Effective Teaching: Hold Your Students’ Attention So Powerfully They’ll Beg You To Stay Longer In Class
(Hey Awesome educators! Don’t forget to COMMENT below and let us
know which of our 4 tips you’ll use in your classrooms this week. The
whole tribe would love to hear your insights!)
Imagine the following 2 scenarios:
1. It’s the first day of school. Your students walk into the
classroom laughing, talking, and genuinely happy to see eachother again.
They begin to take their seats and, shockingly, some even say hi to
you. The noise keeps on growing and you keep on thinking,
“What can I do to grab their attention so they want to listen?” Unsure,
you welcome everyone in and begin the year the same way you always
have. While some students do listen, you don’t get the reaction you
dreamed of. You wish there was a way to start the new year so that
they’re so enraptured with your presentation you could actually hear a
pin drop.
2. It’s the first day of school. Your students walk into the
classroom laughing, talking, and happy to see eachother again. They
start to sit in their seats and some even say hi to you. The noise keeps
on growing and you do
2 things that instantly grab their attention. They’re dazzled, sitting in complete silence, anxiously waiting for your next words.
Your heart sings…
At the end of the post you’ll learn exactly what these 2 actions
were, but I have to warn you: They’ll only work if you use these 4 quick
effective teaching tips of a new method we discovered.
1. The Desire Method
The reason it’s so hard for teachers to grab their students attention
is because most teachers make the classic ‘About A Topic’ mistake. The
‘About A Topic’ mistake is when you teach ‘
About A
Topic’. Whether it’s American History, Chemistry, or any other topic
you could possible think of, when you talk ‘About’ it, you lose people’s
attention.
The solution is not to teach ‘About A
Topic’ but instead to teach ‘For The Student’. Meaning, the Student
needs to immediately feel the benefit of the content you are teaching.
When you show a benefit, you create desire. And where there’s desire,
you guessed it, you hold attention.
Here’s a quick start to use the Desire
Method. As you know, the absolute most important part of effective
teaching is how you start. If you begin the wrong way, it’s near
impossible to get your student’s attention back. Never
start with a typical ‘Welcome’ or ‘Here’s what we’re going to learn
today’ (classic ‘AAT’ Mistake). Instead, begin your content with Headlines and with Hooks.
A Headline is a short sentence that boils down the core benefit of
being part of the class. For example, take a look at what you’re reading
right now: You’re reading this sentence now because it began with a
Headline that caught your attention:
4 New “Effective Teaching” Methods To WOW Your Students.
A Headline is a Promise. What can your content promise your students?
If you delve into your students minds, you’ll discover exactly how they
want to learn, and, trust us, they’re hungry for wisdom. But they need
to see how your content is a benefit for them. For example, learning
about the American Revolution could show them how to be an effective
leader, how to bring about a movement of change, the principles of
starting something new (whether it’s a company or a country or an app),
etc. Or, the better a student is at Mathematics (whether it’s 4th grade
math or advanced geometry) the better they’ll be able to Code (which is
all about math and algorithms) and create innovative businesses and
technology.
2. Feel The Pain
The second best effective teaching tip is to have students feel the
pain of missing this benefit. Notice also how I began this post. I
clearly framed a painful situation many teachers face in terms of
desperately trying to get the attention of their class. After I gave the
Headline with a Hook, you were drawn closer in because of the painful
scenario.
The pain is always the emphasis of lack. So if the benefit is
Attention, the lack of Attention is the pain. Think about it this way:
If your students are LACKING the content they’re about to learn, what
impact would that have? How does NOT knowing your content ultimately
hurt their future success?
The best form of pain is proof and/or giving a specific example. If
Steve Jobs had mastered the leadership secrets of George Washington
would he have been fired from Apple? Who are people you know who were
worse off because they lacked the knowledge you’re about to gain?
3. The Preview Strategy: How To Create Anticipation For Your Curriculum
Here’s a brilliant effective teaching strategy for you: C
reate anticipation for your curriculum.
Most teachers start the year by saying something general like,
“This year is going to be great, you’re going to learn all about….” - classic AAT mistake. Instead, build up the benefit, value, pain, lack and top it off with a Preview: ”…
but you’ll only learn the 4 secrets to George Washington’s Leadership Success in a few months…”
Did you feel that? Now your students CAN’T learn something? They can’t have something they
WANT right now? Super powerful, 100% attention hacker gold.
Think Hollywood. They
never just release a movie, it’s
against attention hacking DNA. Every movie ever released from Hollywood
is first launched with a Preview. You go to see a movie and before that
movie begins – you’re shown 5 movies that are ‘Coming Soon’. Then you
see the Preview again on TV or YouTube and you can’t wait for it to come
out because of all the anticipation they created for you.
4. A Wild Secret for Effective Teaching: Teach with VAK
Here’s something you already know: There are 3 main types of learners
- Visual, Audio, and Kinesthetic. To really master effective teaching,
notice which type your students are.
Visual is
seeing the material, Audio is
hearing the material, and Kinesthetic is
feeling
the material. Meaning, the optimal learning environment is NOT to sit
passively waiting for a lecture to end. The IDEAL learning environment
is when the Student sees, hears, and feels the material themselves.
That’s why making animated videos and presentations has become such a
popular new medium of effective teaching recently. Animated videos hit
the Audio and Visual, and when the Student creates one themselves, it
hits the Kinesthetic type too.
https://www.powtoon.com/blog/effective-teaching/
