We’ve reviewed a wide variety of these strategies here at EPSL, and they all have one thing in common - they all need quality school exercise books, personalised exercise books and supplementary reading material to provide the best possible learning environment for pupils. We believe that the most effective teaching strategies are those proven to work over large scale trials, so we’ve picked out a few of the techniques that we think you and your class would benefit from implementing (if you haven’t done so already!).
Know your pupils
It’s true what they say - the basis of all good teaching is a detailed understanding of your pupils and their learning needs. The relationship you form with your students is a vital aspect of how they perceive the learning experience. There has to be a mutual respect between you and the children you teach as a bare minimum, or you’ll really struggle to engage with them on an intellectual level.
In order to build an effective relationship with your students, you need to understand exactly what it is that motivates them. Once you’ve established this, you can personalise a lesson or a teaching technique as appropriate to the child in question. By doing this, you make learning a more individual experience instead of a one size fits all programme.
Teach students the vocabulary
It’s a given that some students will find certain subjects more difficult than others. That’s not a problem in itself - but that difficulty is likely to be amplified if they’re not familiar with the fundamental vocabulary associated with the subjects in question.
It’s advised give your students a run-down of any complicated terminology that could trip them up. For example, if you’re teaching a specialist maths class in fractions, decimals, percentages, or Pythagorus theorem, it’s worth taking some time to explain these terms to your class before attempting any in depth teaching, just so everyone’s on the same page.
Utilise effective questioning techniques
There are a few techniques that you can adopt which will definitely improve the effectiveness of your classroom questioning. Questions like “Are you sure?” and “How do you know?” encourage pupils to engage in basic critical thinking, which can massively improve their cognitive ability when it comes to problem solving.
When students figure out the answer to a question, consider asking them “Is there another way?”. By doing this, you can help encourage them to highlight any examples where multiple methods to derive a solution may exist. As a side tip - encouraging pupils to verbalise their reasoning behind a specific answer is a good way of ensuring that they’ve fully got to grips with a subject. A good example of this in practice is the common exam question; “Can you show me your working out?”.
Recognise effort, not just talent
Students make links in their minds between putting effort into a task and receiving recognition. It’s one thing for them to be naturally gifted in a subject, but a student that receives recognition for putting a great amount of effort into something they might not be particularly good at gets a a huge lift.
Praise and recognition are motivators that pupils are already familiar with, so if you want to nurture a sense of motivation in your students, it can be highly effective to switch the focus of your praise from attainment to effort - i.e. rewarding students for making an attempt at answering a question, not only when they get it correct. It’s vital that students feel encouraged to talk through their answers and celebrate their mistakes as opportunities to learn.
These are just a few of the techniques that we’ve picked up over the years here at EPSL, and we’re sure you’ve got some more of your own! Regardless of the strategies you choose to adopt though, effective teaching requires effective equipment. We know all about the importance of that, which is why we supply a huge range of school exercise books, personalised exercise books, and supplementary reading material, so that you and your class have everything you need to achieve an exemplary learn take a look through what we’ve got available on our site - and if you have any questions, feel free to give us a call on 01254 686 500. We’re always happy to help!
