Do you ever come across a situation when you feel energize to teach your class but all of the the students does not show the enthusiasm to learn?
Let's hear this one make-up story about his students' attitude during class.
" ... I was enraged. I had to calm myself down outside the class after their unresponsive act. I prepared all night making learning aids just to make sure they will get attracted of what I'm going to teach them today. All I want is for them to give a response. Yesterday, I already lectured them their purpose of going to school and they need to focus on that purpose only... I wish a had a better way to make them understand my goal..."
There could be a lot of factors that caused the student to be "unresponsive" during class. Some of the reasons could be:
Lack of oxygen for the brain
Our brain needs oxygen to function well and focus puts up a lot of brain power to work. Without sufficient supply of oxygen to the brain, the tendency to "rest" is probable. In this situation, the only possible and temporary solution is to ask your student to have a drink of water. As mentioned by Sposato (2007), the brain needs to get hydrated to keep you thinking clearly. (Read her full article here)
Not mentally prepared to learn
As weird as it may sound, most of us didn't really emphasize students' preparation in learning on subject that we are going to teach due to the reason that we always put assumptions that they can manage and know what will they learn next. This is truly a mistake. According to Thorndike's Law Of Effect, one of the crucial process in behavioral learning is the law of readiness. This process refers to an act that a meaningful learning is only achievable if they have a general idea of knowledge of what they are learning. Unable to follow the lesson due to lack of student's preparation will cause frustration to them thus becoming "unresponsive". One possible suggestion to tackle this problem is to ensure your student know what they are going to learn on the next class. I've been trying myself to practice this method for my Year 5 Science class. I hope I can share the outcome on my next post.
Inconducive learning environment (extreme hot/cold weather, noises etc)
These are also known as "distractions". Students easily get distracted by their five sensory. One way to get back their attention is to let them have the "distraction" and make a statement about it. For instance, if the gardener is cutting the grass with the lawnmower during class, you can tell the student, "I know you all fell uneasy about the noise, and so do I. But, I hope just because of this it stops our lesson. What do you think?" They can share their thoughts for awhile but try not to let them engage too long on that discussion.
Simply have no interest to learn at the moment
I've experienced teaching a class on the final hour after they sat a mock exam in my class. They are mentally drained from all the thinking. I assume that if I try to give them the lesson I already planned, they will either hear it and just nod at everything I said or they simply ignore you. In this situation, what I have done is I play a game with them, yet interestingly, I brought them to play a game about the topic I was going to teach. By putting a different approach of teaching at that time, I have managed to bring them to learn in a fun way, although the result should be higher than expected, but more importantly, you done the teaching and the students done their learning too!
I hope you will have an insight on how you can help your students to get prepared for the next lesson. Cheers ^^.