You are sitting in your least favorite class, and your eyes slowly troll the room, glaring at vibrantly painted posters and papers. You begin playing with your pencil, and drawing on the worksheet. Soon, the teacher who is blabbing on and on about numbers and multiplication’s voice fades away. “Hello? Can you tell me the answer?” Your body tenses up and your eyes dart around the room looking for answers, but time is ticking and you end up staring blankly at the teacher, praying she will call on someone else. Unfortunately, this situation is common for many unfocused, distracted, off-topic students. So But what causes students to be so disengaged during class? Well, the answer is teaching styles. Different teaching styles are commonly used amongst the education community. Some teaching methods involve little to no student interaction, which causes students to become bored, while others encourage students to participate in the lesson. Therefore, students with teachers who use a more lecture based teaching style will not focus as well as students with teachers who that use either a workshop or interactive teaching style.

The question investigated during the research conducted was, do different teaching styles affect a students’ focus in class? Next, The the hypothesis formed was, students with teachers who have a more lecture based class will not focus as well as students with teachers who use a more interactive teaching method. As different classrooms were being observed at Brooklawn Middle School, it became evident that many teachers used different styles and methods to teach their students. To begin, independent learning is a common strategy used to get students critically thinking while the teacher is there for any questions. Other than that, the students are on their own. When these classes were being observed, many students were on YouTube while others were playing computer games (Observations). The students were off-task, and had the freedom to do so, since the teacher was not paying attention to what the students were actually doing. On the other hand, students were also taught in some classes using a method known as interactive based classrooms. This can look like students getting into groups and completing work this way, or playing interactive games in class to learn about the material in an engaging way. With this method, students can lean on each other for support if needed. These students were completely on task and were having fun learning (Observations). This method seemed like it grasped their attention, and allowed them to have fun while also learning. Also, another teaching style that was observed was the workshop style. This is when the teacher teaches a mini lesson and then proceeds to allow the students to work independently incorporating what was taught during the mini lesson. Although some students seemed focused, most of the students in the class were on their phones and talking at the same time that the teacher was. One student asked another student, “Did you tell Senora Hunt?” (Observations) Considering these students were in English class and discussing Spanish class establishes that the students were off-topic and going off on tangents about things different than what was being taught to them in the specific class they were in. This quote highlights how when students are not focused due to boredom, they tend to trail off and begin talking about offtopic subjects that interest them such as school gossip, sports, after school activities, etc. Additionally, another teaching style discovered during the investigation was lecture based teaching. This is when the teacher talks to the students and there is little student interaction. When this classroom was observed,  the students seemed bored, and were fidgeting with and finding objects around the room to analyze instead of paying attention since they were so disengaged. Kids tend to feel disinterested when they have little involvement in things, so it makes sense that they felt so disengaged during class. To conclude, although many great teaching styles were observed, lecture seemed to be the least effective, while interactive learning was deemed most effective.

Although a lot of information was gathered in the initial investigation, it became clear that further research was needed. According to the article “Why Students Get Bored”, “As students progress through their education, they often need more varied teaching methods. Traditional lectures and memorization can lead to a sense of indifference and disinterest” (Why). This demonstrates that although students can easily do things like note taking and memorizing facts, using the same teaching styles repetitively can be reprehensible to a child's education. If teachers put more effort into planning their lessons to be more interactive, students are more likely to be engaged. In the study, “Facilitating and assessing student engagement in the classroom” professionals from the University of Colorado Boulder introduced a new method where students will thrive and benefit from their education. In the article it states, “...active learning refers to a broad range of teaching strategies that engage students as active participants in their learning during class time. Active learning helps students to engage with the course of material beyond reading, listening and note taking, and it contributes to the development of higher order thinking skills (e.g., analysis, synthesis, evaluation) as well as content knowledge. Active learning often involves interaction among students, though these activities vary in intensity” (Facilitating). This method of a variety of teaching methods allows students to take charge in their own education making it more interactive and engaging for them. A google forms survey revealed, 37.5 % of sixteen 8th grade students on team 8-3 say that they feel more focused in an interactive based classroom, while 6.3% said that they feel more focused in a lecture based classroom. When the students were asked what class they dislike the most, the majority of the students said social studies, and when asked what teaching style the teacher used, they said lecture. They explained that they were bored out of their minds and that they wished the teacher planned more interactive activities for the class. (Forms). The level of success in students suffers when they are bored since when students become bored, they lose interest in learning causing them to in some cases, drop out of school (Why). Not only is this a loss of interest in what knowledge is being offered to them, but if students are no longer paying attention, they will begin to find school abstruse which will also contribute to the care they have for their education slowly deteriorating over time. In summary, students who are bored in class due to lack of a variety of teaching methods will find it harder to gauge interest  engage in what they are they’re learning.

Ultimately, students in most situations are less likely to pay attention when teachers are using a lecture method rather than if kids are being taught in a more interactive based teaching style. If teachers don’t take action in this issue, and avoid planning more lessons that will grasp the attention of their students, the kids will find it harder to learn, and will grow with little to no knowledge that they could have gained in school. Teachers, next time you notice students panicking over a question they don’t know the answer to since they were not paying attention, consider mixing up your teaching style to ensure your students will have a more well rounded education to set them up for success!