“I shouldn’t have to entertain my students.”
“I don’t have all day to lesson plan.”
“I can’t compete with video games and social media.”
These are common teacher frustrations. I’ve heard them a million times.
And they’re all true.
But here’s the thing: You don’t have to play along with any of them. There is a better way, an alternative path, a secret workaround that avoids these frustrations while leading to lessons students actually love.
Let’s take a look at each one separately, and slowly reveal this better way.
Entertainment
Don’t even try. While in school, students shouldn’t be entertained. If you buy into this notion, you’ll fail. You’ll never be able to do it better than what students have at their fingertips 24/7.
Attempting to will only highlight how boring your class is in comparison. This isn’t to say that you can’t sprinkle your lessons with humor or dress up like the captain of a Spanish Galleon.
You can. However, your focus can never be to entertain. Instead, it must be to—this is critical and the one thing that consistently and reliably works—be interesting.
Time
Capturing interest doesn’t take a lot of preparation. You don’t have to plan out exactly what you’re going to say. You don’t have to have a physical example or video clip to show (though it’s fine if you do.)
You don’t have to be cutesy or whimsical or clever. You must have a clear objective, of course. You must know what you want your students to be able to know or do, of course.
But beyond that, the most important thing you need—that takes no planing time and which happens to be what nearly all struggling teachers don’t have—is expert content knowledge. You have to know your stuff.
Competition
Never try to compete with the online world. You’ll get crushed. You must offer something different, special, real. This isn’t a disadvantage, mind you. It’s a great advantage.
Because you have something they can’t get anywhere else. You are a living and breathing expert in your content area. Which means you can highlight the nitty-gritty details that students can’t get enough of.
You can elucidate, act out, and story-tell endlessly about the curse of the Egyptian Pharaohs, the hidden world of Planet Nine, the mind-blowing mysteries of Gobekli Tepe, or the beauty of fractals.
The Way
You’re doing it wrong.
It’s not about the “hands on” materials you must ready. It isn’t the creative activities or your loud and fake enthusiasms or big reveals. It isn’t the soul-crushing promise of rewards for paying attention.
It’s about teaching something cool your students don’t know much about. That’s it. And it only needs to be more interesting than a daydream.
It’s not about entertainment. It’s not about prepping for long hours. It’s not trying to compete with anyone or anything.
Put all of that out of your mind.
The secret to great lessons is in what you know and what they can’t get anywhere else.
If you haven’t done so already, please join us. It’s free! Click here and begin receiving classroom management articles like this one in your email box every week.
Bullseye!
Completely agree!
What I would like is advice on how to keep young kids on task (especially grade 2) when reading aloud together. We do choral reading, or sometimes they follow along reading on the screen in front or their physical book as I read aloud, but also a lot of popcorn reading where I call on kids at random or around the circle. Kids start talking out of turn when another student is reading aloud together for us. This is a time when we read together, not on their own silent reading time. How to keep it moving and together when some kids read painfully slow (or seem to do so on purpose at times, in which case I should let them pass if they don’t want to) but they still want to read aloud. It seems like both choral (all of us at ince) and echo reading with the kindergartners, and popcorn reading all have benefits. And I insist it is a safe place and we encourage each other as we become excellent readers togther. Thoughts anyone? How best to do read aloud togethers for beginning readers? Even the 3rd/4th graders sometimes find it hard to focus when another student reads to us, but its mostly grades 1 and 2. These are kids who all need extra reading practice. Thanks! What do you think?
Hi! At the middle school level, I’ve found that cloze reading (I think that’s what it’s called) works well combined with random popcorn reading.
The teacher gives students the expectation that they must follow along. The teacher reads out loud, and randomly pauses, expecting the whole class to say the next word in unison. If not all students say the next word, they probably aren’t following along, in which case I repeat the expectation. If students still aren’t saying the next word out loud, I will do a “strike” system. The first time I pause and don’t have the whole class saying the next word, it’s strike 1, and so on. I will usually have a class-wide consequence if I get to strike 3 (but keep it positive….say “Ope! We can do better. That’s strike 1.” If they correct it after strike 1, say “there we go!”
In conjunction with this, I randomly call on students to read “loud and proud”. I will interject when I feel it’s time to move on to another student and will simply say, “Good! Johnny, pick up please” and Johnny will continue where the other student left off. (Or, I’ll go back to cloze reading).
Hope this helps.
Thanks for the tip!!
Yes, very helpful advice. Thank you.
I teach fifth grade so my students are pretty capable in reading. I use several strategies so it doesn’t get boring. Here is one that may work for you too. I have all the students open their book and follow along as I read. I don’t have a book. I walk around behind them. They are supposed to have their finger where we are on the page, so I can continuously read. I switch it up and go different directions so they are not sure where I will go next. It keeps them engaged. Occasionally we stop and answer questions. When we pick back up again, students need to know where we left off. If they do well, we can earn a classroom benefit.
I teach 5th, and this is a fantastic idea! I’m going to try it this year.
Remove the popcorn reading. There’s really no benefit and the kids will always get bored who aren’t reading. Stick with readaloud or choral reading. Change it up with boys read, girls read, or if you’re wearing blue, right side left side, keep them on their toes so they can’t zone out, but keeping it at a one section wait at most will help a lot and still achieve your purpose. Add in motions for vocab, and keep the one on one reading for small groups. I’m no expert, that’s just my two cents. 😊
Your article was timely. My school has adopted a math resource which is script oriented which does not lead to spectacular lessons. But what the script cannot replace is my knowledge of teaching math and also my knowledge of the student. So I have spent the first couple of weeks of summer trying to figure our how to make those lessons sizzle. I do agree it is in both mine and my students best interest to have interesting lessons or hooks, but sometime just knowing the content and the student may just be enough. Thank you for taking the pressure off to perform.
“And it only needs to be more interesting than a daydream.”
That is an amazing insight!
Agreed! Love that quote as well! I just got back from traveling to another country. It gave me some perspective. I feel like I’m doin’ alright.
It appears as though you are using a great reading strategy however, you may consider a session or two to teach the character trait “Empathy” where the students consider and understand their likenesses, differences, abilities, weaknesses, strengths and how to help each other be able to read aloud together, including everyone. Should this not help to improve the reading aloud together, you may regroup to smaller groups for a while at any level. (Have the poorer readers to listen and read along more.)