Teaching is an Art for me. Great Teachers help us to understand the core of subject and at the same time they make us laugh, hold our attention and inspire us. Achieving this kind of engagement with students takes lifelong learning, practice and of course experience.
But what If you are someone like me, who has never worked with students before and has got that big responsibility and mission now to work with them, help them to develop their language skills and do workshops which will be interesting for them and make them involved during the whole process.
In this article I would like to share with you some tricks and ideas that I found out during my research and which helped me to make nice, interactive workshops for students.
If you are about to start your first workshop I hope that these steps will help you:
- First and foremost, you have to choose topic which is really interesting for your “target group”, how? Ask them. For example in our first week in school when we had to present ourselves to students, in the end of presentation we asked students what topic they would like to discuss with us and a lots of students answered that for them would be very interesting to know about our countries, so I made my first workshop about “Cultural Differences”
- Make some changes in the room/hall/office. People usually like to sit in the same places and classrooms usually look the same but when you make them move and change their places or divide into several groups they become more interested and want to know what will happen next.
- Try to include some comparisons which are familiar for them, ask some questions and make them think differences between the facts that you introduced and what they know about it, for instance in my workshop I’m talking about Armenian traditions, stereotypes etc. and asking them about Polish ones. Try to make it as fun as possible. They like to laugh and feel refresh.
- Play games. You can make your whole workshop like a game or just include some games and energizers at the beginning, in the middle or in the end. It can be related to the topic or something different, they will be happy in both cases.
- Tell some stories. Whatever you’re teaching, try to make it relatable to everyday life by using real examples, case studies, and creative metaphors. They will be happy to learn about real stories.
So, these are those 5 main points that I would like to share with you if you are beginner and need some ideas to start your first workshop. Wish you all good luck.
