Increasing Student Interest in the Classroom

No matter the age or grade, teachers want their students to be interested in the topic at hand. Not only does interest promote achievement, teachers receive true satisfaction when their students appear wide-eyed and motivated to learn about the topic that they spent time and energy preparing for. Interest allows students to remain engaged and focused on what is being taught so that they absorb the material quicker and more efficiently. The good news is that teachers are the best motivators for student interest because they are in direct contact with their students throughout the day. They have the connection, relationship, knowledge of and rapport with their students to best engage them and, therefore, interest them. 

Upon introducing a curriculum topic, utilize a simple Likert scale to gain information on where students fall on the spectrum of interest, or in other words, how much they would like to learn about the topic .  A Likert scale is a rating scale that allows students to express themselves numerically; in other words, how interested the students are on a range of numbers, such as one through five. By gathering this important input before, during and after the lesson, teachers can quantitatively determine whether or not their students' interest changed (and hopefully improved!) throughout the lesson or activity.

The most important way to grab your students' attention and spark their initial interest is to engage them and express self-interest in the topic. Share with your students how you personally connect with this topic.  Utilize an eager, motivated tone of voice and a big, genuine smile when introducing the topic so that the students interests are piqued right from the get-go! Likewise, have students connect to the topic by bridging their own lives or knowledge with the topic at hand. Relate the information to the students' lives or with current world happenings so they can better identify with and connect to the topic and ensuing information. For example, if students are learning a math concept, you may compare the computational skill being taught to shopping and budgeting for groceries or holiday gifts. If you are teaching about a war that occurred many moons ago, perhaps you can connect that war to what is occurring right now in Iraq. If you truly cannot find a way to connect the topic to the student's current lives (or even if you can), modify the activity surrounding the topic to an activity that the students enjoy, such as rapping or writing song lyrics regarding the topic.

This leads into another method of increasing student interest: have fun with the topic! If you can find a way for the students to sing about, dance, role-play, act out or draw or create a game regarding the topic, they will be much more engaged throughout the learning process than by using a traditional note-taking teaching strategy. A similar method to increase student interest is utilizing a multi-modal approach to teaching that includes presenting the material in various ways, from visual to auditory and even kinesthetically. The more senses that are engaged, the more students will plug in to the subject matter! Some ideas to help put this into action are watching videos on the topic, playing a jeopardy styled game utilizing relevant information, or if possible, going on a school trip pertinent to the subject at hand.  Perhaps students can split into groups and each group delve into the material in various ways before sharing their final products with the class. One group may graph interesting information related to the topic while another group may create a collage using magazines and newspaper cut-outs. Teachers will be just as interested to see how creative and  resourceful students can be when they are inspired!

Would love to hear some specifics from teachers on how what tools or methods they use to motivate students to become interested in the topics being taught.