5 simple ways to make your lessons more engaging
Kick off your lessons with these five engaging ideas
Practical ideas for primary and secondary school teachers to spark curiosity, get students involved and make learning more interactive.
How do you get students engaged from the very first minute of your lesson? Sometimes, all it takes is a surprising question, a quick challenge or a playful activity. It sparks curiosity, activates what students already know and gives them a reason to start thinking.
The good news? You don't need to reinvent your lessons to make it happen. With a few simple teaching activities and your interactive touchscreen, you can create an engaging, meaningful start in just minutes.
At i3CONNECT, we believe technology should make teaching easier while keeping the focus where it belongs: on learning. Here are five simple ways to bring more interaction, curiosity and a little fun into your classroom.
1. Start with a visual mystery
Spark your students' curiosity before revealing the answer.
A great image can be the perfect way to kick off a lesson. Instead of introducing the topic straight away, show an intriguing photo, an unusual object or a surprising statement on your i3CONNECT interactive touchscreen.
Teaching geography? Show a satellite image and ask students to guess what they're looking at. In science, zoom in on an everyday object and challenge students to identify it. For history, start with a historical artefact and ask what it tells us about life in the past.
Use your interactive touchscreen to zoom in, highlight details or reveal clues one by one. Invite students to come up to the display and point out the evidence behind their guesses.
Visual clues work especially well with younger learners. In kindergarten or early primary school, try covering an image with shapes. Erase small sections one at a time and let the class guess what's hiding underneath. Older students can take things further by analysing evidence, challenging assumptions and explaining their reasoning.
i3CONNECT tip💡
Open an image in Whiteboard or your favourite presentation tool and use the annotation features to collect observations. Keep the answer hidden until your students have had a chance to explore the image together.
Why does it work? Students activate their prior knowledge, ask questions and become curious about the topic before the lesson even begins. And because they've worked to discover the answer themselves, they're more likely to remember it.
2. Turn revision into an interactive quiz
Revision is more fun when everyone gets involved.
How much do your students remember from the previous lesson? Instead of calling on the same few students, turn revision into a quick, interactive classroom quiz.
Display three to five questions on your interactive touchscreen. Let students answer individually, discuss their ideas with a partner or work together in small teams. Mix things up with multiple-choice questions, true-or-false statements or challenges with more than one possible answer.
With digital teaching tools like Gynzy, you can use ready-made activities or quickly create a quiz that matches your learning objectives. Keep the questions short and use the answers to see what students already understand and where they might need a little extra support.
And don't stop at the right answer. Ask students to explain why they chose it. That's where the real learning happens.
i3CONNECT tip💡
Show the questions on your interactive touchscreen so everyone can follow along. If your quiz tool supports it, let students submit answers from their own devices. Then use AllSync to wirelessly share a student's screen with the class and let them walk everyone through their thinking. Or use the split-screen feature to let two students work side by side on different solutions in Whiteboard.
Why does it work? Short revision activities encourage students to actively recall what they've learned. At the same time, you get an instant picture of what your class has mastered and what needs more attention.
3. Get students moving with Motion
Learning doesn't always have to happen sitting down.
Getting students more involved doesn't mean adding more screen time. Sometimes, the best way to boost engagement is to get them out of their seats.
That's where Motion comes in. This i3CONNECT teaching tool brings movement into learning by combining versatile physical cubes, hands-on activities and digital learning experiences. It makes active learning a natural part of your everyday lessons.
Start with a language challenge where students respond with a specific movement or by turning their Motion cube. In maths, ask them to solve a problem before moving on to a physical challenge. With secondary school students, present a statement and let them use a colour on their cube to show their opinion, followed by a class discussion.
Movement also works brilliantly between activities, giving students a chance to reset and refocus before their next task.
The key? Make sure every activity connects to your learning objectives. Movement makes the biggest difference when it helps students practise knowledge, work together or participate in a new way.
i3CONNECT tip💡
Explore Motion's physical exercises and digital activities, including its quiz in Gynzy. Choose an activity that fits your learning objectives, your students and the time you have available.
Why does it work? Movement creates opportunities for active learning, collaboration and hands-on experiences. It's a refreshing alternative to lessons where students spend most of their time sitting and listening. And there's research to back it up. Research by University College London, covering 42 studies, found that physical activity in lessons improves students’ attainment.
4. Give students a voice with screen sharing
Move beyond presenting information and start sharing ideas.
Your interactive touchscreen shouldn't be a one-way street. Give students the opportunity to contribute by sharing their work with the whole class.
Ask them to solve a problem on their own device, create a visual explanation or prepare a short response. With AllSync, you can wirelessly share multiple student screens on your classroom display at the same time. It's an easy way to compare different ideas, approaches and solutions.
In primary school, students can share a drawing, a completed exercise or a visual retelling of a story. In secondary school, they can present different solutions to a maths problem, compare research findings or defend an argument.
But the real magic happens when students start discussing each other's work. Why did two groups reach different answers? Which approach works best? And what can we learn by comparing their ideas?
i3CONNECT tip💡
Use AllSync to bring student work onto the big screen and make it part of the conversation. Choose a few examples that show different approaches, then compare, annotate and explore them together on your interactive touchscreen.
Why does it work? Students learn from each other, build communication skills and discover that there's often more than one way to solve a problem.
5. Turn the first five minutes into a mini challenge
Give students a reason to start thinking straight away.
A great lesson starter doesn't have to be complicated. A quick challenge gives students a clear goal and helps them focus on what they're about to learn.
Display a problem, riddle, series of clues or unfinished sentence on your interactive touchscreen. Give students two or three minutes to think independently or work in small groups before revealing the next step.
For younger students, try a word puzzle, number challenge or picture guessing game. With older students, kick things off with a thought-provoking statement, a scientific prediction or a real-world problem linked to the lesson topic.
Collect answers using Whiteboard and your touchscreen's annotation tools. Highlight connections and build on students' ideas. You can also prepare a quick interactive activity in Gynzy or bring movement into the challenge with Motion.
Whatever you choose, always connect the activity back to your learning objective. What have students discovered? What are they still curious about? And how will today's lesson help them answer the original question?
i3CONNECT tip💡
Prepare one simple challenge before the lesson starts. An image, a question in Whiteboard or a short digital activity is often all you need to get everyone thinking.
Why does it work? Students begin the lesson by thinking, predicting and solving problems. It gives new knowledge and concepts a meaningful context right from the start.
Great classroom technology puts learning first
Making your lessons more engaging isn't about using as much technology as possible. It's about choosing the right approach for your learning objectives and giving students more opportunities to think, move, create, collaborate and share their ideas.
Your i3CONNECT interactive touchscreen helps bring ideas to life, encourages interaction and makes student contributions a natural part of every lesson.
And you don't have to change everything at once. Start small. Try one new lesson starter this week and see what happens when your students get involved from the very first minute.
Because a great lesson isn't just about capturing your students' attention. It's about turning that attention into meaningful learning.
Ready to try it in your classroom?
I hope these five ideas inspire you to try something new with your students tomorrow. Curious to see movement-based learning in action? Request a free Motion demo and let's explore together how you can bring more movement, interaction and fun into your lessons.