Getting Your Point Across to a Group of Students
Why good communication in class and with online students matters
You put a lot of energy into teaching a group of students, hoping that they will understand what you are demonstrating and then they’ll be keen to use it in an assignment you set, showing off their skills.
Or you’re working one to one with a student or group of students online, and you’re just met by blank stares when you ask if they understood what you just taught.
But sometimes some learners just don’t get it. Some students don’t listen, you can see others drifting away from what you’re teaching,
Too many messages
Students are surrounded by information every day.
Most use smartphones and engage in online chats. You tube videos, Instagram and other apps play a large part in their lives. In most schools students aren’t allowed to use smartphones in lessons but there are students who break those rules, sneaking a look at a post or picture or video in lessons.
Once you have a class sitting in front of you waiting for you to start it can be daunting. Getting and keeping their attention from the outset is hard. Especially with so much competition from apps that deliver instant entertainment and engagement.
Planning to teach well right from the start of the lesson can be tricky.
I like to grab student’s attention with a starter task. I choose a task that has the potential to spike their curiosity.
Some starter tasks I’ve used
I teach maths so I like to use tasks that develop reasoning skills and that can spark discussion about maths topics. Engaging starters are a great way to grab attention and set the tone for a lively maths lesson.
Here are a few examples.
1.What comes once in a minute, twice in a moment, but never in a thousand years?_ (Answer: The letter M.)
I ask my students to solve it in pairs or groups of three.
2. "You’re buying snacks for a party. A pack of crisps costs £1.20, and you want 8 packs. How much will it cost in total?"_
I like to tie it to budgeting so I go on to ask more questions about items in a budget, making students more aware of real life issues.
3. “ Did you know that the number zero was independently invented by the ancient Indians and the Maya civilization?”
4. Or I might share how Fibonacci numbers appear in nature, like in pinecones and sunflowers.
I like to try to get students fascinated by a historical maths fact or maths patterns that occur naturally. That usually sparks some discussion about whether maths was invented or discovered.
5. "Would you rather win £100 today or £1 each day for a year?"_
Sometimes I like to get students to do a quick calculation to explore their reasoning.
6. I show an image, like a city skyline, and ask students to identify shapes they can spot (triangles, rectangles, etc.), relating maths to the real world.
This helps sharpen students visualising skills and gets them used to naming common 2D shapes.
These ideas aim to balance fun, curiosity, and maths skills.
Diving into the main part of the lesson
When done right, your words can inspire action, ignite curiosity, and leave an impact long after the class has left the room. This is what most teachers would like to happen.
After your students have had some fun with the starter questions, begin by telling them what they will learn in the lesson.
I like to follow on from my fun and interesting starter task or question very quickly. Sometimes I will use a simple, anecdote, or statistic as a link between the starter and the main topic and then flow from that.
The Fibonacci sequence is a number pattern that starts 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, and so on. You get the next number by adding the two previous numbers, so 1+1 = 2 and 1+2=3, 2+3 = 5 and so on.
So for example if I start a lesson by talking about the Fibonacci sequence in nature, and showing a short clip on it, I could then move on with stating that the objective of the lesson is to understand and use number sequences.
Then quickly following on from that statement, I might ask students to work on some challenges.
1. Challenge students to create spiral patterns inspired by the Fibonacci sequence. For instance, draw squares with sides that correspond to Fibonacci numbers (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, etc.), arranging them to form a spiral like the golden ratio. Can they match nature's designs, like the spirals in sunflower seeds or shells?
2. Ask students to calculate the ratio between successive Fibonacci and observe how it approaches the golden ratio (~1.618). Discuss where this ratio appears in architecture or art.
3. Provide students with a random Fibonacci number further down the sequence (e.g., 55 or 89) and challenge them to reconstruct the sequence backwards to its starting point (0, 1). This tests their understanding of the relationship between the numbers.
Measuring how well the learning objective is being met
So it’s not just about having fun.
Challenges are great but there is a point where I need students to demonstrate what they’ve learnt so far.
For me that’s different to progress.
I’m looking for them to show that they’ve gained some knowledge about maths from doing those tasks. Progress is a longer process involving transfer of knowledge from short term to long term memory. It can’t be measured in just one lesson.
An easy way to check if students are learning is to ask them some questions like:
“Did you get manage to solve that problem?”
“How did you do that?”
If the response is unclear, or if a student can’t explain their thinking process well, then some encouragement to find the right words to describe what they have learned may be needed. Or alternatively it may be that the student needs to work through a challenge again making notes on what they find out as they go.
Extension tasks and keeping an eye on struggling students
I like to provide extension tasks for students who have finished the challenges.
In a class there are always a few students who will excel at the tasks set for the group. So keeping a bank of extension worksheets on a topic in the class is great.
I used to have a filing cabinet labelled by topic which students could just dive into whenever they needed to. This gave them a sense of ownership over their learning and encouraged them to explore a topic in greater depth.
Those worksheets always had answer sheets that students could use to mark for themselves once they had completed them. That meant less work for me. Managing the main body of the class could be hard work.
There were often students who struggled with work.
I used to keep an eye out and made sure that they were able to work with other students who were happy to help them. If they were lost then I would drop some hints on how they could make progress. I recognised that sometimes it was hard for those students to ask for help so it was up to me to make sure that I could identify them.
Ending with a discussion on what’s been learned and achieved
Drawing it all to a close at the end of the lesson is important.
It was great listening to students thoughts about what they had learned, discovered, worked on and ways in which they could progress. After the discussion I would get students to write down whether they thought they had achieved the learning objective.
Reading those statements later on gave me valuable clues on ways to move forward with further teaching.
A wider view of learning
For me, clarity in a lesson is important.
Moving information from one person to another is a skill that takes time to learn. Students need to have a clear pathway mapped out by their teacher to enable them to learn what they need to know each lesson.
Some students are great at independent learning so can take an idea and move on with it and some other students need a good deal of encouragement to follow a learning pathway.
Teachers need to balance this all against managing a class well, knowing when to intervene in discussions, change tasks, watch interactions between students and how to ensure that students stay on track without getting distracted.
Mixing in fun, curiosity and discussion into a lesson, whilst managing a class as well as you can, makes it more likely that students will learn and make progress.
What types of communication and learning activities do you use in your classes and with your online students?