If you ask me to remember a lesson I learnt when I was a child it will with no doubt be something that was taught to me in a fun and innovative way.

Research shows that the more senses used while teaching something, the more chance there is of the student remembering it. When I say senses I mean: sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste.
Of course you can’t exactly taste or smell what you are learning about (unless it is a cookery class). Yet you can teach via sight, sound and touch.

Teaching through song is highly effective, particularly for children. For example when you are teaching the times tables. If there is a tune to the times tables, children will get more excited about it and will try to remember the song and therefore without realizing it, they remember their times tables.

Even in my higher education this proved true. I would regularly take a favorite song of mine and change the lyrics to fit what I was learning. Every time I listened to my favorite song I would remember my lyrics and consequently revise what I had learned.

Touch is something that is popular when teaching children. When teaching them about materials you can bring the materials into the classroom and get them to feel them rather than explaining how glass feels smooth whereas bricks are rough etc.

Any class, even in higher education, where they discuss properties of materials should have some samples around for students to feel for themselves.

Teachers can also use images in the classroom. Classroom wall displays are extremely important, this is true also in high school classrooms. Students tend to lose focus often and will usually ‘space-out’ by staring at a wall. If there is something educational on the wall then the student will repeatedly read it and after a while it will be stuck in their memory.

Physical stimulation is not only important for young students, it is important for those older ones as well. These days everything is so fast-paced and technological that teachers need to catch on and try to implement as many new-technological methods into their teaching as possible.

There are so many videos online about the endless things to learn about this world we live in. There are professional channels on sites like YouTube that are dedicated just to producing fun, and interesting visual content to help students learn, and teacher teach.

My favorite classes in high school were those that included some sort of video presentation in them, even if it was short. Note: a video presentation, and not a PowerPoint. PowerPoints can be effective but in my opinion they are just a copy of the textbook typed out on a page that will be blown up big so everyone can see the same page at once. They are static and therefore uninteresting in the fast-paced day to day nature of the world.

Teachers: I suggest you look over your lesson plans and try to work stimulation of the senses into your classes as much as possible, especially if you are teaching young students.