by Marilyn Justine

Created on: November 20, 2008   Last Updated: February 23, 2010

Creative teaching methods help enthusiasm to come to the fore, helping students achieve the best grades they can, enjoy the learning process and retain information for years to come. However, there is also that tricky balance between academia and fun that needs to be addressed.

People are always looking for new ways to improve teaching methods, but the truth is that teaching can only be fun for both you and your students if you make it as creative as possible. That way, you both win. The way you get your subject across is half the battle of successful teaching and providing students with knowledge they will (hopefully) retain If you don't enjoy teaching this will show, and then it's almost guaranted that they won't enjoy learning. It's as simple as that but, fortunately, there are several creative tools you can use to make teaching more fun.

Even when you are teaching something you may find boring (such as grammar, spelling and punctuation) just remember that it is essential that these skills be taught; so, you should try and teach them in a fun and exciting way that makes kids want to learn. Never let the students know that you think it's dull because then they'll switch off from the outset and that won't do either you or them any good. Teach by example for the best results.

Just like there are no set rules for learning, there are no set rules on how to teach either. However, when we look back with fond memories to the teachers that we liked, it probably goes hand in hand with the teaching methods they used and the knowledge we actually retained after leaving school because of them. Therefore, this would seem as good a place to start as any.

Personally I believe that the best teaching methods are academic but not too severe. I strongly feel that the right balance between academia and fun is the best way to get facts across to students and to help them in their own quest to find answers.

At the moment I am teaching linguistic frameworks to an English GCSE student who is finding them rather difficult to deal with. So, instead of applying these complex terms to the work of Shakespeare or Tennessee Williams (which would only confuse him more); we started off looking at semantics and phonetics hidden within film reviews from broadsheets newspapers. Therefore he is learning the academic terms he will need for his examinations, but in a fun way that he also finds interesting. Therefore. his attention will be held and he will not realise that he is learning these complex academic terms and will therefore not be put off by it. He is not weighed down from the start by heavy literature which in itself would stand in the way of his learning the terms fully. Therefore, he can pick out connotation, denotation, syntex, metaphors and so forth confidently and then move onto poetry and classic literature knowing he can confidently identify these elements. This is a great achievement indeed.

All texts can be analysed and all analysis is important, therefore making the analysis fun in the process means that learning is also fun and the more you enjoy learning, the more you will learn. As I said before: it's as simple as that.

Learn more about this author, Marilyn Justine.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.