19. How To Motivate Your Students
Motivating your students can be a struggle. How do we get them to put forth the effort and engage in your STEM lessons? We need to dig into why students lack motivation and get to the root of the problem first. It may be that they need a boost in self-efficacy, or need a way to find value in how the class relates to them personally. Tune in to this episode to join the discussion and hear ways you may be able to better motivate your students.
18. What You Should Know About Failure
This episode is a follow-up to episode 17 where we introduced an assignment for educators to fail at something! This allows for teachers to be able to empathize with our students so that we can better help them fail forward or learn from their failures. Listen to this episode for tips on how to address failure in your classroom, tools to equip your students for failure, and even how you can score some free supplies for your STEM lab. Don’t forget to check out the links below for more on failure!
17. We All Need a Lesson in Failure
When was the last time you truly experienced failure? As educators, we need a refresher on what failure feels like to put us back into the mindset of what it is like to be a novice at something. This perspective is how many of our students are walking into our classrooms. We can become more effective at teaching them if we are able to relate to the position they are in with our content.
16. Everything You Know About Learning Styles Is Wrong
Do you meet all of your students’ needs by teaching to each learning style? Maybe you make sure there is an audio recording of your content for the auditory learners or provide plenty of pictures for your visual students. Perhaps you even add some active components for those kinesthetic learners. What if I told you that learning styles are a lie? Turns out, there is no evidence that learning styles are a real thing. Tune in to this episode to hear the “why” and find out how to effectively teach your students without all the learning style fuss.
15. How to Address Students' Misconceptions
Do you shy away from addressing students’ misconceptions? According to the constructivist theory of learning, kids make their own knowledge and ideas about how the world works based on their experiences. What if those ideas are wrong? As educators, we need an approach to correcting these misconceptions that first helps students become aware and commit to what they believe. Listen to this episode for practical methods and examples in how you can help your students with their misconceptions.
14. When Kids Are Ready to Learn and How to Teach Them
Do your students struggle with design challenges? Maybe they aren’t developmentally ready for that level of knowledge application. Research shows that abstract concepts often cannot be grasped by children under a certain age. We need to make sure our teaching is appropriate for a student’s age and know how to set them up for success in learning these concepts when they are ready. Listen to this episode to learn more!