Create engaging content for your students

You’ve done your research, you’ve prepped for far too many hours and you’ve even whipped up a new pop quiz…

…so why wouldn’t you expect anything less than a room full of engaged students and a gold star for your work? Two words: content delivery. Or more importantly, the lack of! A key teaching tool for classroom success is to not only be a teacher but an educational content marketer too!

Education really IS the theme of content marketing and the best content marketers are the best teachers! As an educator, besides managing disruptive behaviour, juggling work schedules and your own life outside of work, the pressure is on to keep yourself and your teaching methods relevant, innovative and engaging to your students. Sounds daunting, doesn’t it? If you break away from the ‘marketing’ terms, you’re left with something really quite simple to achieve and we’ll show you how!

“Refresh, revive and reinvigorate your teaching content delivery in a way that will ensue with the students of today and the future.”

Refresh, revive and reinvigorate your teaching content delivery in a way that will ensue with the students of today and the future. Students often say that school is boring – a point that us as teachers need to tune into – and find out why. What does it take to make education exciting?

We’ve thrown together a teacher toolbox of tricks to keep up your sleeve on becoming not only a great educator but also an effective content marketer of your learning material!

1. Predictability is Painful

One of the greatest battles is predictability. You remember those times as a student where you forgot what day is was because everyday started and ended the same way, yes? Routine can be both beneficial and detrimental to the school day and how your students interact.

Why not test the waters a little – you don’t need to forgo your entire schedule but try mixing it up a bit and inject a bit of variety in the way you share your content.

Mainly work on the premise of chalk, talk and handouts? Bring in some video, some audio, case studies, webinars or any other variety of teaching techniques. You’ll be surprised how much more interaction you’ll receive from your students.

2. A Little Humour Never Hurt Nobody

Whilst it might not ring true for all of us, we’re confident that the majority of us can remember the teachers we liked at schools and most of them were funny. Having a sense of humour is an extremely powerful teaching tool that makes students remember what you’re teaching them.

The key challenge of a content marketer and teacher is to deliver content of all kinds in a way that will be remembered outside the classroom. Faced with teaching some dry material? Why not try injecting several jokes, a few anecdotes or even a funny role-play or experiment to engage the interest of your students.

3. Relevance Rules the Roost

It’s notoriously known that subjects considered ‘boring’ or ‘of no use’ are the biggest instigators for student disengagement. Whilst Jamie may adore learning about Pythagorus theorem in maths, Lydia sat behind him can’t see how it will help her become a future lawyer. So she doodles instead.

The most useful tip for marketing your educational content is to to be aware of your audience. Look for the nonverbal signs of boredom or confusion and adapt your content accordingly. Engage with the class, ask them what it is that they’re not getting, not liking, which bits they did like and what they want to learn more about.

Content marketing is only successful if you covet the material that your audience – in this case, students – want to learn about. Find ways of making your content relatable to the students – to their position now and how it will help them in the future. This could be through case studies, testimonial videos and focus upon essential career skills.

4. Let Your Students Muck In

Remember how you felt when a teacher said it was a textbook day? Now compare that to when it was an experiment day. Big difference, no? Having your students get stuck in and learning ‘hands-on’ is one of the best teaching tips for engagement.

Tailoring you lesson content in a way that calls for interaction is the key to maintaining the interest of your students. This could be anything from setting up webinars, a classroom twitter chat with another class, a group quiz or even setting up a classroom discussion in the form of a game show. The important thing is to get creative!

5. Break the Mould 

Stuck in a rut of doing the same thing day in, day out? Both you and your students can get bored of staring at the same four walls so break up the routine by organising days out for your class. Children love to go out on school trips so why not take your teaching to an exciting destination where the learning can take place organically.

From places you can get to with the wheels of a school bus or even taking your class outside into the school grounds, it breaks boredom whilst the fresh air helps to keep the class alert and refreshed.

Remember, the teachers that stand out from the crowd are the ones that adapt and change to elicit sustained interest in their classroom and position themselves as an influencer of inspiring educational experiences for their students.