It’s a dreary day, the rain’s pouring outside, the students are damp and mud-stained from playing football on the cesspool of a field, the classroom is a murky shade of what used to be white with displays half peeled from the walls by year seven fiddlers.

Never an ideal location for fun.

Or a lesson for that matter.

Whilst that may well be the case, how important is it for our lessons to bring some sparkle and fun into what can be, I’m sure, a long and dull day for our students. When they face multiple lessons and subjects each day, how much more important is it that we be memorable and reach out to them with learning through fun? If we can be excited and exciting, they will be too.

Recently, I’ve been looking at teaching some of the (appropriate) poems in ‘The World’s Wife’ to our KS3 students, looking at poetry, perspective and writing skills. What I wanted them to get out of it was improved analytical skills, improved explanation skills and more accurate writing skills eventually leading towards the AQA GCSEs.

They need to know that but do they need to feel that? I don’t think so? My aim was that they enjoy those processes as much as possible and build a passion for English as they learn…

Let me take you through some of the resources!

The first week of the scheme looks at representations of women. The first thing anyone notices about a handout is how it looks rather than the content, making it look more fun is an immediate way to encourage students to perceive the work as fun. More than that, and more importantly, finding texts they’ll engage with (in this case winding them up) is a great way to encourage them to enjoy it. Time flies when you’re really into something and discussing these representations of boys and girls from the past is likely to really get a reaction from them!

Easy ways to make these resources even more fun and interactive is to use competition – which not only helps to get students to buy in to the activity but also helps to add pace to the lesson – such as who can BEST summarise the representation of girls in the texts or who can FASTEST summarise the representation?

Points written on the board for competitions like this really develop a sense of the tangibility of it, especially if there is a visible reward for completing the activity.

One of my favourite ‘tricks’ is to say that the prize goes to the one person who makes the CLEVEREST comments, pushing them to think as perceptively as possible and to evaluate their own contributions!

 

 

 

With homework, the same is true. Making it look interesting and exciting is half the battle, the other is ensuring that the task will actually excite them! Here you can see that the aim (at least) is that students do a bit of research and thinking for themselves…

Without a knowledge and understanding of the world of work and the tie in it can be to have to provide for ourselves financially, do our own chores and the like, our students can easily find school a grind. We have so much control over whether they like our subject or LOVE it.

Let’s try and make English fun.