Allie Gale, the Departmental Teaching Fellow for Earth and Planetary Science, shares her quick tip on teaching.
Do you have any tricks for getting your students to learn the material rather than just memorize it?
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The Bok Blog 
Allie, you’re awesome and beautiful! Great tip on teaching. As a teacher myself in my school for comedians, I teach them to think as well. George Carlin used to say, “don’t just get them to laugh, get them to think.” Very powerful.
Also I use humor to teach. Two university studies show that any subject taught with humor properly injected, increases retention as much as 18 percent.
Hi Allie, you bring up a great point about encouraging students to think rather than memorize facts. When developed, this skill can be also be useful outside of the classroom, as it will help students become self-reliant problem solvers, and ultimately, help students become more proactive in regard to their studies.
As a secondary school teacher, I have a bit more time to cover material. As a means of informal assessment, I encourage peer-teaching activities where students are responsible for presenting a specific concept previously covered during lecture. I find that this motivates students to review the material for themselves, as they will have to present it in an engaging manner to the rest of the class.
Yes, a lot of teaching today is content driven rather than inspiring children and engaging their interests. Quite often teachers have the pressure of having to get through the syllabus rather than encouraging children to reflect on what they have learned.
Hi Allie
Good on you for encouraging your students to think for themselves…I wish teacher had done that when I went to school.
Something I try to do these days is to create memorable experiences for our students. So rather then remembering boring facts or head knowledge they remember an activity that relates to the topic and drives home the point.
Thanks for the info. Nice article.