How to Make Your Students Pay Attention in Class

Ways to Keep Them Interested and Working

Being a new teacher is one of the most intimidating and frightening things in the world. Whether you are fresh out of college or starting your second career, there is nothing to prepare you for facing 20 - 25 students whose sole purpose is to make your job harder and your life miserable. Well, here are a few ways that you can keep them interested in the lesson and working on their classwork without badgering them.

The examples I will be using are for Social Studies, but they are adaptable to anything. Now, what is the hardest thing to get kids to do? Pay attention while you are teaching a lesson. At any given moment, there will be at least two students whispering to each other or passing notes, while another one is drawing on the notebook paper you told them to use to take notes.�

1. Get them to help teach the lesson. I know it sounds crazy, but it works. Break your students into four to five groups, depending on the number of students you have in your class. Assign one part of the lesson plan to each group. Have guidelines printed out and distributed so they will know what you expect them to accomplish. Give them a day or two to work on the assignment and make sure they know when they are supposed to present it to the class. You will be surprised at what kids can come up with when you allow them to use their creativity to work on a specific goal. I did this many times with my classes and it worked out great! Even I learned some things that I didn't know! This particular lesson works very well when you are studying different countries. Assign each student one country, give them guidelines to follow letting them know what you expect them to share with the rest of the class.�Make sure they understand that they must meet the guidelines you lay out for them and how it will affect the overall grade if they fail to meet them. Tell them all of this before they begin to work to give them a goal to work for.