Finding ways of motivating teens in FE
Further education is a rare opportunity to engage teenagers, in most instances they are experiencing their first change of learning environment in five years, they arrive not really knowing the difference between their school environment and the college environment.
The trick to engaging teenagers entering FE is to maximise this opportunity in the first weeks of their course. Today's frustration is the insistence of FE organisations that you as a lecturer must undertake many induction activities with the students that basically destroy this opportunity. How many times have you sent the students on tour of the college with a map and very little in terms of direction, or delivered a PowerPoint on the college sickness absence policy, to the new student this is dire at best.
So we are trapped between the needs of the system and failing to engage our students in the early part of the course, what to do? Well here are a few things that have worked for me:
If you want to engage the students, build a bond with them by making activities two way, compete against them and try to integrate a small amount of none relevant questions in the with the topic related questioning e.g. I often include a small number of movie, music or sports related questions or general knowledge these give the students chance to re-engage when you are starting to lose them in a topic.
Pacing a lesson is always tricky but in induction as much as students can be tolerant of your delivery in the first few weeks you should make sure information overload does not occur.
The trick to engaging teenagers entering FE is to maximise this opportunity in the first weeks of their course. Today's frustration is the insistence of FE organisations that you as a lecturer must undertake many induction activities with the students that basically destroy this opportunity. How many times have you sent the students on tour of the college with a map and very little in terms of direction, or delivered a PowerPoint on the college sickness absence policy, to the new student this is dire at best.
So we are trapped between the needs of the system and failing to engage our students in the early part of the course, what to do? Well here are a few things that have worked for me:
- Everything yes everything in the induction process should be active.
- Word searches/Crosswords to summarise learning from a session.
- Make students compete with each other when being asked to find information.
- Give a prize not for the first answer but for the best answer.
- Create a league table for the induction weeks.
- Make everything you can a game.
- Be an actor, if they need to know what to do in a fire, come in in a fire marshals jacket,
If you want to engage the students, build a bond with them by making activities two way, compete against them and try to integrate a small amount of none relevant questions in the with the topic related questioning e.g. I often include a small number of movie, music or sports related questions or general knowledge these give the students chance to re-engage when you are starting to lose them in a topic.
Pacing a lesson is always tricky but in induction as much as students can be tolerant of your delivery in the first few weeks you should make sure information overload does not occur.
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