Innovative Methods for the Classrooms

Some of our most inspiring and memorable movies are of teachers and professors who use innovative methods of teaching to reach out to the minds of the students and win the hearts of the audience while doing so. Knowing this while a few years ago, one would only see such innovative and effective teaching on the screen, today technology has given teachers across the world a number of tools to enhance teaching methods.

Here are ways teachers can create innovative learning spaces.

Teacher’s Mindset

A change in mindset, mood, and overall classroom vibe begins with the instructor. To make it really special the teacher sets the tone of the class from the minute students walk into the building. If teachers are excited about their subject matter, students will tend to follow. No matter how educators must have passion for the subjects they're teaching. Too often a teacher's mindset regarding how to design and deliver content is critical to the innovative learning process. It is seen that most teachers were trained to educate solely from the teacher's point of view. It happens that to change this type of delivery and make the classroom more innovative, they need to think about their students as leaders too--acting as guides rather than teaching content and asking students to spill out information on a standardized test.

Self-Reflection for Educators

Now self-reflection in the classroom is a way for educators to look back on their teaching strategies to discover how and why they were teaching in a certain way and how their students responded.

In a school with a profession as challenging as teaching, self-reflection can offer teachers a critical opportunity to see what worked and what failed in their classroom. Today educators can use reflective teaching as a way to analyze and evaluate their own teaching practices so they can focus on what works.While we are talking effective teachers acknowledge the fact that teaching strategies, delivery and finding success can always be improved.

Be Ready to Think Big

Innovators have a tendency to think big. Well they know how to use social networking tools to make a worthy idea go viral. Remember to encourage students to share their projects with audiences beyond the classroom, using digital tools like YouTube or online publishing sites. A wonderful idea is to help them build networks to exchange ideas with peers and learn from experts around the globe.

Educators Should Build Empathy

Innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum.Needless to say innovators who have empathy can step outside their own perspective and see issues from multiple viewpoints. Approaching a problem this way leads to better solutions. Please try to teach students strategies for making field observations, conducting focus groups or user interviews, or gathering stories that offer insights into others’ perspectives.

Passion

I always tell others that passion is what keeps innovators motivated to persist despite long odds and flawed first efforts. You should find out what drives students’ interests during out-of-school time, and look for opportunities to connect these pursuits with school projects. Ask students: When you feel most creative, what are you doing? What tools or technologies are you using? Their answers should set the stage for more engaging projects.

Educators Should Infuse Passion Into Learning

Nine Tenents of Passion- Based Learning.This works wonderfully when educators focus on integrating kids' own interests and passions into the curriculum will see them flourish as learners. I think it is a good idea when educators think about integrating such practices as showing relevance of what students are studying to life outside school, connecting with parents, and using digital media as a way to spark interests and spreading ideas.

Redesigning and Trying Something New

Jumping into the 21st Century. For both veteran educators and newbies, the desire to stick to what's acceptable and what's been done is hard to overcome. Needless to say that educator Shelley Wright talks about how she took the plunge and redesigned the entire structure of her teaching practice. Her goal? "Changing to a student-centered, skill-based, technology embedded classroom," she says.

Personality Matters: Creating A Spot For All Learner Participation

You see in Susan Cain's book,Quiet:The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking,one of the critical differences between introverts and extroverts is that extroverts tend to get their energy from social interaction and introverts gain energy from quiet spaces and a time to think and reflect alone.

Remember that when a classroom solely focuses on group work-which emphasizes whole group discussions, small groups working together, gathering peer feedback (all which require a great deal of social interaction), extroverts in the classroom can grow and gain energy, while introverted students can find themselves easily drained with a lack of motivation to participate.

It happens that when a project focuses solely on quiet reflection or individual research, the opposite is likely to occur. Okay so introverts can then thrive and blossom, leaving extroverts to feel antsy and lost. They can also become easily irritated or get in trouble for trying to get attention, talking, sneaking in on social media, and becoming disruptive.

I want to stress here that when possible, teachers can offer students options of working in groups or on their own. I feel extroverts can complete some projects alone, and introverts can choose to collaborate--both of these ways of teaching are critical to meet the needs of different learners.

Needless to say teachers who provide activities that best engage, inspire and sustains students' love for learning are more likely to put in their best efforts, enjoy the process and find positive results.

Let Students Learn From Error

Make sure that students need to see that adults in their lives try many things and repeatedly fail, but keep on trying. Students need to experience failure to learn.

This is a good way when teachers provide real-world projects that give students problems to solve, they are offering a platform for students to learn from failure, step up again and again to eventually find success.

In her 2017 paper “Learning from Errors,” psychologist Janet Metcalfe states that avoiding and ignoring mistakes at school is the classic rule in American classrooms. And while when we don't let students fail, we are most likely holding back not only individual student growth, but we are also holding back the entire education system.

As wonderful as you are by giving students real-world problems to tackle, fail and try again, we are telling students that their voices matter. Believe it or not we have plenty of issues worth addressing that we can give to students for insight and opinion.

Come on a pedagogy based on discovery and inquiry is so much more exciting than remembering dates, information, and taking tests.I think pre-determined answers on an exam in a traditional education setting can hold students back in ways we cannot measure.

Use The Structured Design-Thinking Process

Well the design thinking process is a set of structured strategies that identify challenges, gather information, generate potential solutions, refine ideas, and test solutions.

The reality is that there are five phases to the process: discovery, interpretation, ideation, experimentation, and evolution.

For each phase, students and teachers can follow the following pattern:

• I have a challenge. How do I approach it?
• I learned something. Now,how do I interpret it?
• I see an opportunity.What can I create?
• I have an idea.How can I build it?
• I tried something new.How do I make it evolve?

I suggest that all of these strategies are ways to form innovation and inspire creativity in the classroom. Now teachers can start with one new project to see how things go with their students while revising, learning and building repeatedly. Innovation is a essential change we need in schools today, and it can begin with you.