How to Maximize Student Interaction in Class

Being a teacher, you will need a clear feedback from your students. Students will not interact with you until they are encouraged to participate in all classroom activities and issues. To create an effective learning environment, you need to encourage your students to interact with you and their peers without hesitation. Here are some things which you can do to maximize students’ interaction in classroom:

• You need to respect learners.
• Being a teacher, try to see things from your students’ perspective.
• Be an encourager and encourage hesitant and shy students to interact with you and fellow students.
• Create and maintain a relaxed learning environment in class.
• Enhance your communication skills and build strong rapport with your students so that they can communicate with you without fear.
• Instead of giving lengthy explanations, ask questions.
• Try to ask relevant open ended questions. Do not make it simple by asking just Yes/No questions.
• During your lecture, give enough time to students to listen, think and process their thoughts so that they can then ask something or speak. While giving them time to think, don’t talk to them.
• Be an active listener and try listening to every student in class.
• If a student finds difficult to explain something, you should try to understand what he wants to say actually.
• Also listen carefully to their language mistakes and make corrections immediately.
• Take necessary actions to increase student talking time. At the same time, try to decrease teacher talking time. You can do this by using gestures instead of speaking too much.
• To increase students talking time, make groups or pairs of students. Encourage students to interact with each other.
• When a student starts speaking something to you, let him finish his sentence first.
• Being a good teacher, you can also be a part of class instead of always acting as head of class.
• You should make a balance between coordination and competition. Encourage cooperation when needed and set competitions at suitable time.
• If a student speaks too quietly and slowly, move to him and encourage him to speak louder. In this way, you can also increase confidence level of your students.

These tips and guidelines seem very simple but they are very important to create a healthy learning environment.