If you’re an online tutor, you’ve probably struggled with the motivation to teach online and get creative while teaching your students the lessons at some point.
Student engagement is directly linked to their focus and concentration, which in turn improves their critical thinking skills and results in meaningful learning experiences. If you want your lessons to be impactful so that your students achieve their goals, then lesson planning is absolutely crucial.
A lesson plan is an outline or schedule that breaks down your lessons from start to finish. That includes the lesson’s goals, activities, materials, among other things. Reach out to Preply.com to enhance your career growth as an online tutor.
But the pressure of teaching, and life in general, can mean that you’re too busy or just uninspired to come up with a creative lesson plan. So, if you teach online, here are a couple of creative ideas to help you get started:
1. Add Lots of Visual Elements
Past research has proven that humans remember what they see more than what they hear or read. So, if you want to make your online classes more interesting and increase retention, you’ll need more than one style of teaching.
One of the best strategies you can adopt is including visuals, that is videos, and pictures.
Visuals can help keep your students’ attention, which can be difficult in an online class. They can also save you time by helping to explain complex concepts more easily. So, instead of written documents and traditional instructions, try using:
- Videos
- Visual props (think flashcards and relevant physical objects)
- Sketches on a virtual whiteboard or dry erase board
- Presentations
- Graphic organizers
2. Incorporate Audio Clips When You Teach Online
In some cases, audio can help to enhance the learning experience in your classroom. Remember, students learn differently. Whereas some learn by reading, others do so by seeing or hearing.
Audio in eLearning helps learners to relate to what they are learning, which then improves their retention.
Depending on what you are trying to explain, audio could be your own voice recording or external material like podcasts or even songs. Recordings, however, shouldn’t just narrate what’s already on screen. Make it interesting and engaging by adding new insights and practical examples.
3. Use Response Devices
A typical lesson plan should cover the objectives, warm-up, presentation, practice, and finally assessment. So, near the end of your lesson or before you move to another topic, you should always check how much the students have learned.
You can ask your students to hold up their responses using tools like index cards, magnetic boards, whiteboards, or drawing tools.
Thanks to innovative technologies in eLearning, you can enable real-time responses for your students. With response devices, you’ll be able to assess individual students’ understanding of the material and address their particular weaknesses.
You can also introduce virtual games, online whiteboards, quizzes, pointers, and more to keep students on their toes, and hence engaged, at all times.
Start with a Basic Lesson Plan
A lesson plan is important when you are teaching online. As you plan your lessons, though, keep your students’ needs and preferences in mind to increase engagement and liven up the atmosphere.
Try the ideas highlighted above to add variety to your lessons and make them very interesting for your students.
