THE INTRINSIC POWER IN COLOURS

Teacher’s Diary

With regards to students’ performance, teachers are increasingly up against the lure of the internet. You simply have to be super-creative to be effective. Creative teachers know the power of colours and will use hues of solids and pastels to improve their students’ assimilation and retention.

A careful study and selection of the colours you plan and use to help you deliver the curriculum will not only give your lessons and classroom aesthetic benefits but help your students to remember and usefully transfer what they have learnt onto aspects of daily living.

Today, the internet reports that the world’s prettiest colour is YinMn (a shade of blue), which is described as ‘so perfect and bright that it almost doesn’t look real’. Conversely, the ugliest colour in the world is Pantene 448C. It is a drab dark brown colour that market researchers condemned as the least attractive colour.

Colours take on and reflect man’s attributes, emotions and personalities. Colours have the power to refer, recommend and exclude. This is why we put some thoughts into what we wear and accessories we use. Today common adjectives used to describe colours range from words like ‘annoying’ to gross; sexually attractive; ugly; brilliant; warm, steely; leaden and pale. We speak of colours as though they were animate.

Younger children are more captivated by bright and vivid colours; whilst teenagers and adult learners tend to prefer lighter, more subtle and pastel colours. In teaching, various researches have proven that colour positively impacts on learning. Colour applied digitally or conservatively by paper and stationery both work productively in teaching.

At your lessons, you can use colour to achieve accuracy, improve navigation and progression on a page, sheet, text or book. Using colour also reduces the levels of eye fatigue in you and your students. When you use colour strategically and effectively, previous knowledge is easily linked to the present thus facilitating a continuum in learning.

Essentially, the purposeful and skillful use of colour during teaching has the power to reduce stress and increase productivity. In this same vein, a teacher and everyone else must skillfully and consciously contribute to their own well-being.

Ironically God has used colour purposefully. Take a look at nature on land, sky and sea – you’d find a master-full selection and blend of colours that affect our wellness in immense ways. In the same vein, what you should be eating has also been masterfully created to “invite” you, seemingly encourage you and guide you to choose them. Have you heard of antioxidants? Do you know that colourful and vivid fruits and vegetables contain antioxidants? Antioxidants maintain your productivity by maintaining your immune system.

Colourful fruits and vegetables especially those with purple, blue, red, orange and yellow colours are full of three major antioxidant vitamins called Betacarotene, Vitamin C and Vitamin E. They improve your productivity at work by activating and strengthening your immune system so that it can fight diseases, infections, ageing, stress and fatigue. So teachers, go through your day with purposefully chosen and well planned meals and snacks.

Omoru writes from the UK