Technique 46: The J-Factor
The Concept: Help your students find joy in learning the things you are teaching them.
The Five Categories of J-Factor:
The Five Categories of J-Factor:
- Fun and games: Play upon the fact that kids love competition and challenges. Take a boring grammar lesson and turn it into a fun game of who can name the most prepositions.
Why it works: Kids are going to be more willing to play games, regardless of topic, than to sit at their desks and listen to you lecture or teach. This is also a great way to help create that sense of “us” as explained below because by turning a lesson into a challenge, this allows the students to work together to find a way to overcome the obstacles. - Us (and them): Turn your classroom into its own little culture; create a sense of community with yours students to help them feel like they belong. Using things such as nicknames, tradition, songs, “isms” and such you create a type of community for your students. Having a special tradition for your students creates a sort of allure for those who are not a part of the “us.” This allure helps create a sense of “us” that makes the kids feel more as if they have a secret that only the other students in the class understand or get.
Why it works: Everyone wants to feel like they belong, so take advantage of that. Because of the grades I’ll be teaching (9-12), I need to take into account that at that age, not all kids feels as if they belong to certain groups. So by using this portion of the J-Factor, you can help kids who don’t normally fit into a certain group feel as if they belong to one. It allows you to help create a sense of camaraderie. - Drama, song, and dance: Act things out and put your lesson or concept you are trying to teach to a song because using music and drama to teach is a great way to help students remember certain things. Plus the catchier the tune or the sillier the skit, the more likely they are to remember those things.
Why this works: In all honesty, kids are more likely to remember the lyrics to their favorite song instead of the parts of speech or whether to use “accept” or “except,” so why not take a catchy tune and a concept and turn it into a song that will help your students remember what you are trying to teach them. Or if you’re having your kids read a novel or a play, act out a certain scene or an important event in the story (make sure you add a couple dashes of the over-dramatic because chances are they’ll remember that versus what they've read, especially if they’re just skimming over what you assigned. - Humor: Why keep things boring, monotone, and uninteresting? People say that laughter is the best medicine and in the education field, laughter can be a great way to create a happy positive environment that allows your students to feel comfortable. Humor can be a powerful tool that helps bring your students together. Use it by telling jokes or funny stories that only students would get if they were in your class.
Why this works: Again, humor helps create a sense of “us” because jokes and funny stories are ways of connecting students, especially when they are jokes and stories that only they know. - Suspense and surprise: Keep things unpredictable; stay unpredictable because it keeps the students on their toes. Use suspense as a way to keep your students guessing; they won’t get bored with the monotony of lesson, lecture, and homework.
Why this works: By using surprise and suspense in the classroom, your students no longer become uninterested or bored with certain subjects and topics they once did not care for.
In the Classroom
The J-Factor is a great technique to use in an English/Language Arts classroom because it allows me to take a subject that some students find boring and bring it to life, I can use each of the five categories to some extent in my classroom.
The J-Factor is a great technique to use in an English/Language Arts classroom because it allows me to take a subject that some students find boring and bring it to life, I can use each of the five categories to some extent in my classroom.
- Fun and games: Make a boring grammar lesson on nouns into a game of who can create the most synonyms for a certain word. Create mad libs out of a parts of speech lesson.
- Us (and them): Have the students create their own "story" by turned the classroom into a setting and designating certain characters to each student.
- Drama, song, and dance: When reading a play, act out a scene or two and have students explain why certain props or stage positions might be used to help give the audience a better sense of what is going on.
- Humor: Turn a plain poetry lesson into an interesting one by having students create funny limericks and haikus.
- Suspense and surprise: Break routine up every now and again by instead using one of the previous four.