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As a tutor, you have probably scoured every blog article for tutors to make your lessons engaging and effective for your students.
But it can be hard teaching a student who feels detached from the topic you’re teaching because they cannot relate to it. And no Kahoot quiz is going to make it any easier. So how do you make it relevant to them and help them understand how concepts are applied in real-world situations?
By integrating these real-world issues into your lessons! Let us see why and how you can do that.
Advantages of Bringing Real-World Issues Into Lessons
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There are many advantages to bringing real-world issues into lessons. The most well-known reason is to engage your students and liven up your sessions. Although this is important, there are other reasons for applying this teaching method.
Here are some benefits of bringing real-world issues into lessons:
Make learning fun and engaging
As a tutor, your lessons should inspire creativity, imagination, and a passion for learning! And your lessons can be like this when you bring in real-world scenarios or relate your lessons to an ongoing issue or event.
This makes lessons less dull because you make them relevant and relatable, keeping your students interested during them.
Make learning meaningful
When you make your lessons engaging, they become more effective and meaningful for your student’s learning.
Studies show that relevant and meaningful activities that both engage students emotionally and connect with what they already know help to improve long-term memory storage.
Promotes critical thinking and problem-solving skills
Bringing real-world issues and scenarios into your lessons is a great way to encourage critical thinking skills!
When you discuss real-world scenarios and issues with your students, you get them to share their opinions and think out of the box for solutions.
Broadens their worldviews and perspectives
Talking about conflicts and relationships worldwide helps broaden your student’s worldviews and perspectives.
This exposes your students to diverse cultures, ethnicities, races, religions, and ideologies. They also become more aware of global connections.
How to Bring Real-World Issues Into Lessons
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Even though you may understand the advantages of integrating real-world issues into your lessons, it will be for nought if you cannot implement them.
So here are some ways to incorporate real-world scenarios into your lessons!
Look into the news
The first place to look is the news. Be it natural disasters or technological advancements, there is always something in the news that you can use to relate back to what you are teaching in the classroom.
This helps students recognise issues that really happen outside of the classroom and that they are not just stories in a textbook.
Give students a real tangible problem to solve
During your lessons, allow your students to apply the concepts they know to a real-world problem. For example, creating a water filtration system to solve a water crisis.
By applying practical problem solving while conducting experiments and lab work, your students learn to problem solve, think critically, and work in a team!
Invite guest speakers
Another way to give your students more insight into an issue is to bring in a guest speaker who may be directly involved (through virtual means of course)!
Let them share their experience, and allow your students to ask them questions to better understand a topic. This also encourages awareness and control of their thinking.
Conclusion
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As tutors, it can be hard to get our students engaged and involved in the lessons – especially if they feel like they cannot relate to the topic.
We need to make our lessons enjoyable and bring the concepts and facts closer. Make it relevant, make it current for them to understand.
I hope this article helps you understand the importance of integrating real-world issues into your lessons and shows you how to do that.
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