
Using educational teaching aids can boost student success in the classroom. These aids reinforce what a teacher says and ensures the main points are understood. Educational teaching aids signal students to the important information. They also allow them to experience something that is abstract in real life. They engage students’ other senses in the learning process and allow for different learning styles.
What is A Teaching Aid?
A teaching aid is anything that can be used to help reinforce new information or skills. It is helpful to consider the age of your students and the subject you are teaching. You must also consider your specific students. Do they need more active involvement? Do they prefer more serious teaching aids? Are they struggling with your subject?
Create teaching aids that build on your students’ knowledge and inspire them to learn more.
Why Do You Use Teaching Aids?
- Teachers use aids consciously because they know that they have a positive effect on learning outcomes, they claim that learning aids improve methodology.
- Whenever teachers use some of the learning aids while teaching, their students get more stimulated because the learning aids help them (students) to become more attentive.
- With aids, students participate in better in-class activities.
- Learners understand better when teachers use aids to teach.
- Teachers also improvise the teaching aids when needed.
- Teachers claim that they use teaching aids to explain the various concepts that require explanation.
What is the Importance of Teaching Aids?
- Support lesson.
- Assist learning.
- Explain concepts and illustrate meanings.
- Facilitate teachers‘ work by promoting conversation in groups.
- Save time and effort.
- Make use of the five senses.
- Arouse interest in the current topic.
Characteristics of Good Teaching Aids:
- Suitable for the teaching objectives.
- Correlate with text material and class work.
- Simplify the learning process.
- Be of appropriate size and attractive.
- Provide language experience to improve communicative competence·
- Motivate pupils to practice language individually, in pairs or in groups.
- Clear and easy to use, available in the classroom or school.
Examples of Learning, and Teaching aids:
- Whiteboards.
- Slides.
- Flip charts.
- Smartboard.
- Diagrams.
- PowerPoint.
- Pictures, flashcards, graphic organizers.
- Videocassettes/DVDs.
- Overhead transparencies.
- Audio aids.
- The teacher-laptops.
- Data show.
The Five Main Criteria to Choose Effective Teaching Aids for the Classroom
Teachers commonly use aids in the classroom to supplement their instruction. The effectiveness of these teaching aids depends on certain qualities. These qualities enable students to benefit from aids.
1. Accessibility
The most important factor of any educational aid’s effectiveness is its accessibility to students. Educational aids must be made available to all students within a classroom.
2. Visibility
For educational aids to be effective, they must be clearly visible. Boards provide convenient visual platforms from which students observe and copy information. Dry-erase boards use markers, which can easily be wiped away. Electronic boards, or “whiteboards,” can link directly to a teacher’s computer to display information that can be altered directly or remotely.
3. Practicality
Educational aids are most effective when they introduce students to knowledge and skills that prepare them for the real world. Desktop and laptop computers are useful for this purpose. They can be used to access educational and creative material while familiarizing students with technology.
4. Interactivity
Educational aids become effective when they encourage participation from learners. The greater the degree of interactivity, the greater the benefit is to the student.
5. Usability
A large degree of any educational aid’s effectiveness lies in the ability of the person using it. Both students and teachers must be familiar with the aid’s operation and its intended purpose before it can be used effectively. For example, an art teacher who wishes to use a slide projector should be aware that such a device requires periodic maintenance and is ideally placed some distance from the screen.
As a teacher, your first goal is to maximize learning and to use time efficiently. This may mean that you take a different approach to teaching. This is how teaching aids are beneficial.
- Keep the learning relevant to your students’ lives.
- If the material is not relevant, students are less likely to care for it.
- Remain enthusiastic and implement different methods in your teaching approach. It makes for a more engaging classroom.
Thanks For Reading
Liked This Article?
Share It With Your Networks.
You can also join my email list not only to be notified of the latest updates on elttguide.com but also to get TWO of my products: Quick-Start Guide To Teaching Listening In The Classroom & Quick-Start Guide To Teaching Grammar In The Classroom For FREE!
Join My Email List Now (It’s FREE)!
Want to Continue Your ELT Professional Development?
I offer various ELT publications on teaching English as a foreign language.
In these publications, I put the gist of my experience in TEFL for +20 years with various learners and in various environments and cultures.
The techniques and tips in these publications are sure-fire teaching methods that worked for me well and they can work for you, as well, FOR SURE.
Go ahead and get a look at these publications to know more about each one of them and the problem & challenge each one focuses on to overcome.
Then, you can get what you have an interest in. It is very easy and cheap. You can afford it and you’ll never regret it if you decide to get one of them, FOR SURE.
Now, click to get a look at my Publications
Searching For The Best TEFL Courses?!!
We Recommend International TEFL Academy (ITA)
It is one of the world’s largest TEFL certification schools for you to become professionally trained as an English teacher.
International TEFL Academy (ITA) trains more than 6,000 English teachers annually and offers internationally accredited TEFL-TESOL certification courses online and in 25 locations around the world.
All students and graduates receive a lifetime job and search guidance, and graduates are currently employed as teachers of English online and in more than 80 nations in Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East.
For more information about TEFL certification and teaching English abroad, please visit their site: International TEFL Academy (ITA) to receive a FREE guide now.
GREAT.THESE TEACHING AIDS ARE ESSENTIAL TO SUPPORT OUR LESSONS AND MEET STUDENTS ‘ AS THEY HAVE DIFFERENT METHODS OF LEARNING.HOWEVER WE HAVE TO VARY OUR AIDS SO THAT EVERY STUDENT CAN BENIFIT FROM THE LESSON
Thank you for the great lesson
Very systematic and precise well understood
Education is the key to success
Impressive
It is good notes because is systematic arranged which stimulate an individual to study or lean
I have followed the notes very well and I promise to follow these criteria in selection of the teaching resources for my ICT class . THANKS ?
So good for 21st century teacher
Thanks so much sir for the great work you have done especially imparting in us the knowledge and I think It will help not only me but the class as a whole to ensure the above certria in a practical matter
Thanks so much for the great work and imparting in us the knowledge
Asante sana Mwalimu, i will keep following for more information to improve teaching
Great stuff
Good notes and i like