6 Innovative Teaching Methods That Will Transform Your Class
Kenneth Soares
January 13, 2025
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2 min read
If you’re teaching a class of students, you’ve got your work cut out for you. There’s several things to keep in mind: be it developing engaging lesson plans and resources, modifying the plan and content to suit the level and learning style of your students, or teaching them in a way that not only captures their interest and attention but also allows them to retain what is taught. And nailing the last of those can be a real headscratcher of a task.
Teaching methods can be paralleled to sales pitches; if they don’t strike a chord, they go real bad real fast.
Fair to say, the instructional strategies used by the teacher are arguably the primary decider of whether or not students will engage with and get the most out of the lessons. Thus, using innovative teaching methods can make all the difference. Gone are the days when learners listened to teachers drone on about a topic from a textbook and simply copied down information from the blackboard. Innovative teaching tools have given rise to new teaching methods which meet the evolving needs of the modern learner.
If you’re an educator looking to jazz up your classes, here are some innovative teaching methods you could consider using for better results.
Creative teaching can be viewed as a broad subject, but at its core, it is based on one underlying principle - using out-of-the-box thinking to convey ideas and concepts to your students. Quick fix examples would include practices like asking students open-ended questions, using mnemonic devices to help memorize long lists, flipped classrooms and several others mentioned ahead. Teaching kids creatively means empowering them to take charge of the learning and explore topics on their own while you act as a facilitator and guide.
You can achieve this by adopting a project-based approach with a focus on research and application rather than going back and forth on theoretical jargon. For example: In a business management class, students could be tasked with starting and operating their own small business in groups over the course of one term, right from thinking of an idea, managing the logistics, creating budgets and financial plans and addressing challenges along the way. They could be assessed on how effectively they apply the concepts taught to them in class to real-world scenarios. In this way, you’re equipping learners with the skills they need in the later stages of life, at an earlier age. Moreover, it will help you to explain concepts clearly as their minds are now adept at comprehending information more cohesively.
Pro tip: Whenever possible, try to make learning fun for students. Incorporating games in your lessons is a great way to engage students, be it scavenger hunts, online quizzes, etc. Today’s kids are super tech-savvy, so to include digital elements, you could use QR Codes, which students could scan to find clues for a treasure hunt.
Let’s face it, we all love consuming content. There’s just something about looking at virtual moving pictures and sounds that appeals to the human mind and finds the engagement sweet spot. Besides, an evidently massive advantage of using audio visual techniques in your teaching is that it offers an unimaginable spectrum of variety. Think about it, you can find thorough documented coverage on practically any topic in the world (Thank you, Internet). You could find documentaries and movies on World War 2 (Oppenheimer, Schindler’s List, Dunkirk, the list goes on), interviews with scientists at the best research labs in the world, TED Talks that simplify complex topics, or animations that break down abstract concepts into digestible visuals. And these are just to name a few. In the 21st century, the strides made in the AV sector around education have been extraordinary, to say the least. The multiple resources now available truly make audio visual teaching one of the most easily implementable innovative teaching methods. Can you really miss cashing in on resources like these?! (can you?)
Outdoor classes are frankly a very undervalued innovative teaching practice. However, its merits are undeniable. The benefits of learning outdoors include better performance, more creativity, an improved attention span, more opportunities for informal learning among several others. Outdoor classes are also a great way to teach certain topics by allowing kids to view and experience them occurring in real time. For instance, taking students to a nearby park or forest could teach them so much about the flora, fauna and ecosystem. A nighttime excursion to view the stars and constellations could be an innovative lesson in celestial bodies.
Besides, the change in scenery really helps in breaking mundane routines to keep students fresh and more receptive to information. Imagine all these benefits with the added advantage of being able to enjoy the great outdoors rather than the same stuffy old classroom. Sounds like an upgrade to me!
Brainstorming is a process wherein a group works together to generate ideas and/or come up with solutions. As a teaching technique, it involves you, as a teacher, actively participating with your group of students to come up with these ideas and solutions. While teaching a lesson on global warming, you could all brainstorm practical ideas to reduce the school’s carbon footprint. An economics class could brainstorm ideas on mitigating the impact of recession.
Brainstorming as a teaching technique offers benefits on multiple levels. First off, it builds solidarity; first amongst your students within themselves and secondly between you and your students. This makes for a healthier classroom environment, which in turn improves productivity in class and ultimately leads to a better learning experience. Brainstorming sessions also promote critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving skills among students.
“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” ~ Philip Pullman
Who doesn’t like a great narrative to follow? Well, that’s exactly what story-boarding achieves in a classroom space. It’s an innovative teaching technique that helps teachers engage the students while highlighting key ideas of a concept or topic by illustrating and including them in the story’s most crucial scenarios. The best ways to use the storyboard technique are by reading a story out loud or even assigning students to make their own storyboards and assessing their understanding of various concepts through their use of them in the story.
Hypothetical learning is a concept that we often practice in our day-to-day lives without even realizing that we do it. It’s when we try our hand at anticipating the outcome of future events and incidents that we may come across (not to be confused with psychic readings, unfortunately). What hypothetical teaching poses, in essence, is the task of placing your students in hypothetical real-world scenarios and having them come up with appropriate responses to figure their way out of it. You can commit to this idea on several levels, from writing the situation down on a piece of paper and having students write their solutions, to physically simulating the environment to the best of your ability and having students enact it in the form of a role play. The primary payoff with this technique is that it arms students with great intuition and confidence and amazing problem-solving ability, better than any other conventional method.
If you're a teaching and learning business looking to enhance your classroom strategies, Classcard can help. Our practical and intuitive class management software offers a range of features to support your innovative teaching methods, including attendance marking, scheduling classes, and managing payments. Empower your students with creative, audio-visual, and project-based learning while keeping track of their progress effortlessly. Discover how Classcard can transform your teaching experience and bring out the best in your students.
Trying innovative ways of teaching and experimenting with different ideas can open up a whole new world of possibilities for you as well as your students, and can yield significant results in terms of student engagement and performance. So why not give them a go and see how they transform your classroom?