6 teaching techniques you did not know

Posted by Roy on October 15th, 2017

Education, like almost any other field in our society, has evolved by leaps and bounds in recent years.

Traditional teaching techniques, based mainly on the figure of the teacher explaining and the students taking notes may still be useful in some occasions; however, today education revolves more around stimulating the student to arouse his curiosity and desire to learn.

As a result of this trend, new teaching techniques have emerged. Many of these teaching techniques are not new.

However, the use of the new technologies that we have at our disposal today can give them a new focus and make them spread in our classrooms.

These are 6 teaching techniques YOU DID NOT KNOW:

1. Flipped Classroom — This teaching technique basically consists of students studying and preparing the lesson prior to the class. In this way, the class in question becomes something much more dynamic and an environment in which to deepen on the subject of study.

The students come from home with the basic concepts assimilated, reason why the class can be dedicated to solve doubts and to go beyond in the subjects by which the students are curious.

2. Design Thinking — This technique is based on using real cases and solving them in groups through analysis, brainstorming, innovation and creative ideas.

Although "design thinking" is a structured method, in practice it is quite messy, since it deals with real problems on which in most cases there is not enough information and it may even be that the conclusion is that there is no solution possible.

However, the case method prepares students for the real world and awakens their curiosity, analytical ability and creativity. This technique is often used in popular MBAs or Masters to analyze real cases experienced by companies in the past.

3. Self- learning — Curiosity is the main driver of learning. As a basic principle of learning, it does not make much sense to force students to memorize text so that they forget it 2 days after the exam.

The key is to let students focus on the area that most interests them to actively explore and learn about it .

A perfect example of teaching techniques based on self-learning is that reported by Sugata Mitra at the TED(Spanish subtitles) conference.

In a series of experiments in New Delhi, South Africa and Italy, educational researcher Sugata Mitra provided children with self-monitored access to the web.

The results you obtained could revolutionize the way we think about teaching. The children, who until that moment did not even know what the internet was, were able to self-train in multiple subjects with unexpected ease.

A closer way of exploring the self-learning technique may be by using Mind Maps. With them, the teacher can initiate a thought process by writing a word at the central node of a map or proposing a main theme and letting students develop their own ideas from it.

Thus, for example, if the central theme is the Human Body, some can create Mental Maps on Systems and Devices, others on Bones and others on Diseases that affect the human body.

Students would then be evaluated according to the mental maps they have created and could collaborate with each other to improve them.

4. Games — Learning through the use of games is a method that has already been explored by some teachers, mainly in primary and pre-school education. Through the use of games, the student learns without practically realizing it.

That is why learning to play is a learning technique that can be very effective at any age and is also useful for keeping the student motivated.

The teacher should design projects that are appropriate for their students, taking into account their age and knowledge, while making them attractive enough to provide extra motivation.

One idea may be to encourage students to create quizzes with questions related to a particular topic and encourage them to challenge their peers to perform them to see who gets a higher score.

In this way, students will enjoy the competition with their peers to reach the highest score.

5. Social Media — A variant of the previous point are teaching techniques based on social networks. In this way, students, who today spend the day in social networks, will have an extra motivation to learn.

The forms that this method of learning can take are very varied, as there are hundreds of social networks and possibilities.

A good example is the initiative carried out by the Brazilian academy of languages ​​"Red Ballon", which encouraged its students to review the tweets of their favorite artists and correct the grammatical mistakes that these made to reinforce their learning of English.

6. Exegetical or Commented Reading Technique — It is based on the reading of texts related to the topic or author to be treated.

This technique aims to capture and understand what the author wants to communicate and to find the meaning implicit in the text, as well as its circumstances.

Each student can be based on the subject that most interests him to inquire about him. Again, new technologies provide us with a great advantage in using this technique, as they allow us access to an unlimited amount of information.

As you can see, there are innumerable teaching techniques that can help you to connect better with your students in these times. Did you know these teaching techniques? Would you add some other?