4 New Effective Teaching Methods To WOW Your Students

Read Time: 6 minutes

Effective Teaching: Hold Your Students’ Attention So Powerfully They’ll Beg You To Stay Longer In Class

(Hey Awesome educators! Don’t forget to COMMENT below and let us know which of our 4 tips you’ll use in your classrooms this week. The whole tribe would love to hear your insights!)

Imagine the following 2 scenarios:

1. It’s the first day of school. Your students walk into the classroom laughing, talking, and genuinely happy to see each other again. They begin to take their seats and, shockingly, some even say hi to you. The noise keeps on growing and you keep on thinking, “What can I do to grab their attention so they want to listen?” Unsure, you welcome everyone in and begin the year the same way you always have. While some students do listen, you don’t get the reaction you dreamed of. You wish there was a way to start the new year so that they’re so enraptured with your presentation you could actually hear a pin drop.

2. It’s the first day of school. Your students walk into the classroom laughing, talking, and happy to see each other again. They start to sit in their seats and some even say hi to you. The noise keeps on growing and you do 2 things that instantly grab their attention. They’re dazzled, sitting in complete silence, anxiously waiting for your next words. Your heart sings…

At the end of this post, you’ll learn exactly what these 2 actions were, but I have to warn you: They’ll only work if you use these 4 quick and effective teaching tips of a new method we discovered.

Click here to make a Powtoon to WOW your class now »

1. The Desire Method

The reason it’s so hard for teachers to grab their students attention is because most teachers make the classic ‘About A Topic’ mistake. The ‘About A Topic’ mistake is when you teach ‘About A Topic’. Whether it’s American History, Chemistry, or any other topic you could possibly think of, when you talk ‘About’ it, you lose people’s attention.

The solution is not to teach ‘About A Topic’ but instead to teach ‘For The Student’. Meaning, the Student needs to immediately feel the benefit of the content you are teaching. When you show a benefit, you create desire. And when there’s desire, you guessed it, you hold attention.

Here’s a quick start to using the Desire Method. As you know, the absolute most important part of effective teaching is how you start. If you begin the wrong way, it’s near impossible to get your student’s attention back. Never start with a typical ‘Welcome’ or ‘Here’s what we’re going to learn today’ (classic ‘AaT’ Mistake). Instead, begin your content with Headlines and with Hooks.

A Headline is a short sentence that boils down the core benefit of being part of the class. For example, take a look at what you’re reading right now: You’re reading this sentence now because it began with a Headline that caught your attention: 4 New Effective Teaching Methods To WOW Your Students.

A Headline is a Promise. What can your content promise your students? If you delve into your students’ minds, you’ll discover exactly how they want to learn, and, trust us, they’re hungry for wisdom. But they need to see how your content is a benefit for them. For example, learning about the American Revolution could show them how to be an effective leader, how to bring about a movement of change, the principles of starting something new (whether it’s a company or a country or an app), etc. Or, the better a student is at Mathematics (whether it’s 4th-grade math or advanced geometry) the better they’ll be able to Code (which is all about math and algorithms) and create innovative businesses and technology.

2. Feel The Pain

The second best effective teaching tip is to have students feel the pain of missing this benefit. Notice also how I began this post. I clearly framed a painful situation many teachers face in terms of desperately trying to get the attention of their class. After I gave the Headline with a Hook, you were drawn closer in because of the painful scenario.

The pain is always the emphasis on the lack of something. So if the benefit is Attention, the lack of Attention is the pain. Think about it this way: If your students are LACKING the content they’re about to learn, what impact would that have? How does NOT knowing your content ultimately hurt their future success?

The best form of pain is proof and/or giving a specific example. If Steve Jobs had mastered the leadership secrets of George Washington would he have been fired from Apple? Who are people you know who were worse off because they lacked the knowledge you’re about to gain?

3. The Preview Strategy: How To Create Anticipation For Your Curriculum

Here’s a brilliant effective teaching strategy for you: Create anticipation for your curriculum.

Most teachers start the year by saying something general like, “This year is going to be great, you’re going to learn all about…” – classic AaT mistake. Instead, build up the benefit, value, pain, lack and top it off with a Preview: “…but you’ll only learn the 4 secrets to George Washington’s Leadership Success in a few months…”

Did you feel that? Now your students CAN’T learn something? They can’t have something they WANT right now? Super powerful, 100% attention hacker gold.

Think Hollywood. They never just release a movie, it’s against attention hacking DNA. Every movie ever released from Hollywood is first launched with a Preview. You go to see a movie and before that movie begins – you’re shown 5 movies that are ‘Coming Soon’. Then you see the Preview again on TV or YouTube and you can’t wait for it to come out because of all the anticipation they’ve created for you.

4. A Wild Secret for Effective Teaching: Teach with VAK

Here’s something you already know: There are 3 main types of learners – Visual, Audio, and Kinesthetic. To really master effective teaching, notice which type your students are.

Visual is seeing the material, Audio is hearing the material, and Kinesthetic is feeling the material. Meaning, the optimal learning environment is NOT to sit passively waiting for a lecture to end. The IDEAL learning environment is when the student sees, hears, and feels the material themselves.

That’s why making animated videos and presentations has become such a popular new medium of effective teaching recently. Animated videos hit the Audio and Visual, and when the student creates one themselves, it hits the Kinesthetic type too.

How to add an instant WOW Factor in your Class Today

What did the teacher in the second scenario (above) do that instantly grabbed their students’ attention? What was their secret to effective teaching? Simple: They turned the lights OFF…and turned a Powtoon ON.

Here’s why that’s smart, why it works, and how to use the 4 tips you just learned to rock your students’ world. When you turn off the lights it interrupts their pattern of what they expect to happen. They expect you to say hi, they expect people to be talking, and they expect not to be too excited. But they’re not expecting for the lights to go off.

Now, if the lights went off on their own without any other medium – it would feel like some childish punishment. But when you do simultaneously turn the lights off and turn a Powtoon on, it feels like going to a movie. Their mind associates lights going off and movies going on with tons of positive emotion. Then, once the Powtoon begins, if you create a Powtoon with the 4 tips you just learned, congratulations, they’ll love you! And if you make it with the Preview Strategy, they’ll be glued to their seats, waiting for more.

Click here to make a Powtoon to WOW your class now!

If you know a colleague who would LOVE to get started with Powtoon for FREE, just forward them this post : )

And let me know which of the 4 tips gave you the biggest ‘aha’ moment you’ll use in your classroom this week. The whole tribe would love to hear your insights!

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Ari Sherbill

VP Business Development @Powtoon. Ari's known as the "High Energy Guy" who currently advises Fortune 500 companies, Hollywood Studios and over 5,000 executives and business owners every month how to increase their leads, engagement and sales with Powtoon. He's spoken on stage with MGM, the Sands Hotel, 3M and Oracle. NASA referred to his strategies as "fresh and intriguing". Learn how to grow your sales and impact by following me on twitter: @AriSherbill