As many of you know I’m a firm believer that there needs to be some degree of fun in every classroom. As my very first professor, Barry Raebeck, once stated, “If it’s not fun a fair part of the time, it’s probably no good and definitely wont last.”

However, the classroom cannot just be all fun and games either…

I’m passing along a short article today which I found very interesting.

Check it out and let me know what you think. I’d be curious to hear if it resonates with you or not…

Best Wishes,
Adam Waxler
Teaching Tips Machine, LLC

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“Why You Can’t Rely on Fun Lessons to Solve Classroom Management Problems”

© Written By Rob Plevin
Author of the new Needs-Focused Lessons

Having a fun classroom and teaching a fun lesson isn’t enough to stop behavior problems, and it isn’t going to miraculously transform your challenging students into hard-working, diligent stars.

Without a good understanding of some other key classroom management skills, a lesson that you think is fun may well turn into a free-for-all and only serve to build you a reputation as a walk-over.

Teaching is not about “entertaining” students or letting them just “mess about,” and it certainly isn’t about demoting them to the role of passive spectators.

The truth is, even the most colorful and funny presentations can become boring (and even annoying) to kids if they are repeatedly expected to merely “be entertained” or just “have a laugh.” If challenging students are to feel truly involved in a lesson, they need to be given opportunities to develop, grow, improve and feel a sense of accomplishment and achievement.

Sure, they can still have fun in the process, but it is more productive if the fun comes from interacting with each other, finding out, working out, building, trying, experimenting, practicing and doing. They don’t get these things from just sitting back and watching or messing around.

I like to use the simple analogy of your pupils each carrying an “emotion backpack” on their backs as they enter your lessons. If they arrive with the feeling that the lesson (based on their previous experience) is something they will have to ENDURE for the next hour – something that is boring, irrelevant to their lives or perhaps embarrassing or difficult – then their backpack will be filled with NEGATIVE emotions before they even set foot through the door.

Teaching kids who walk in your classroom with negative preconceptions is the HARD way to teach. It’s tough to get students to engage when they have already made up their minds that the lesson isn’t something they’re going to enjoy or benefit from.

The easy way is to have them actually LOOKING FORWARD to your lessons. You want them carrying that backpack with a little bit of INTRIGUE, perhaps recollections of a few LAUGHS they had during the last lesson or a feeling of SUCCESS and ACHIEVEMENT having UNDERSTOOD a difficult concept for the first time.

Isn’t that what education is all about?

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I hope you found the article informative. If you want more ideas on how to get students to LOOK FORWARD to your lessons then you must check out Rob Plevin’s lesson improvement program known as Needs-Focused Lessons.

I can’t recommend Rob’s Needs-Focused Lessons highly enough.

And Rob has agreed to let you try his simple but super-effective lesson plan strategies for $1.

Take a look at this extremely valuable resource right now at:

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