Creative teaching strategies are imperative to keep things fresh and to ensure that your little students are enraptured by what you are teaching and will more likely enjoy learning it.
There are a couple of things that you can do before you even begin; things that can really keep your classroom interesting include having a kind environment, being approachable and having an exciting and colorful decoration scheme.
Once you have sorted out the environment, you can get down to the creative teaching techniques that will help your kids learn valuable skills and lessons:
Use video and audio tools
Move away from using text books for everything and incorporate video and audio tools that will keep your audience enthralled. Little ones in particular tend to focus their limited attention for longer periods of time when there is variety in the material they are learning.
There are tons of apps you can use for video, audio and other visual tools in the classroom. It is one of the best ways to keep your children engaged, and one of the most useful creative teaching strategies that will ensure your methods don’t get stale.
Real-life scenarios
As a teacher, you are one of the primary people that are responsible for ensuring that your students are ready for the real world; that they have developed the necessary skills to take on the challenges they will face throughout their lives.
Use real-life scenarios to teach your students important life lessons. For example, you could organize a market day in the classroom to teach them about buying, selling and using money.
This also has handy math lessons to be learned. There are also speciality toys that have been designed to teach children the necessary skills that will get them further in their future. The Miniland products that specialize in social skills were developed for this particular purpose.
In a world that is increasingly dominated by technology, it is absolutely essential that you give your students time away from the screens. Children are spending less and less time in the outdoors and this is detrimental to their social skills and their appreciation for nature.
One of the most beneficial teaching strategies is to take the classroom outside for a bit. Conduct a lesson under the trees, in a park or base an actual lesson around nature and how it works.
You can explain mammals, reptiles and other kinds of animals by going to a park or you could bring the outside into the classroom with a worm farm, bug house, or any other cool nature or outside orientated toys that your children will enjoy.
Storyboards
Using storyboards in your classroom is a creative and exciting way to get kids to learn about a number of different subjects and will help them remember things easier. For example, instead of getting your children to write an essay about their holidays, rather get them to draw pictures of it in sequence.
Subjects like history suit storyboards particularly – get your kids to draw a piece by piece representation on the story on the board, taking turns to draw from their memory and interpretation.
Creativity and art
When it comes to creative teaching strategies, it’s vital to ensure that the children have enough time in the day to take part in their own creative outlets. Painting, singing, dancing and any other form of art is an important outlet of expression for little ones, and at least half an hour a day should be set aside for this.
It’s also great to give children toys such as puzzles and mazes that not only keep them busy, but that also help them develop logic and problem-solving skills.
At Miniland, we have created a range of speciality toys that are the perfect addition to any classroom and provide new, exciting ways for teachers to do lessons on subjects that could become boring.
Our blog is full of ideas, insights, and advice for teachers, and can help you turn your classroom into a place of education and nurturing to all those that pass through it.
