Ten Steps to Better Student Engagement

"As a teacher, my goal is to go home at the end of each day with more energy than I had at the beginning of the day. Seriously!" Hm, that is exactly my goal also! I have yet to achieve it after 40 years plus in the classroom, but I keep trying. Seriously!! Yes, as one teacher mentioned to the author in a workshop, there are good days when you are in a "flow" with your students and it does bring great joy. Okay, so I have experienced a few of those, but too few and too far between.

The author gives some very good ideas about increasing student engagement, which makes this article well worth a read. He suggests project based classrooms, but also cautions that teachers and students must learn and practice the skills to be successful in this type of classroom.

As an 8th grade teacher, I recently assumed that my students would already have the skills to complete a project. Nope! We were building jets for the first part of the project. I reviewed the expectations of the final plane, discussed procedures for building and cleaning up, and found out that hardly anybody listened or I wasn't specific enough. So back to the drawing board. Basic skills for completing a project like this were not in place.

The first of ten steps for student engagement includes creating an "emotionally" and "intellectually safe classroom." Put downs by other students and the teacher are both factors that do not support collaborative classrooms. Training students that when you say, "Please begin," they all pick up their pencils and start working is a skill students must practice. Creating an active-learning classroom is also a must. Make tasks easy at the beginning and then gradually increase the challenges. Notice which of the activities you do actively engage kids and which do not.

Whether or not students love doing projects, depends a lot on how you scaffold the challenging tasks so that all can be successful. The author mentions how Japanese teachers value the last 5 minutes of class as a time for students to summarize, share, and reflect their learning of the day. Especially in Science, but any class, teachers should emphasize explanations of thinking rather than "right answers." Students should be taught to be self-aware about their thought processes and how they learn. The author provides a neat diagram to place after each question on a test. The student must mark whether he was "confused, maybe, I'm sure" about his answer.

The questioning strategies the author outlines are very useful and can be used by all teachers. He says professionals use a design process to outline their work before they actually do the final. Encouraging students to do this drives students to do higher quality work. The last strategy is one I think is very powerful and necessary. "Market Your Project" is a way that students know ahead of time who will be looking, judging, evaluating their work. It is for more than just the teacher. Parents, other teachers, students, and staff should be invited to view and critique the finished projects. This truly can engage students to do their best work.