#1. Grab and maintain students’ attention

Attention is a prerequisite for learning, as it ensures successful retention.

Even with the presence of external distracted resources, you can help your students pay attention and concentrate. Because the way you present your lessons determines how focused and attentive your students will be.

So, grab your student’s attention from the start (the moment you step into the classroom), then try to maintain it throughout the lesson.

At the beginning of the lesson

To capture your students’ attention, use attention-getters. You can find some of these here.

Also, begin your lessons with examples and activities that attract students’ attention and get them ready for the information that follows.

Students appreciate real-world examples, cooperative tasks, and personalized instruction where they can have choices and express their views. They also admire those mysterious moments that trigger their curiosity and thinking to discover the unknown.

However, attention is also about making connections and relating to the learning material at hand.

Students care about the relevance of what they are learning. And they are likely to pay more attention when learning is relevant or meaningful to their life and career.

Therefore, besides generating interest and using hooks, explain to your students what you will do from the start and how this will contribute to their learning.

Throughout the lesson

To maintain students’ attention, cue students on important points. This means when you say something your students should note, draw their attention saying: “This is a key point” or “Be sure to get this in your notes”.

Students get distracted when they become confused and feel inundated with information. So, be selective; deliver the most essential information in manageable chunks. Focus on the essentials and talk less.

In addition, ask questions periodically. Try to generate thought-provoking questions instead of posing questions like “Is that clear”? or “Do you have any questions”?

Also, get your students to generate answers (questions) in small groups. Encourage them to express themselves and interact more. This will make them more involved and less distracted.

Varying your delivery is also necessary to keep students’ attention. So, integrate different materials to explain your content (for instance, flip your classroom), and invite students to do so.  Vary your pitch to show your focus on the meaning of what you are saying.

Further, use different deliberate, purposeful, and sustained gestures to hold students’ attention, like holding up an object, moving in the classroom, or changing your seat. And don’t forget that pausing is a powerful tool for gaining attention.

#2. Convey enthusiasm

If you appear bored with the topic or content you teach, your students will quickly lose interest. So, it is important to convey enthusiasm for the material to get our students engaged.

Even where the topics have little interest, we need to come up with new ways to stimulate students’ enthusiasm.

Both your voice and body language should convey emotions.

Vary your pitch to draw attention to important words. Upspeak to signal a climax and speak softly to push students to listen more carefully.

Also, when you are presenting your lesson, make eye contact with students. Don’t read notes or talk to the board. Use facial expressions: your eyes, eyebrows, forehead, mouth, and jaw to convey enthusiasm, curiosity, and thoughtfulness.

So, when you are enthusiastic about teaching, you are acting. You are full of energy interacting with students, calling them by their first names, getting them engaged, and praising and celebrating their success.

Your enthusiasm is also visible in the classroom when you use informal language and humour to create a supportive learning environment and lessons that are unforgettable for students.

#3. Build on students’ prior knowledge

This is one of the essential presentation tips to support effective learning.

Because learning is a process of connecting pre-existing knowledge (knowledge, skills, and ability) with new instruction or information.

Yet, even if the student has relevant prior knowledge, he/she does not always automatically draw on it.

We need, therefore, to activate students’ prior knowledge before introducing any new content.

To learn about the strategies that can help you tap students’ prior knowledge and harness it, check out this post: 3 Strategies to Harness the Power Of Prior Knowledge 

#4. Create a sense of order

A good lesson has a sense of coherence and flow.

For this reason, students often get confused, overwhelmed, and bored when teachers move from one task to the next, making no transitions.

So, we should not only manage the different lesson stages (opening, sequencing, and closure) but also maintain the momentum of the lesson during a transition (i.e., how to move from one task to another within the same lesson stage).

Therefore, creating a sense of order is necessary to achieve an effective lesson presentation. This is through:

• Explaining from the start the structure of your lesson. This is by telling students what you will be covering first, second, third, etc,… while indicating your objectives;
• announcing transitions: Whenever you move from one task/idea to another, direct your students’ attention. You can use words (Now, let’s look at..), your body language (signals), music (playing a particular music), and materials (a doorbell, flashcard). Be sure to prepare your students for the transitions so that they know what to expect;
• moving from the simple to the complex, from the familiar to the unfamiliar: Start always with what students know, lay out the most basic ideas, then introduce complex ones;
• restating the main ideas: Emphasize important ideas by restating them, using more illustrations. Address your questions and invite your students to participate to gain feedback about their learning throughout the lesson (don’t wait until the end to do that).

#5. Keep track of time

Among the essential presentation tips is teachers’ ability to manage time.

Be aware of how long you are taking to cover your points. While planning the lesson, decide what material you should cover and what material you will leave out if you are behind schedule.

So, do not try to speed up to cover everything in your notes. Have a plan for what to omit.

Also, if you have an important point for students to learn and there are just a few minutes left, leave it for the next lesson.

You need time to cover it, and more students’ attention and energy to focus, which may not be possible at the end of the lessons.

For more time management tips, check out this post Time Management Tips For Teachers

 

These were the 5 presentation tips teachers need to make their lessons more effective and interesting for students. So, preparing a good lesson plan along with mastering those presentation tips will help you get your students engaged and motivated to learn from beginning to end. What other presentation tips for teachers would you suggest? I’d love to hear from you.