3 easy ways to make your lessons modern and engaging

The world is moving at an incredibly fast pace and so I make it my mission to keep lessons modern and relevant for the world our students are growing up in. Here are my top 3 tips for keeping lessons current and engaging for today’s students:

1) Visuals – use lots of pictures, preferably modern images students can relate to. For example, I often like to decorate my classroom with emojis related to the topic on display (like a ‘thumbs up’ emoji on a “wonderful work wall” or the ‘information girl’ emoji on a notice board). The visuals are not only helpful cues for children, but adding in the fun emoji factor that most students use every day in their messages to friends, really gives a modern and relatable feel to your classroom! I have created a few emoji clip art sets that you could  use in your own classrooms too if you like:

2) Keep up to date - Connect with your students – listen to them and find out what their interests and hobbies are or what songs or phrases are popular right now, then you could try including these in a lesson. For example, I’ve been known to slip in a “what are thoooose” or a “damn, Daniel” comment into my teaching every now and then for a laugh – let me tell you, the kids absolutely crack up in hysterics when I do! Although slightly cringy, I know they appreciate that I understand them and make an effort to modernise their lessons and school experience! (PS. If you don’t know what on earth those phrases I just mentioned are, they’re videos that went viral online recently - Google the phrases and it’ll make more sense to you. 😉) If that’s not your style, then you can try incorporating popular, modern characters into your lessons that students love: I have had many a Minion make cameos in my lessons in the past, which always goes down well! 

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3) Modernise your resources - Gone are the days of dull worksheets – these days you can find an abundance of engaging resources with lots of life to them that make it fun for your students to learn from. Feel free to check out my freebie on ‘differentiated written activities for any book’, as an example:

The reason this works well, is because instead of doing a mundane write up on a book students have read, they can be exposed to modern, creative ideas in an aesthetically pleasing format to work from and enjoy. It really makes a notable difference in their engagement!

I hope you pick up some useful tips here and implement them in your own classroom; please let me know if you do! I wish you a fantastic week ahead!