Pass It On January 2014, Issue 5 | Page 16

CLICK HERE for the full 10 ways to reach students in your classroom.

You've just got to make at least one part of the subject appeal to the students. I once went to watch a football match. Once, and once only. Within about 2 minutes of the whistle being blown, I had lost interest in the match itself but I was interested by the crowd; the chants they were shouting and their behaviour towards one another. It was this aspect of being at a football match that interested me; not the game itself. Could we be more open in the classroom to the possibility that a student might be more fascinated by (and therefore more motivated by) a more abstract element of our subject than we might expect?