5 Tips Teachers Can Follow to Improve their Teaching Style
You enjoy teaching as a passionate educator. But, on the other hand, do your students like learning the way you teach?
One of the most critical aspects of teaching is accommodating students’ learning styles and preferences and making learning enjoyable. Doing so encourages kids to pay more attention to the process and retain what they’ve learned.
Due to the Coronavirus outbreak, thousands of pupils and educators have been forced to rethink how they will transact in the learning process in the time ahead. For instance, many schools have taken the hybrid (online+offline) route, while some schools will have fully online classes and some fully offline for a specific age group.
Nevertheless, no matter the teaching mode, teachers are often under pressure to adapt to the changing demands from learning. Therefore, improving their teaching styles becomes a key parameter to their success in the field.
This article sees five tips that teachers can follow to improve their learning skills:
1 Mastering tech-assisted learning
Thanks to the pandemic, your students will become more tech-savvy than they have ever been. As a result, you must keep up with them as their teachers. Updating yourself with technology could include mastering teaching software or including practical aspects like social media into your teaching routine. As a result, you’d have an easier time capturing the trainees’ attention.
There are plenty of fantastic online resources available for educators, including the popular quiz-making program Kahoot—perfect for competitive kids who can do their best to respond the fastest and receive the most points.
For example, the app Study Blue is helpful because it allows teachers to generate study materials and flashcards for their students while simultaneously utilising the materials during their revision.
Other scopes for mastering tech include being fluent with popular video conferencing apps such as Google Meet, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or other digital dashboard apps such as Google Classrooms and so on, whatever applies.
After you have an intermediate level of technical expertise, you can explore using digital game-based learning in your classroom, such as Minecraft. You can help your students fully participate in the learning process by mastering technology and improving their creativity and teamwork with your technical understanding.
2 Trust your students with essential responsibilities
Your responsibilities as a teacher are not confined to ensuring that your students pass their exams with excellent grades. You must also ensure that they have sufficient social skills for their future.
Students also enjoy being thought of as trustworthy individuals. It boosts their self-assurance and confidence. Therefore, as a part of your classroom, encourage students to take on different initiatives and projects. Make them aware that you’re still willing to assist them, but they must initiate the process themselves. In this way, you will help cultivate the vital skill of accountability in them.
3 Continue to make learning more interesting
The days of simply presenting information from books are long gone. Today, to be a successful teacher, you should think out of the box and incorporate all kinds of offline and online materials to help spice up your lessons.
Please remember, you have visual, auditory, reading/writing, and kinetic learners—all the different types of learners—to teach in a typical classroom. Hence, ensuring that your teaching style caters to all these types of learners is crucial.
What about some takeaways from a current OTT series or a viral meme (of course, educational)? Students get attracted by social media, practical learning, and applications more quickly than classic book-based study, so when you incorporate all of these elements into your teaching, you will be speaking their language.
4 Request feedback from students
It’s impossible to evaluate your teaching performance in isolation. Students are, therefore, the best choice to provide you with feedback in this regard.
You can get feedback in a variety of ways. For example, you can make feedback forms or have students write their feedback on a sheet of paper. Let students share what they enjoy or dislike about the class.
5 Between teaching jobs, make time for yourself
You might be in love with your teaching profession a little too much. Nevertheless, tiredness could set in quickly if you don’t strike a work-life balance. Set aside time for yourself and your interests.
That is why, after a long day at work, spend time with your family and friends to relax. In addition, speaking with your coworkers, who are also teachers, could be a good stress-buster. They will be sympathetic to your difficulties and may assist you in improving your teaching methods.
Key Takeaways
As educators, you must always be on the lookout for fresh ways to adapt your teaching methods to the ever-changing requirements of new students. In addition, new teaching methods are constantly being developed, so whether you’ve been a teacher for 40-years or only four months, you must always be searching for ways of improving your teaching quality.
Because of its nature and goals, teaching jobs are incredibly satisfying and meaningful. Moreover, you have a significant role in moulding a generation’s thoughts and outlooks. Therefore, it is only fair that you strive to improve your job performance by incorporating a few strategies.
Just as students are expected to master a wide range of skills, teachers too have the right to guarantee that all students obtain their best possible outcome.