I recently returned to teaching full time middle school social studies. For the past 3 years, I had been teaching university students and adult learners. Teaching adolescents is very different to teaching older learners. They involve navigating distinct cognitive, emotional, and developmental landscapes. Adults typically bring a variety of life experiences and a self-directed approach to learning. Teaching adults often involves leveraging their prior knowledge, fostering independent thinking, and connecting new information to their existing understanding. Adolescents, on the other hand, are often characterized by a heightened sensitivity to peer relationships, rapid cognitive changes, and a burgeoning sense of identity. Effective teaching for this age group requires engaging, interactive methods that acknowledge their need for autonomy and social connection.
So, the strategies need to be different! Here are some tips that keep in mind when teaching younger learners:
Set clear objectives and expectations: Young learners benefit from clearly defined goals and expectations. The expectation that I have of them in class need to be explicitly communicated and consistently managed. For example, in the first few weeks of school, my students would always come into class with their bags, and this would subsequently take them longer to take out their notebooks and pens, meaning we would start class later than we should. I decided to create a rule in which students were not allowed to have bags in class and had to be ready, sitting on their desks with notebooks and pens out. I communicated this clearly and had to remind a few times but now they all know what is to be expected and come into class without their bags and notebooks and pens out!
Be patient and flexible: This is an important one. The attention span of students of this group really can vary. Children of this age are changing rapidly and it is important to be patient and flexible. I encourage curiosity and exploration, even if it means going slightly off topic! This happens often but that is the nature of learning. Yesterday, in my Grade 5 social studies class, we were looking at the domains of the Earth (biosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and geosphere). I gave my students the data point of how Earth is made up of 71% of water. Then, a student of mine, asked me how much percent of the human body is made up of water. This led to a conversation about the human body, which was not necessarily relevant to the objective of the lesson. We found out that roughly 60% of the human body is made up of water. After finishing our mini-digression, I recalibrated by asking my students which “sphere” humans belonged to. They rightly said the biosphere and we continued with the lesson. Content, topics, and concepts do not exist in silos and are connected in an interdisciplinary manner. The key is to bring the focus and discussion back to the lesson plan and that is the role of the teacher.
Make learning fun and interactive: To make learning fun and interactive, it is important to use their natural inclination for enjoyment and experiential learning. Students at this age enjoy games and simulations and respond more enthusiastically to educational experiences that are designed in a gamified manner. Rather than traditional worksheets, reading comprehension, or writing paragraphs, their learning becomes an adventure, and by incorporating games and experiential activities, students learn without even realizing it. This approach mirrors how we naturally learn in the real world, where practical experiences are the sources of learning. I have been incorporating escape rooms into lessons, which encourage problem-solving and teamwork. I am now constantly on the lookout for how i can make the content I want to teach a simulation of some sort, making students engage and learn.
Teaching this age group is a signification shift from my prior teaching experiences. While it certainly poses challenges, it's also an opportunity for me to explore and develop new tools and strategies of instruction. My role is to make learning that is dynamic and enjoyable journey for my students. And if one strategy doesn’t work, there is always another!
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