How to Choose & Prepare Teaching Aides
- 1). Know your audience! If your class predominately learns well by seeing things, create teaching aides that are highly visual. For example, instead of simply reading something to your class, show it up on a screen, too. Some classrooms are full of students who must feel things before they can learn them. We all can learn well by using all of our senses. Try to create teaching aides that allow students to get hands-on experience with new concepts.
- 2). Create a poster board that graphs out the concept you are trying to teach. Depending on your topic, an image along with some bullet points is usually quite effective. Make sure everything is big enough for all your students to see easily. Keep the concept as simple as possible while still conveying the message you need to get across to the students.
- 3). Make an audio assistant! For example, if you are teaching a history lesson, a sound bite from a historical speech or other significant moment can be a great teaching aide. Just be sure that the audio is clear enough to be easily understood, or this can bore students quickly.
- 4). Keep your aides simple. It's difficult enough for students to learn a new concept, but concepts can get quite convoluted when the aides used are riddled with far too many elements. If you start to create a teaching aid and realize that it's too much information, try dividing the information into two or more aides.
- 5). Get feedback from your students before choosing and preparing your next set of teaching aides. You may be surprised to find out which tactics worked and which didn't, but you should take their preferences into consideration.