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- Social Engagement: Creating Connections with Students Through Collaboration and Sharing. Social engagement involves social interactions. The key to having effective social engagement is to help students get to know and trust you and other students early in the semester.
- Behavioral Engagement: Establishing Rules, Routines, and Roles. Behavioral engagement deals with routines and behaviors that help promote learning. It is important to teach the routines and behaviors that you want your students to use to improve the quality of peer discussions and the efficiency of class activities.
- Emotional Engagement: Facilitating Joy, Connection, and Memories. Emotional engagement entails creating safe, positive learning experiences for everyone involved.
- Intellectual Engagement: Promoting Choice, Challenge, and Curiosity. Intellectual engagement involves curiosity and meaningful explorations. Whenever possible, give students choices in terms of tasks, topics, and strategies for demonstrating their learning.
Mar 20, 2024 · Mastery-based learning focuses on competence, ensuring deeper understanding and skill acquisition. Mastery-based learning can lead to increased student satisfaction, more positive attitudes, and less differences between students in what they learn. Teaching in my classroom is not just about grading but is about learning.
- The Grapple. This is a type of instructional strategy I developed after being inspired by our math curriculum, which starts with an element called the “anchor task.”
- Student-Created Anchor Charts. After participating in a Grapple, students are tasked with trying the strategy of the day in their own writing. I then make an anchor chart naming the strategy with examples of student work.
- Free Writing Time. Free writing time gives students space to let their creative ideas flourish and see themselves as writers. I give my students 5 minutes of free writing time each day.
- Oral Brainstorming. Oral brainstorming helps build class community. Regardless of the genre, students can share about themselves or a variety of other topics with their peers and teacher.
- Model Engagement
- Use Music
- Use Art
- Give Ownership
- Make It Relevant
- Play Games
- Read Aloud
- Create Visuals
- Stop and Jot
- Discussion Warm-Ups
It didn’t take me too long into my first year of teaching before I realized the importance of modeling engagement. Teaching the same lesson several times a day isn’t one of the perks of being a teacher, but the less enthusiastic I am about a lesson, the less engaged students tend to be. And, the reverse is true as well. Wanting to engage students i...
When we play music in the classroom, the energy changes. Whether we are using songs for intentional brain breaks (which are an engagement strategy as well!), as a mentor text for figurative language or grammar, or as a bell ringer, music brings life to the classroom. Here’s a free analytical music activityyou can use with poetry.
Use art in ELA to pique students’ interest. For example, I love encouraging students to think critically by drawing vocabulary associations or creating one pagers or sketch notes. They can analyze and evaluate graphic design elements by looking at author’s craft in picture books or by creating booksnaps to capture reflections. Use photographs as in...
If we really want to engage students in learning, we need to give them ownership: voice and choice. Involve them in making decisions about what happens in the classroom and about their learning. Ask for their feedback about lessons and units. Have them evaluate their work and progress. And, let students choose what they want to read as often as pos...
Students are more engaged in learning when lessons are relevant to real-world application. Tie literature to essential questions that help students understand life. Choose books in which they can see themselves or their culture present. Try passion projects or genius hours. Teach real-world writing skills like email etiquette and journaling. And, o...
Games are crowd pleasers. This year, I asked my students…If you could take the skills I am asking you to learn and transform this lesson to make it exactly how you want to learn, what approach would you take? The answer? Resoundingly, games. They want to play games. Games are not ideal for every circumstance, but if students can play a game to prac...
Students are never too old to be read to. I just attended a conference in which the presenter used several picture books as interactive read alouds with an adult audience, and everyone was enthralled. Picture books truly have to age cap. Whether you’re reading the first chapter of a book, the entire thing, a short story, or a picture books, you’ll ...
Visual elements captivate students. Graphic organizers provide them with naturally differentiated entry points for discussion. Plus, the design of many graphic organizers elevates thinking more than a traditional worksheet. Anchor charts are effective because students can help create them, and they anchor learning so that students can refer back to...
Sometimes we are so busy disseminating information that we don’t stop often enough to let students think. And, thinking is critical for engagement! Try incorporating brain dumps, or stop and jots, as a way for students to write down what they remember as you move from one topic to another or between parts of the lesson. This type of activity is als...
Ever wonder how to engage students in class discussions? Try think, pair, square, which is a variation of think-pair-share. In think, pair, square, the teacher poses a question. (Students can pose questions also, determining on the purpose and goal). Then, students do a brain dump on paper, writing down everything they think in response to that que...
- Use an exciting hook. Having an exciting hook, whether it's a brilliant book, a video clip, role play or a powerful image at the very beginning of a lesson is incredibly important.
- Build upon the children's interests. I was certainly guilty as a teacher of saying "I did this last year and it worked really well so I'm going to do it again", but one of the big things I learned from working with colleagues in EYFS was building upon the children's interests.
- Link your lesson ideas together. Another thing I learned quickly was that the more that my lessons could link together, the better. It really helped me, particularly when it came to those longer writing pieces to pull all the teaching points and activities I was setting together.
- Create more opportunities to write. I remember looking back at writing books at the end of the year in some of the year groups that I taught, and thinking gosh, there isn't much in there!
1. Help your students to see themselves as real authors by showcasing student writing as read-alouds. 2. Use student writing in your mini lessons to highlight specific skills and talents. 3. Share a piece of your own writing and ask for your students’ advice on how YOU can improve a piece of your writing.
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Jul 18, 2023 · Designing writing-to-engage prompts. Writing-to-engage (also called writing-to-learn) assignments and activities emphasize writing as a key means of learning rather than primarily as a way in which a writer demonstrates mastery of content or knowledge. This kind of assignment or activity can serve as part of the process of completing a more ...
