The 5 Key Criteria To Create Effective Teaching Aids For The Classroom

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.

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