In his previous blog post
How to engage students in the classroom & beyond, trainer
Vincent Chieppa shared some insight about classroom engagement. The team at Oxbridge, as part of their continuous teacher training and development, devoted a meeting to brainstorm and role play the proposed tips and guidance. We walked in our students' shoes by becoming learners for one hour. The results was very revealing: we all remembered better when the vocabulary was contextualized and when we were engaged in the topic.
Memorizing, as part of the learning process, often occurs at a subconscious level while being engaged in what we are doing. The conclusions of this meeting really made the difference and teachers have better notions now of how closely related the degree of engagement and motivation is to the process of remembering and learning.
In this meeting Vincent achieved exactly what the purpose of this learning activity was: to engage teachers in a fruitful discussion and to make them aware of how to appeal to students' emotional side and use suspense to boost motivation and concept retention.
The smiles and laughs speak for themselves. Objective achieved!