MAKING IT EASIER TO BE A BETTER TEACHER

NOTEWORTHY NEWS

Here’s our weekly roundup of interesting education stories from around the world. Click each link to learn more:

• These specific exercises benefit brain development the most 💪 

• Your math homework is too hard for parents - here’s why ➗ 

• Ice Age teenagers probably faced the same awkwardness of today’s teens - High school never ends 🧊 

TECH TALK

My quiet students won’t participate

In many classrooms, quieter students tend to hold back during discussions due to social anxiety and fear of judgment. This can leave teachers struggling to engage the entire class and ensure all voices are heard, while not putting any students on the spot.

The Solution: Tricider

Tricider is an anonymous brainstorming tool where students can submit ideas, add pros and cons, and vote on their favorite suggestions—all without speaking up in front of their peers.

This fosters inclusive participation by providing a low-pressure way for quieter students to share their thoughts without the threat of speaking up in front of everyone.

This allows students to propose solutions, make decisions as a group, and even vote anonymously. With the ability to add pros and cons to each suggestion, students also engage in critical thinking while still feeling safe from the pressures of public speaking.

How About YOUR Classroom?

Engaging students in meaningful discussions without putting them on the spot helps build confidence over time. 

Use Tricider to pose open-ended questions in subjects like social studies, literature, or science. Start by asking a class-wide question for a topic that students would have an opinion on, like "What’s the most important invention in history?" or "How should we approach a class project?". This will help students get used to the tool’s features.

Plus, it’s a great tool for collaborative decision-making, allowing quieter students to weigh in without the pressure of public speaking.

Strategies:

• Begin with a low-stakes question to help students get comfortable with the tool.

• Encourage students to add at least one "pro" or "con" to a peer’s idea to keep discussions flowing.

• Use Tricider to structure group project brainstorming or to gather input on classroom decisions, making it a tool for building democratic practices.

• As students gain confidence in their ideas being valued, they might start participating more actively in verbal discussions too!

Tricider’s simple, yet powerful, ability to encourage collaboration can help amplify some of the quieter voices in your classroom. By providing a safe space for students to contribute anonymously, it helps ensure that every student’s ideas are heard, valued, and thoughtfully considered. 

Best of all, Tricider is free to use, making it an accessible option for classrooms looking to increase student engagement without extra costs.

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BRAINY BITS

Are funny teachers more engaging?

Being the ‘funny teacher’, especially for new educators, is sometimes seen as a shortcut to developing a connection to students. But does it do more harm than good?

This week, we turn to a recent academic study to see if well-timed, relevant humor can help students connect with you and the curriculum to make lessons more impactful.

The Study: A study on instructional humor

This week’s study is a literature review that tries to understand how often humor should be used in educational presentations (i.e. lessons) and its effects on student engagement. 

In the experiments examined, two main examples were used —TED Talks with education-targeted humor, and user-submitted jokes on a popular website targeted for laughs only. The researchers compared the types of humor used in each of these to quantitatively see how humor differs in instruction (TED Talk) versus entertainment (joke website).

By using natural language processing and computational linguistics, they were able to determine how humor, when well-timed and appropriately integrated, can help maintain student attention and can enhance learning outcomes.

The Results:

The research found that humor, when strategically used in teaching - like in TED Talks - can improve student engagement, especially in longer presentations. 

However, the study also highlighted a key distinction: not all humor is equally effective. 

Instructional humor that ties directly into the learning material works best. Overuse or humor irrelevant to the content (i.e. jokes just for the sake of being funny) can distract students rather than help them focus. 

What separated the TED speakers from the website jokes was that TED speakers successfully employed humor in a way that reinforced key concepts, creating memorable associations with the material.

And yes - this was all backed up via quantifiable data - these language models can actually determine the impacts of humor. That’s pretty cool.

In Your Classroom:

For teachers, humor can be a great way to break the ice, relieve classroom tension, or make complex ideas more accessible. 

Humor should be sprinkled in strategically, helping students connect emotionally and cognitively with the material, but not used too much where it overshadows learning objectives.

Strategies

• Memes on memes: These are an easy way to incorporate relevant humor, but keep them up to date - stale memes are just that - stale!

• Know your audience: Tailor humor to the age and interests of your students. Humor that connects with one class might not work for another. But don’t force it - today’s kids are exceptionally good at pointing out when humor is forced.

• Balance is key: Use humor sparingly to complement, not overwhelm, your instruction. The goal is to enhance focus, not distract from it.

Humor, like any teaching tool, works best when used intentionally. Whether it’s a joke, a funny video, or a playful anecdote, using humor strategically in your classroom can help foster a more engaging and enjoyable learning environment.

REFERENCES

This week’s issue adapts information from the following sources:

Tech Talk:

Tricider. (2024). Collect ideas and vote. Retrieved from: https://www.tricider.com/

Brainy Bits:

Shoda VP, Yamanaka T. A Study on Instructional Humor: How Much Humor Is Used in Presentations? Behav Sci (Basel). 2021 Dec 29;12(1):7. doi: 10.3390/bs12010007. PMID: 35049618; PMCID: PMC8772906.