6 Ways to make lessons fun and engaging online

Teaching from home can be an adjustment for teachers who are used to the classroom.

It's not always easy to communicate via webcam and it takes imagination to keep students’ minds stimulated! You might find that you need a completely different set of online teaching skills that you wouldn’t need in-person.

How can you balance teaching with fun and engaging activities?

1) Adapt in-class activities to a virtual classroom.
2) Encourage peer to peer learning.
3) Set targets and help students stick to them.
4) Use technology and the resources available to you.
5) Break the lesson down and make it digestible for students.
6) Introduce some fun into the classroom.

1) Adapt in-class activities to a virtual classroom. Sometimes, there is just no way to adjust specific learning activities to work online. But often, with a little creativity, you can adapt activities to be more online friendly and still have the desired effect on the class. Using a variety of activities to teach can mean that students who thrive off different types of learning are included. Turning games into independent quizzes, or moving demonstrations online can keep students engaged and entertained.

2) Encourage peer to peer learning. Group activities are still needed to help to grow social skills as well as academic skills. Encouraging students to share their work with their peers is a good idea, despite restrictions. Research tasks or projects involving small groups of students will maintain communication skills and encourage teamwork. Peer to peer learning is still possible online.

3) Set targets and help students stick to them. Some students are motivated by targets. One easy way to set short-term goals in your online classroom is to make sure that each lesson has a straightforward outcome and overview. You share this with your student so that they know where they are in the learning process and the context behind any task they perform.

4) Use technology and the resources available to you. Teaching online comes with its challenges, but there are a lot of pretty interesting resources for you to take advantage of. Discussion boards, pointers, virtual gamers, text editors, drawing apps, file editors or screen-sharing tools, can all be used to bring diversity to your lessons.

5) Break the lesson down and make it digestible for students. Before a lesson, set out a lesson plan to provide structure. There are plenty of free lesson planners like ‘Planboard’ you can use to do this. You should allocate enough time for each activity to ensure you cover what’s needed during your lesson. Breaking the lesson down into smaller chunks will help to keep students focused and allow those falling behind to catch up.

6) Introduce some fun into the classroom. The trick to getting your online students involved is to find out what motivates them and give them a reason to be involved in learning. Make lessons more fun by playing music, talking about a specific subject, relating what you're doing to the real world, or offering quizzes/games.