Giving your students an assessment -- such as a test or pop quiz -- helps you to understand their strengths and weaknesses, allowing you to tailor class lessons accordingly and ensuring the information presented stays at the students' level, making it easier for them to learn it. Assessments also will indicate if remediation is necessary.
Recognizing your students' learning style is imperative to the learning process, as each student's lesson comprehension occurs differently. As assessments help you to determine students' weaknesses, play to their strengths and provide learning methods to help them overcome their weaknesses. For example, facilitate hands-on activities such as math manipulatives to assist students' understanding of greater-than and less-than values. In addition, change seating assignments and the classroom layout to accommodate small groups of chairs instead of rows, or test some students with one-on-one lessons with a teacher's aide to determine whether certain students learn better in small groups or even alone.
Creativity can be used as a motivator when a teacher wants to engage her students in a lesson, especially if students have difficulty understanding concepts. To keep their interest, learning should be presented in a real-life context so that new information builds upon prior understanding, which then can be generalized to broader concepts. For instance, teach students about how plants suck up water through their roots by watering white carnations with water mixed with food coloring. Students will understand the concept of osmosis when they see the white carnation turn red or whichever color you placed in the water.
The classroom should provide a serene environment conducive to learning. This begins with the atmosphere; the room should be properly lit, aired and free of noise. A wealth of materials and activities should be available to enhance learning; this includes math tubs and visual aids such as posters that make learning fun. The classroom culture should support students by applauding them for participation even when the student's answer is wrong. This way, children will not get discouraged if they do not perform well on their first attempt to solve a math problem or mispronounce a word while reading aloud.
In addition to homework and hands-on projects, teachers may elect to include guest speakers, field trips and interactive technologies to enhance understanding and bring to life the knowledge their students have acquired in the classroom setting. For example, a presentation by the local librarian about the library's resources available for class reports -- including access to online journals and inter-library loan of reference materials -- or a field trip to the botanical garden can help students understand how to easily access information and identify plants, respectively.