you can also instill values of empathy, respect, and cultural sensitivity into your students, making your classroom experience convenient and value-packed.
Additionally, you use effective teaching approaches to prepare your students for standardized examinations. However, there are several teaching methods, so you should ensure you adopt one that suits your classroom philosophies and principles and especially your school mission statement.
5 Types of Effective Teaching Methods In Teaching Secondary School Children
As a teacher, you can employ a variety of techniques in the classroom. Many of them share a common goal, so you can combine different teaching techniques to better meet the demands of your students.
Listed below are five common strategies to take into account.
1. Differentiated Instruction
This has to do with the idea of creating unique education plans for your students based on their various needs. This could relate to how your students access information, what they do, how you assess them, or even how your classroom is physically set up.
Everyone has different skills and talents, therefore, it’s advantageous for you to customize your teaching instructions in a way all your students would comprehend. This would also help in supporting students with disabilities and ensuring they feel relaxed, welcome, and comfortable to learn in that academic environment.
Below are a few ways you can use this differentiated instruction;
- Provide reading books or other materials for different levels.
- Create a special spelling list for your students with different spelling skills or assimilation levels.
- Organize a chit-chat session regularly to constantly advise your students.
- For students struggling with one challenge or the other, offer them one-on-one after-school help to overcome their problems.
- Speak to the parents about your student’s progress and offer at-home teaching methods they can employ to help them.
- Projects, portfolios, and involvement are some of the different ways you can use to gauge your students’ progress.
2. Traditional Lecture-based Learning
This is also one of the most effective teaching methods you can employ. This type of learning approach is the traditional way of structuring your classroom learning experience by using a lecture format. That is, you would have to explain lectures to your students while they observe.
You will have to teach a lesson by discussing, demonstrating, and modeling various aspects of the topic. Students can then observe your moves, listen, take notes, and copy your demonstrations while you lecture. Note that you can always tailor this conventional approach to suit your style and learning environments.
Here are some strategies you can use to make this Lecture-based Instruction successful:
● Keep lessons brief: Students, especially those at a young age, don’t have long attention spans and might only be able to focus and concentrate for short periods. It will be beneficial to you and them to keep classroom lectures short to have your student attention and engagement.
● Allocate time for questions: Although lecture-based learning is part of the effective teaching methods that are teacher-centered, you can still allow your students to input one or two by making time for questions before, during, and after the presentation. While this can make the lecture time longer, however, it greatly helps your students to engage with the material, understand it, and remember it easily.
● Create and Design instructional videos: You can also make use of flipped classroom approaches that allow your students to watch lectures or instructional videos at home and attempt their assignments in class. This can be a great avenue to let students learn at their pace, as they can see those learning videos again by playing them backward and forth
● Use visual cues: Using visual aids in lectures, such as icons, photographs, and videos, can be a fantastic method to keep your students interested in the topic, whether they are in or out of the classroom. Also, be sure to utilize high-contrast colors, bold shapes, and lines to allow your students to see clearly and understand your lectures.
● Encourage handwritten notes: For those students who are capable, encouraging handwriting notes on paper is a great approach to help them maintain concentration throughout lectures. Additionally, it would also enhance their spelling and writing abilities and also aid their information retention ability.
3. Kinesthetic Learning
Another important learning approach that’s part of the effective teaching methods you can use is Kinesthetic learning. It is a type of learning approach that encourages you to teach using movements. You can move around the classroom and gesticulate while you present to engage students visually and kinesthetically.
Additionally, you can also encourage your students to perform physical activities where they can move around, shake their bodies, think, and use their creativity.
Here are some Kinesthetic Learning ideas:
● Building: Building different structures using blocks, toys, or other materials can aid in the development of your students’ hand-eye coordination and critical thinking abilities. It will also help them have fun and enhance their concentration span in class.
● Drawing: Drawing is another popular class activity that you can use to make learning more interesting for your students. Students can be given the liberty to create an idea and use various colors and tools to bring their thinking to life.
● Playing: Playing sports is a typical example of kinesthetic learning, and many schools offer gym programs so that students may get active and spend time outside. In the classroom, you can also play instructional sports games so that your students can move around and learn at the same time.
● Acting: This is another fantastic way to include kinesthetic learning into collaborative tasks for your students. Students, particularly the younger ones, will enjoy creating and assuming different roles during drama performances. This will enhance their comprehension and creativity and help them discover themselves more.
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4. Self-learning:
Although group projects and learning can be fun for students, it’s equally important to encourage self-learning so that they can attempt their assignments themselves, thus enhancing their problem-solving abilities. Giving students time to read, analyze, and reflect on their reading material helps to develop their thoughts and boost their brains.
This teaching approach is part of the effective teaching methods, and it will come in handy during a class discussion as students come to the class prepared with their remarks. You can also award points for writing tasks to students who are unable to engage in class discussions due to shyness.
5. Expeditionary Learning
Expeditionary learning is an effective teaching process that encourages learning through participating in practical experiences. These experiences could be assignments, theories, case studies, lab tests, or field trips to notable places around the school and in the community.
For instance, you might take a trip to a nearby zoo to expose the students to the different types of animals. This teaching approach will help your students to apply their classroom knowledge and skills to the real world.
Advantages of Using Effective Teaching Methods in Teaching Secondary School Children
Applying different effective teaching approaches can make your work as a teacher simpler and more productive. Highlighted below are some benefits of these methods:
- Effective Teaching approaches allow you to effectively teach your students and help them build their learning abilities.
- It also allows you to properly plan your educational content to suit your student’s needs and to make your work efficient and error-free.
- Adopting a working teaching method also helps you build connections with your students. It allows you to govern your classroom well and have fun with your students while impacting them.
- It also helps you to discover the right teaching styles that yield better performance for your students.
Conclusion
The importance of effective teaching methods lies in the adaptability of those methods. Therefore, there’s no particular method that can work for all.
You can always customize any of those methods to align with the unique demands of students, the subject, and the setting of your classroom. We have provided you with five effective methods, so try them out and see what works best for you.
