If your class seems bored or isn't directly engaging with the material, providing students with incentives to participate in class will help spark conversation among students and keep your students focused during class. While you can keep the grading of students' participation vague, you can also directly tell them to participate a minimum of two times a week or more to get a complete participation grade. Be clear with students to help keep them motivated and informed with respect to what they have to do to succeed in class.
While a course can often seem stale and dry when described in a textbook, bringing a subject to life through real-world application can help get your students interested in a subject. If you're focusing on biology, chemistry or any other science course, organize field trips to museums and research laboratories to help your students make personal connections with the subject. In addition, teach a class outside to free your students from a conventional course structure, allowing them to experience nature firsthand while you engage them in a regular lesson plan.
While a subject may hold your students attention for 10 or 15 minutes, keeping them from growing bored after 45 minutes or an hour can be difficult. If you find yourself lecturing for the entire duration of your class, try breaking up your lecture into 10-minute segments. In between each lecture, offer an interactive portion of class; whether it's a self-graded quiz or a group project, varying class structure will help keep your students interested.
Interactive whiteboards are a new technology that allows teachers to display data from their computers on a whiteboard. The whiteboard looks similar to a projection screen, allowing for all course work and data to be enlarged on a wall. In addition, an interactive whiteboard comes with a pen that can be used directly on the board. This allows your students to get directly involved and engaged with the course work. If you have a challenging piece of material, allow your students to interact and engage with the whiteboard to help keep things interesting. If you don't have an interactive whiteboard, have students engage in course work on your chalkboard.