In school, students are often forced into a direction and forced to learn material that they do not find interesting. Most often, these students get totally bored and then lose interest in that specific subject. Gosh, sometimes even I find it boring. If you teach a specific subject like Mathematics, and do the same topics every year (but with different students) it can become somewhat of a ritual, and we then don't realize that the lesson is actually boring.
If a student is bored in class, it means that his mind wanders off, and you are most likely teaching yourself, because I can promise you that the student's minds are far away from the classroom.
I find it exactly the same when I start difficult topics in class. Specifically Algebra.... and I can honestly say that I have had this specific question every single time when I start with the first lesson in Algebra.
"Where will I ever use this information again in real life?"
The fact is that we don't realize where we use certain skills obtained in school in real life.
Why is Algebra important?
Algebra for example teaches us quite a variety of skills which we use in our daily lives and we often don't realize this.
When we learn Algebra we learn how to
- Think critically
- Analyze information
- Interpret information
- Reason abstractly
- Persevere
- Plan ahead
- Learn from mistakes
- Apply prior knowledge
- Envision solutions
- Be precise
- Justify
- Change the way we think
I am sure that I can still add a few other skills that we learn from Algebra but these skills are already quite a few useful skills that we use in our everyday lives.
To be innovative and exciting, we as teachers have to find the most interesting way to teach the "boring" and difficult work to our students. This is not always an easy task. Unfortunately we are forced to teach according to a curriculum and we often have to work faster to get through the whole curriculum.
I stopped rushing long ago. I would spend a week on one topic in class just as long as everybody understands the specific content.
What do you do to make the lessons more interesting and how do you handle the "boring" stuff?
