Category Archives for : Education

According to Unicef, approximately 91% of the world’s enrolled students were affected when schools across continents closed down to help end the spread of COVID-19. Governments and Stakeholders of the education sector have been actively engaged in discovering ways to implement remote learning methods to ensure children continue to get their education even if they are confined to their homes.

While the situation has laid bare the many gaps between education systems such as the lack of access to electricity, devices, resources, and the internet, schools, and governments have taken measures to address these disparities with innovative solutions. 

However, thanks to technology, remote learning, and teaching from home aren’t impossible. Many teachers are continuing on with their lessons and successfully engaging with their students online. This post will be focused on practices these educators can rely on to improve their remote teaching efforts. 

Best Practices for Teaching from Home 

Below are 7 best practices you can incorporate in your daily online lessons to make them more productive and engaging.   

Plan Ahead and Be Organized 

Conducting online lessons come with its own challenges and requirements in terms of preparations.

You can’t afford the time to fumble through notes and hesitate through lessons during an online class with your students, especially since you’d be conducting the lesson within a limited time period.  It could also be a challenge to answer each and every student as you would have in the traditional classroom. 

Planning ahead and having your resources organized is the key to taking control of the situation and being effective.

• Plan ahead by preparing a lesson plan on a daily or weekly basis. Share the plan with your students via email or a communication platform if you are using one to stay in contact with the students or their parents. This will allow you as well as the students to prepare ahead of time for the lesson. Lesson Plan templates, such as the one given below can be especially helpful in this task.

• Keep resources easily accessible to students. Any documents, files, or links can be stored in a central location (i.e. Google Drive, DropBox, etc.) where students can access from wherever they are and from any device. Make sure to clearly explain to the students where the documents are located and how to access them. 

• Organize your own resources properly. If you are in charge of teaching several classes online, you may have various resources that you refer to. Make sure that you have a proper system in place to keep everything organized. Create folders for each class, under which you can create subfolders for each lesson. Back these up regularly with an external hard drive or utilize an online storage software to keep them backed up in the cloud. 

• Many schools and institutes have invested in new educational platforms for delivering and sharing interactive content and learning resources to students, while some are relying on tools that are already available to them. It’s important that you are well familiarized with these platforms in order to deliver a better experience to your students.      

Establish a Remote Learning Routine 

Following a routine, like when schools were open, helps create that sense of normality everyone’s yearning for these days. 

Maintain a fixed time throughout the week to conduct the lesson, if the time is to change, inform the students at least a day before. If the online classes are held on-and-off, encourage students to maintain their personal schedule for doing the homework, and revising the learning material. This will aid in keeping them motivated and on track.

Create a Positive Learning Environment Online

Just as in a physical classroom, create an environment where students feel comfortable and safe voicing their opinion and exploring their curiosity. 

• Allow students to take notes and ask questions in real-time, just like you would have in a physical classroom. Interact with the students more attentively, even though you are not in the same room. Create an environment where they have the freedom to conduct more discussions with you and among themselves during the class.

• Use a communications platform to allow students to share their thoughts, questions, and resources they discover, that can be discussed during the next class. This can be a WhatsApp group, a Facebook group, or even a Google Document that all students have access to. 

• Also encourage your students to work together with others in class such as sharing notes or resources when they miss a class, helping out with assignments, and discussing lessons among themselves. 

Be Available

Not only during the online lesson but whenever possible. Let your students and parents know how and when they can reach you. Share your personal contact details for emergencies, but make sure to specify times you’d be available; while you need to be there for your students, you need clear boundaries between work and personal life yourself. 

You can also use a communications platform or a social media group here to engage and interact with students after the lesson. 

Be Creative 

Change it up a bit now and then. Instead of the same old presentation slides and reading from the textbook, make things more interesting and engaging with, 

• Interactive games – some of the games that you play in the classroom, such as charades, true or false, etc. can be played in a virtual classroom as well. You can also come up with new games that are online friendly.  
• Quizzes – Short quizzes can be done with online test platforms like Google Forms. Or simply make it more interactive by asking students the questions and giving them a limited time to come up with the answer. 
• Video and audio clips – share video or audio clips students can watch and listen to during the lesson/ or as the lesson. You can simply create a video based on the lesson and upload it on YouTube and share the link with the students. 
• Online whiteboards – an online whiteboard can make things more interactive in a virtual classroom. Allow students to participate in adding and moving elements on the canvas as well. 

Communicate and Collaborate with Colleagues

It helps to talk to other teachers conducting online lessons to get their input on things you are uncertain of. You can also share resources, websites, tools, and material among yourselves helping each other out.  Co-hosting classes can also make them more interesting. 

To stay connected, you can rely on social media channels (Facebook, WhatsApp, etc.), online communication platforms (Slack, Google Hangout, Skype, etc.), emails, etc. 

Leverage Existing Online Resources

There is a magnitude of online resources available, and you can leverage them for some of your lessons. These can be shared with the students during the class. While it is important to rely on credible resources, it’s equally important to help students identify resources that are credible and trustworthy when they are conducting their own research.

Any Other Tips for Those Who are Teaching from Home? 

Remote learning is the new normal for many educators and students across the world. Technology has made it possible to connect teachers and students throughout the pandemic, allowing teachers to impart their knowledge as if they were in the same classroom. 

However, the situation has opened up newer challenges that teachers are struggling to find solutions for. We hope that these practices for teaching from home will help you improve your efforts and the experience you create for your students online. 

Got more tips to share on teaching from home? Let us know in the comments section below.  

Writing can be intimidating, even if you are an experienced writer.  But a process – by breaking it down to simpler steps – can help you write faster and better. After all the way you write affects how well you write. 

And a proper writing process can make all the difference. 

The goal of this guide is to help you learn how to properly write, whether you are writing a research paper or a blog post for your website. 

Read on to 

• learn what the writing process is 
• see the different writing processes (3-step, 4-step, 5-step, 6-step, and 7-step) that you might have come across before you landed on this page compared next to each other 
• understand the proper writing process with each step explained in detail
• find useful templates that you can use throughout to simplify the writing process  

Let’s dive right in.  

What is the Writing Process? 

Let’s start from the very beginning – by clarifying what it is first. 

The writing process refers to the steps someone takes to compose text. That said, every individual writer follows his or her own writing process and it usually comes naturally to them. 

But there are basic writing process steps that are universally referred to and followed. Understanding them will help you develop your very own writing process more easily.

Still not convinced why you need to follow a process? Following a proper writing process is actually important for a few good reasons 

• It will help you write better and faster. By breaking down the task into manageable steps, you can do away with the struggling and procrastinating.
• Since you will be following individual steps, you can focus on each better, which in turn will be reflected in the quality of the final copy. 
• Practice makes perfect. The more you follow the process, the more it will improve your writing skills. 
• At the end of it, you’ll have something that is well-written, free of grammar or spelling errors, properly formatted and of greater quality.

Many different processes for writing

If you have already searched the term writing process on the web, you may have come across several different types of it. Some claiming to have 3 steps, 4 steps or even 7 steps. Here’s what we found; 

If you look closely, you’ll see that they refer to more or less the same steps. The 3-step process is a generalization of the other process types, while the 7-step process breaks down the sub-steps in the others.

In the 6-step process, marketing and reflecting refer to bringing what you’ve written in front of your audience and assessing the feedback to understand what you could have done better.

The 7-step writing process here is used mostly in schools where teachers guide the children by showing them how to write by planning and drafting a model piece in front of the class. Then they can incorporate the input of the children with a shared piece, which can then be evaluated, revised and edited (with the help of the teacher) before publishing. 

The 5 Step Writing Process 

For the sake of keeping it simple and effective, we’ll stick to a 5-step writing process that anyone can refer to and use for better results. 

Step 1: Prewriting

Many tend to overlook this step completely.

They jump right into writing without taking the time to plan and organize their thoughts. And they end up with a low-quality piece that took a lot more time than they hoped. 

Taking time to complete this step is important because it helps with gathering and preparing everything you need for the subsequent writing steps. 

In this stage, spend time brainstorming and conducting research to understand your topic better and gather relevant information.

Rely on authoritative sources from experts in the subject area and list them down so you can refer to them when writing your piece later to increase its credibility. 

It’s also a best practice to identify your target audience. Understanding your target reader and what they want well will help you narrow down your focus.

Some prewriting strategies you can use here are,

• Freewriting is writing freely without regarding quality or correctness (grammar, spellings, punctuation). The purpose is to get what’s in your head on to paper or screen without stopping. You can consider this as a warmup exercise. 

• Clustering is also known as mind mapping, diagramming, bubbling, etc. and is a brainstorming method. This method uses visualization to capture your thoughts. Place your topic in the center and write down related ideas, terms or words that come into your mind around it connected by lines. You can delve further into these subtopics by breaking them down as well. 

• Outlining helps with neatly organizing what you have already found out through research and brainstorming. It’ll help fish out the important points that will help you tell your story, from the jumble of ideas you have gathered. And it actually makes drafting a much easier task. 

Step 2: Drafting 

Now that you have researched the topic and have an outline ready, apply them to create a rough draft. Remember that this is only the first draft, meaning it will be revised and edited in the later steps. 

It’s important that you only focus on getting the ideas roughly into sentences without worrying too much about spelling, grammar or vocabulary here. 

If you spend time perfecting every sentence and paragraph that you write in the drafting stage, you’ll be more stressed and the quality of the final outcome will be lower. 

Instead, work through the outline you’ve prepared earlier as you write. Write complete sentences and paragraphs, and almost as in freewriting don’t stop yourself to look back and edit.

However, try moderately to use proper grammar and put together words in a way that makes sense when you revise. 

By the end of this step, you should have written everything you needed to say about the topic. 

Step 3: Revising 

This is a critical part of the writing process. It’s during this phase that you will revisit the draft and improve it by modifying and rearranging the content. To make it more appealing to the target audience you can add, rewrite or delete sentences or paragraphs. 

And as you reread your draft, you will detect areas that need to be improved to reinforce your argument better. It may require you to do a little more thinking, and even in some cases more research, to find the information you need to logically prove your point. 

You don’t have to do this step alone. Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes can help provide new insight that you might have missed; you can ask for help from your colleagues or peers during this stage. 

You can revise your draft as many times as you want. However, it’s better to wait at least a few hours if not a day to revise you draft again after the first attempt. 

Step 4: Editing 

Editing requires you to fix grammar mistakes, spelling or punctuation errors, repetition, and style. This is why you should wait to edit until you are done with revising your piece; for there’s no point in editing something you will later delete or rewrite.

You can make this another chance to ensure that your article delivers what your title promises. It’s better to get someone else to read your piece in this step as well, for they may find errors that you might have gotten too tired to notice after sifting through it for dozens of times. 

Step 5: Publishing

Then comes sharing your piece with your audience.

If you are adding it to a website or blog you may have to optimize it for SEO purposes and add visuals. In which case you may also have to consider marketing your piece, which you can do through social media, email newsletters, etc.  

Any Tips or Advice? 

You may have already developed your own signature writing process, maybe with a few additional steps to what we have covered here. We’d love to hear how you go about it, or any other tips that our readers may find useful. 

Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below. 

How excited do you get when you are setting goals for the new year ahead? If only that excitement lasted long enough to propel you towards actually accomplishing that goal – for once! 

Maybe the goals you set are often too general or unrealistic. Maybe you realized that’s not the goal you should have prioritized in the first place. 

Well, the good news is, there’s a way to overcome all these issues and set a goal that you will actually follow through to the end. 

In this post, we will walk you through a proper goal-setting process step-by-step. Goal setting worksheets and templates are at the bottom of the post, and you can use these right away to start planning your goals.

What Is Goal Setting and Why Is It Important? 

Be it in your personal life or work life, “goals” is a word we often hear. But what is it exactly? Let’s pause for a moment and take a look. 

A goal is a desired result. And goal setting is the process of defining this desired result and planning how to achieve it within a specified time limit. Or in the most basic of terms, goal setting is planning for the future. 

There are 3 types of goals out there and the goals you set could belong to one or two of these categories. 

1. Time Goals – short-term goals that take less time to obtain and long-term goals that considerably take longer, fall into this category.
2. Focus Goals – this type of goal is usually long-term and involves life-changing achievements and the need to change different areas in life. For example, starting your own business. This may require you to find the relevant money, learning about managing a business and so on. 
3. Topic-Based Goals – this type of goal applies to a specific area of your life. It could be related to an aspect of your career, finances, or personal life. For example, saving enough money to buy a new house.     

Goals are useful for setting direction to something you do. It helps you identify what you need to do to achieve your target.

Moreover, it helps you properly organize your time and resources as well. In the context of a team, it plays a significant role in terms of keeping everyone on the same page. 

And someone who actually follows the goal-setting process will be more motivated and committed to achieving his or her goals than someone who doesn’t.

Goal Setting Process

Many a time we abandon our goals before we reach the finish mark. If we actually go the extra mile to follow a proper goal setting process, we can actually improve our chances of hitting our target. 

We have listed below the steps you need to take and you’ll realize that it actually doesn’t take much. 

Step 1: Write down your goals 

Does it seem like an unnecessary step? After all, why should you write it down when you can just remember it.

Contrary to what you may think, writing your goals down gives you something tangible, something to sit back and look at and determine if it is really worth your time. 

When writing down your goals, think of what you really want to achieve and why you want to achieve it. And set due dates for completion and evaluation as well. 

This step will help you prioritize your goals. As you write them down, you will have the chance to evaluate which goal is more important and which can wait, and plan accordingly. 

Step 2: Apply SMART 

Now that you have selected the goal you want to pursue, it’s time to make sure that it adheres to the SMART criteria. Make sure that your goal is,

Specific – Your goal should be clear with its boundaries well-defined. It shouldn’t be vague or general. For example, the goal “I want to save $100 by the end of this month” is more specific than “I want to save money”. 

Measurable – How do you measure your success once you have accomplished your goal? Add measurable elements like dates, amounts, percentages, etc. when you are defining your goal. 

Attainable – Do you have the expertise, money, time, or resources to achieve this goal?  It’s important to ensure that the goal you set is actually achievable and is not too far out of your reach. But this doesn’t mean you should set goals that are too easy to gain. Setting challenging (yet realistic) goals will actually keep you motivated and committed.  

Relevant – Does this goal align with the rest of the things? With your career? Your personal life? You need to stop and think whether, at the end of it all, you will be able to take something useful out of it. 

Time-Specific – Your goals should have deadlines and they should be realistic. This will create urgency and energize you to get the work done without procrastinating. 

Step 3: Identify the obstacles 

There could be obstacles that could hold you back along the way. Maybe you lack experience and knowledge in a certain area, or you may not have the money. It’s important to figure out how to overcome these challenges when allocating time and planning the tasks you need to do.

Step 4: Create an action plan

Feel like there are way too many steps? Don’t worry, you’re almost ready to start working on your goal -soon after you create the action plan. 

This is where you identify the steps you need to take to achieve your goal. Wouldn’t it make things easier if you knew exactly what to do?

If you have set a more challenging goal, you can break it down into smaller steps and set milestones to make it more manageable. 

Using an action plan, you can see what you need to do each day, week, or month before the due date is done. And make sure to insert the steps you need to take in order to overcome the obstacles as well, especially if they take time. 

Step 5: Continue to monitor your progress

Remember to assess how you progress towards your goal throughout time. Are you falling behind or right on schedule? If you are falling behind, make sure to revise your action plan and add the necessary steps to catch up.

Goal Setting Worksheet and Templates

Ready to set your goals? Here are some useful templates to kick-start your process. Simply click on the template to open it in the Creately editor. Make necessary changes and download them as PNGs, SVGs or JPEGs. Or you can simply share it with others via a secure file sharing link.

Goal Setting Worksheet

Goal Setting Template

What is Your Goal Setting Process? 

You may already have a goal-setting process that you cherish. Do you think you can improve it with these steps? Share what you think with us in the comments section below.

Want to make a lasting impression on your audience with an effective speech?

In this guide we will discuss how to write a good speech by explaining the steps. You can find an editable speech writing template and planning template which can be used to create and plan effective speeches.  

Identify the Purpose

Before you start writing a speech, you need to be sure of its purpose. Is it to educate your audience? Inspire or entertain them?

The purpose of your speech will help you define its tone, words, structure etc.

Understand Your Audience

Another aspect that will shape how you should structure and write your speech is the target audience.

Your speech needs to be tailored according to their preferences, knowledge, and concerns. The key to retaining their attention is to talk in their language about what interests them.

An audience profile can help you quickly characterize your audience. The plus point of a profile like this is that it is reusable; if you are writing a speech to the same or a similar audience, you can use the information in the profile to develop your speech.

Select and Research Your Topic

An effective speech is backed by good research. Once you select the topic, you need to find enough credible information to back your argument or point. Refer only to reliable resources such as scholarly article, academic resources etc.

The more you know about the topic you are discussing, the more you will be able to stay focused during your speech. However, it’s important to leave out the unnecessary information and narrow down the topic by sticking to a few points that will help you drive your message home.

Create the Speech Outline

Before you actually start writing the speech, create the outline. It will help you organize your information in a logical manner and improve the flow of your speech.

The outline should include what you will be speaking about during the different parts of your speech; these include the introduction, the main body with 2-3 main points with supporting evidence, and a conclusion.  

You can easily use the template below to outline the structure of your speech.

Write out the Speech

Now that you have a rough idea about the things you need to discuss, start fleshing out the outline and develop your speech.

Remember that you need to keep your target audience, and purpose of the speech on your mind. Be consistent with your tone and style throughout the speech.   

To make your speech more effective, include evidence to prove the points you are making. Refer to quotations from experts, statistics, current events and even examples of personal experience.

Make sure to perfect your conclusion. It should be able to highlight the message of your speech and make a memorable impact on your audience. It could be an anecdote or a call-to-action. Keep it short and powerful.

Following is a speech planning template that you can use to plan your speech and the process.

Review and Polish Your Speech

Go through what you have written and spot the areas that don’t add up or erroneous. Correct and finetune your speech.

You can rely on a colleague to go through the speech for you; sometimes a fresh pair of  eyes can help you more.

How to Write a Good Speech? Any Tips?

There are many kinds of speeches; the kind you give at your school, in front of a director board, at a debate, or a wedding, and whatever the occasion is you can use these steps to create a winning speech.

Share your experience in writing and making speeches in the comment section below. Any useful tips you have, let our audience know.

Creating effective learning material starts with instructional design. It has become a concept that is equally popular in both the academic and professional fields.

In this post, we will look at the instructional design process along with the top instructional design models that you can use to create effective educational and training material for students or employees.

What is Instructional Design?

Instructional design refers to the process used to create instructional material.

It is used to identify gaps in knowledge, skills, and attitudes of students or employees, analyzing learning needs and developing learning material to close them.

Instructional design helps give meaningful and effective instructions to learners in a way that will make learning easier for them.

Instructional Design Process

Here are the steps you need to follow when designing instructional learning material for your students or employees.

Step 1:

Conduct a needs analysis to identify the needs of your target audience as well as training and business needs.  

Step 2:

Based on the analysis done on the learners, create a learner’s profile that includes information on their roles, responsibilities, skills, educational and professional experiences, technical knowledge, etc.

You should also assess their competency in the topic the training will be based on and the training methods/ they prefer.

Step 3:

Identify the learning objectives. These should be based on the outcomes you expect to achieve at the end of the program.

Step 4:

Course designing in itself is a process. Once you select the topics for the course or the training program, decide on the instructional approach for it (i.e. video or game-based approach).

Step 5:

Organize the content and identify a flow using storyboards. You can use it to plan content, images, icons, etc. that should be placed on different pages.

Step 6:

You can create a prototype of your online course, training program before you start developing it. This will allow you to test it for its effectiveness.

Step 7:

Once you have developed and launched the program, monitor and assess it to understand whether it is effective in accomplishing the learning objectives and fulfilling the requirements of the learners as well as that of the organization.

What are the Models of Instructional Design?

Instructional design models are used to explain the process used to design and develop instructions. There are several models that can be used in different settings; the following are some of the most popular ones.

• ADDIE Model
• Merrill’s Principles of Instruction
• Gagne’s Nine Events of Instructions
• Bloom’s Taxonomy
• Dick and Carey Model
• Kemp Design Model
• Action Mapping by Cathy Moore

ADDIE Model

ADDIE is a five-stage process that provides guidelines to create effective training material. It stands for Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate.

Analyze: In this step, the situation is analyzed to understand the goals and objectives for the learning material, requirements, needs, skills and knowledge of the learners.

Design: Identify the learning objectives such as the knowledge you want the learners to gain and the learning outcomes.

Develop: Identify how you can help the students get to the objectives you identified earlier and develop the instructional strategies accordingly.

Implementation: Implement the strategies by trying out your training programs with students.

Evaluate: Evaluate and measure the success of the training material you have designed and delivered. Note what needs to be changed.

Merrill’s Principles of Instruction

This is a task-centered approach that focuses on different ways learning can be facilitated. According to this instructional design model, there are four phases of learning;

Activation: Learning material should activate the knowledge the learner already has on the subject matter. This helps them use it as a foundation to digest new knowledge.

Demonstration: The trainer/ teacher should demonstrate the knowledge through techniques such as video demos, infographics, etc.

Application: Learners should be allowed to apply the knowledge they have gathered on their own to solve problems.

Integration: Learners should be encouraged to integrate new knowledge into their life and use it to solve problems.

Gagne’s Nine Events of Instructions

Gagne’s nine event instructions is a systematic instructional design process that addresses the different conditions of learning. The nine steps of the process are

• Gain the attention of the students through stimuli such as a surprise, thought-provoking question, etc.
• Inform the students of the objectives or outcomes of the lesson before the instructions are given.
• Stimulate recall of prior learning by asking questions about the experience from the past. By relating to this past knowledge, they can easily make sense of new knowledge.
• Present the content to the learners in a way that is easy to comprehend
• Provide learning guidance with tutorials, case studies, examples, infographics, etc.
• Elicit performance by helping them internalize new knowledge through activities that encourage them to recall and use that knowledge.
• Provide feedback on the performance of students to facilitate learning.
• Assess performance by testing whether the expected outcomes have been achieved.
• Enhance retention and transfer to the job. Help students internalize new knowledge with techniques like concept maps, summarizing, job aids, etc.  

Bloom’s Taxonomy

Bloom’s taxonomy classifies the different skills and objectives the educators set for their students.

While in 1956 Benjamin Bloom created this classification system to organize the different levels of cognitive learning, it was later modified by Anderson and Krathwohl. Thus it came to be known as the Revised Taxonomy.

To learn about Bloom’s Taxonomy in more detail refer to this article.

Dick and Carey Model

This model focuses on the interrelationship between context, content, instruction, and learning.  The components of the Dick and Carey model are as follows;

Kemp Design Model

The Kemp design model which has a nonlinear structure or a circular structure conveys that the design process is a continuous cycle, therefore, it needs constant planning, design, and evaluation to ensure quality instruction.

This model includes 9 elements

• Identify learning goals and instructional problems or obstacles that may hinder them
• Research the audience to identify learner’s characteristics that you can use to create more relevant course material
• Identify the relevant subject content and analyze tasks to see whether they align with the defined goals
• Clarify the instructional objectives to the learners and how they will benefit from the instructional programs
• Make sure the content for each instructional unit is structured sequentially and logically to facilitate learning  
• Design instructional strategies in such a way that will help learners to master the content and learning outcomes
• Plan the instructional message and the mode of delivery
• Develop evaluation instruments to evaluate the progress of the learners towards achieving the objectives
• Select resources that will provide support for both teaching and learning activities

Action Mapping by Cathy Moore

Action mapping by Cathy Moore takes a visual approach to instructional design and is popularly used in the context of business. It’s a process that helps avoid information dumps and create more activity-centered training.

Add to the List of Instructional Design Models?

You can use the instructional design models discussed above to create an instructional environment and educational material that will guide learners to achieve their learning/ training objectives easily.

If you are aware of other popular instructional design models, let us know in the comment section below.  

Remember the days when teaching was about the teacher explaining the topic and students taking down notes?

Things have drastically changed over the years, especially with the influence of technology.

Students are more tech- savvy and have a shorter attention span now. What can engage them is something that they can quickly process and comprehend.

This is where visual tools come into play. Human beings not only comprehend visuals 60,000x faster than text, but visuals have a far more significant impact on their long-term memory than other communication methods.

Let’s take a look at eight visual teaching strategies that you can use to boost your student’s engagement in the classroom and help them learn faster.

Explain Relationships with Concept Maps

Are your students having a hard time connecting the dots between the different components in a concept?

Made of nodes that represent ideas and connectors that represent relationships, concept maps make use of dual coding. This means students effectively learn the material through both text labels and the visual structure of the map.

Incorporating a concept map to teach or study help students link new knowledge to what they already know.

Following are 2 effective ways you can make use of a concept map in the classroom.

• Create one large-scale concept map of the lesson and a series of more specific maps analyzing the subtopics under it. These can be shared with your students as handouts that they can refer to later while studying.
• Carry out fun exercises with students using concept maps, where you can get students to fill in the blank nodes or labels on the map, or choose from a list of information provided by you.

Creately Tip: Make use of real-time collaboration within the Creately app to get the participation of your students when drawing concept maps online. You can suggest changes and guide them as they work on the map.

Enhance the Student’s Memory with Mind Maps

Enhancing memory and stimulating creativity of students are two of the biggest challenges teachers face.

Now, there are a number of techniques used in the classrooms to facilitate these purposes, but visualization still stands out as one of the most effective methods.

And mind maps – popularly known as an effective study technique – do the trick better and faster.

Mind maps combine everything that is needed to boost creative power and memory, together.

For example, using images instead of text on your mind map can help students recall that piece of information faster. Likewise, taking apart a topic via a mind map using keywords instead of long phrases and color coding, help remember information better.

Mind maps can be used in a number of useful ways in the classroom to improve teaching and learning.

Provide a clear overview of the topic at hand

Before the beginning of the lesson or after, hand your students a mind map based on the topic. This can be further developed by students during the lesson or when they refer to it later.

Creately Tip: Create live mind maps or knowledge banks where you can include links to additional resources right within your mind map. This could come in handy for students when doing their research on the topic.

Brainstorm and generate discussion

Mind maps can provide the structure for a productive brainstorming session.  Put down the topic under discussion in the middle of your map and ask your students to identify ideas related to it. Generating active discussion among your students like this can help them memorize what you teach more effectively.

Map Processes with Flowcharts

Flowcharts help map out the steps of a process clearly, be it to explain to your students how to properly write an essay or to describe how the Earth was created.

Any complex scientific or technical process can be demystified with the help of flowcharts; since flowcharts let you illustrate each process step, students won’t have a hard time figuring out how it works.

Unfamiliar with the use of flowcharts? This ultimate flowchart tutorial explains everything you need to know about flowcharts.

Flowcharts can be used in your classroom in a number of effective ways;

• You can get your students to draw flowcharts online based on what you have taught them. This will get them to think again about the lesson and refer to the notes they took down. Simplifying what was taught in their own terms will help them internalize information better.
• Or you can create handouts containing flowcharts breaking down the lesson. Students can take these home, and refer to them later when they are studying.

Creately Tip: Use flowchart worksheets to test the knowledge of students. We’ve got a whole library of free flowchart templates that you can use for this. Simply choose one and modify it to fit your own needs. 

Tell Stories with Storyboards

Whether to summarize the lesson of the day or to simplify complex information and present them in an easily-digestible way, storyboard creator is your ideal teaching technique.

These consists of illustrations and pictures with notes that briefly explains what’s visually highlighted, much like the comics students love so much these days.

Creately Tip: Use ready-made visually stunning storyboard templates that you can use in your classroom to make things a lot more engaging for your students. Import any additional graphics directly from Google or your computer to Creately to make your storyboard even more comprehensible to your students.

Solve Problems with Fishbone Diagrams

In the classroom, fishbone diagrams – a root cause analysis tool – can be used to develop children’s problem-solving skills.

Fishbone diagrams help identify the main causes of an event, whether it is to figure out why something went wrong, or why something generated such an outcome.

Encourage students to use fishbone diagrams to brainstorm around a particular problem and identify root causes. During the lesson, you can refer to these fishbone diagrams to further drill down the factors that are causing the problem.

Switch Long Notes with Infographics

Infographics combine both graphics and text together and present information in an attractive way. Long lessons that tend to get a little boring and take a lot of explanation, can be effectively replaced with infographics by creating them with the infographic software.

Make sure you use graphics like graphs, charts or images meaningfully and don’t use too much text which would clutter up your infographic. Keep it simple and highlight the major points of the lesson that you want your students to remember.

Creating an infographic, here’s what you shouldn’t do.

Compare and Contrast with Venn Diagrams

Venn diagrams are a powerful way to identify similarities and differences between two or more items.

An effective exercise you could do with Venn diagrams is having students fill a blank Venn diagram with a list of relevant information you’ve handed them.

Creately Tip: Choose from a wide variety of Venn diagram templates that you can quickly modify online. To make things more effective, add images instead of or with text on your Venn diagrams. 

Clarify Complex Topics with Spider Diagrams

Spider diagrams help create an overview of a complex topic using branching spatial organization, images, and color coding – much like the mind map.

Getting students to create a spider diagram online around a topic prior to or after the lesson can help them demystify a complex subject easily.

These can also be used as an alternative note-taking method to help students remember lessons easily.

Want to Expand the Ultimate List of Visual Teaching Strategies?

Visual teaching strategies are popular because they are effective – effective in clarifying relationships, simplifying complex topics and facilitating communication. The tools we have listed here are simple to use and a lot useful in facilitating teaching and improving learning.

Make use of them in the classroom and share with us the results. And if you have more visual teaching strategies to add to the list, share them with us in the comment section below.