Let’s talk about six effective strategies to enhance student engagement in the classroom. This lesson launch pattern will teach expected engagement, reduce confusion, support learning independence and eliminate fear in your students.
- Start each lesson with open-ended questions.
- Provide clear examples of what the student is working toward.
- Review available tools students will need to be successful with the task.
- Explain the relevance of the lesson by providing a why.
- Demonstrate the steps to get from beginning to end.
- Provide students with a quick win before they begin their tasks.
Step One: Open Lessons with Questions Any Student Can Answer
When you are planning a lesson, select something the kids can connect with and think about without fear of failure. Present them with a quote, photo, graph, map or artifact and ask simple engaging questions like, “What do you see, What do you think, What do you wonder?” These are questions all students can answer and you can get and expect everyone to engage.
Give them positive feedback with affirmations, smiles and praise. If you randomly call on someone and they answer, “I don’t know,” simplify the question back to, “What do you see.” By always expecting a student to respond even if you have to rephrase or simplify the question, you are teaching them engagement is expected. This can take weeks to build as a habit but, it can be done.
Step Two: Present an Example of What Students Will Be Doing
This example is important to support students in learning to monitor their own performance toward a task goal. This might be a completed math problem, an exemplar introductory paragraph, a table created from data or a craftier project. It really can be anything as long as it is an example of what you expect to see from their work production.
Step Three: Review the Tools and Supplies Needed for Success
At this point you are going to provide, remind or share all the tools students may need to complete the task. I will offer up all the supports and accommodations that are in the plans for any of my 504 or IEP students. This keeps them from being singled out while reminding them what is available.
Step Four: Make the Learning Relevant for Students
Students have a general fear of wasting their time with busy work. This connection to why this is relevant shows you honor their time and are not asking them to do things that are not worthwhile. I might include, how this knowledge or skill will be useful moving forward in the class. If this is something I use as an adult, in my life, I will share a situation where knowing ___ was helpful to me. If the knowledge or skill is the cornerstone to a type of career, share the jobs and careers with the class. This again reinforces relevance on a large scale, as well as piquing the interest of students who find the work fun, exciting, and/or easy.
Step Five: Give Students Specific Directions and Demonstrate
Now it is time to teach the lesson. Provide students with clear directions, possibly step by step directions written largely ont he board or a handout they can make notes on. These will guide the students how to independently start and complete the learning task once the lesson is over.
As you demonstrate the task, step by step, move from the directions to your example until the process is complete. This would be considered Explicit Direct Instruction. Teaching students how to read and follow directions is a skill you will teach through the class as you reinforce the importance and model.
Directions can be simple like my introductory list. They can have visuals if you work with the littles. Whatever fits the lesson, the students and your style, do that.
Always repeat the demonstration until you feel the class is ready to work independently. Yes, model that mathematical process three or four times, assemble that craft, write a great paragraph, complete a graphic organizer so there is no confusion as to what and how they will be successful.
Step Six: Give Students a Quick Win
Traditionally this win can be done when you check for understanding. This is not asking for questions. Checking for understanding is randomly asking students what is to be done. “Kelli, what is the first thing to do?” “Jim, what do we do next?” If anyone can’t answer the question from your steps or list, go to the source, point out what was last said and gesture to the next direction. Everyone needs to know what to do and where to go if they get stuck.
If directions or steps are not clear, students who by nature or habit want to avoid the work will! They will pick gum from their shoes, take a field trip around the class, talk to a friend or . . . ask to go to the bathroom. Often students who are used to ignoring lesson intros will expect a private one on one before they get started. This is a habit that will not serve them as life long learners. If you have been clear and when roaming the class ask, “why haven’t you started?” you might hear, “I am stuck.” Without emotion gesture or point out step one and ask them to start there.
This prompt and leave strategy can feel like a lot of effort and may seem to wast a lot of time in the beginning however, you are not serving anyone well by allowing helplessness when initiating a learning task.
The other way we can get a quick win is with a boarding pass. If an exit ticket is an example showing what can be done at the end of a lesson, a boarding pass is a demonstration of something needed such as a prerequisite skill. A boarding pass can be, the students committing to a group role. It can be an example of a skill they already possess or knowledge they already have. Whatever it is, a quick win is important to solidify the belief in all the students, I CAN DO THIS.
FAQ
Won’t this take too long? When you start launching your lessons it will take time. It takes less time the more you do it. But, I might suggest, if you don’t launch a lesson with examples, clear directions and complete student engagement, you are spending time on unwanted work avoident behavior. The time is most likely being taken up after you release to independent work as they will act or actually be confused as to what to do, how to do it and what they should be producing.
How do you choose your opening question item? I find something connected to the learning or lesson. It can be anything the students see or possibly listen to. This connects everyone in a shared experience and really can be anything. Of course the more original, exciting and different, the more it will excite the students.
What is that one student still won’t engage and do work? First keep trying and . . . check back here for Part 2 and Part 3 of this series on increasing student engagement.
If you are ready for more on egagment, part 2 is ready and full of information and practical things you can take action on. Right HERE.
