In teaching and learning, teachers have a very important task of not only making the subject fun for their students, but also keeping the students interested in coming to class, either through their personality or teaching strategy
There is a one to one correspondence with a teacher’s way of teaching and what a student learns. Teachers should make their classes fun and enjoyable for their students – especially if they’re teenagers or children. It has been proved scientifically that a student tends to learn better if taught with fun activities and games. Our brains get bored and tired of monotone learning and therefore start not to perceive properly anymore. On the contrary when something is taught in an unusual and enjoyable manner it immediately stores it in permanent memory.
I remember very clearly that as a child I used to get very sleepy and grow tired of learning in classes where a teacher taught with no activity or fun. But in classes where my teacher taught with games, jokes or fun activities I would learn it in an instant and what I’ve learned in those classes more than ten years ago still remain in my memory.
In one of my classes for example in order to explain the motion of the sun, instead of describing on the board and using scientific statements, my teacher put a chair in the middle of the class. After that he wore a yellow helmet and stood up on the chair. Then he started spinning to help us learn about the motion of the sun. And in a Government class another teacher taught us the civil war by splitting the classroom into two groups where each would represent one army in the war and from each side he chose a student to be the general. This way we not only learned how the war took place we also learned the names of the generals without any memorisation. Even though years have passed I still remember the generals’ names. We couldn’t have learned this so well by just reading it out of a Government book. These methods, without doubt had a bigger effect than classical teaching in helping us students learn.
Fact is that students overly love teachers who enjoy teaching and it shows in their day-to-day interactions. Making learning fun entails involving students in the teaching and learning process. Don’t do all the talking alone, thereby making your students feel they’re watching a television. Involve the students. Let your students learn by doing – not just writing down facts they may never need or remember.
