Human brains are hard-wired for learning from the moment of birth. Your students enter the classroom with a wealth of knowledge and experiences. Learning does not occur in a vacuum. Effective teaching builds on your learners' knowledge base. Begin your instructional unit by discovering what your students already know. You can do so with a pretest, a class discussion, a brief essay or a hands-on project.
Have a clear idea of what it is you want your students to be able to do or know at the end of your instructional unit. You cannot develop effective learning strategies if you do not have a clearly defined learning outcome. At the end a woodworking unit, for example, students may be expected to make a frame using bridal joints. Or, if the class is reading Robert Cormier's novel, "The Chocolate War," tell students they will be expected to list examples of the destructive effects of peer pressure once they've finished reading
While knowledge for its own sake can be a powerful motivator, your classroom is only a small part of your students' world. A teenager making a picture frame for her boyfriend's school photo will make that frame represent more than just a class assignment. If you know a student is interested in becoming a pilot, you can further impress upon the need to understand vectors in geometry class.
Learning does not occur in a vacuum. The most effective strategies draw from contexts that are meaningful to your students. Kizlik advocates building the curriculum around thematic units. When the lessons in your unit have a common theme, students can build more easily on previously covered material. In addition, when these themes include issues they recognize or can relate to, your students students can take personal ownership of their learning.