Engaging Students Every Day

Making an engaging learning environment can sometimes be demanding for any classroom teacher.?But?you want your pupils to be absorbed in the subject you’re instructing.

When pupils are engaged and absorbed, I’ve found they’re better listeners and react quicker to instructions. Plus, they look like they’re learning and having fun.

Here are different ways to help engage with pupils and make the schoolroom more fascinating, light, and beneficial for learning.

Making Classes More Interactive

Unless you are a fantastic presenter, your pupils could become bored quickly when they only hear you talk. Involve your pupils in discussion is a time-honored method to keep attention levels up and effectively manage a classroom.

One of the only ways to gauge your pupils’ understanding is to?ask?or?let them ask questions. Allow the pupils to give their views on debatable issues and encourage open dialogue.

Let your students be part of the class as much as possible. Interactivity is vital for struggling students and can be used to engage advanced students as well.

Here are some great tips from the Resilient Educator on how to make classes interactive.

Brainstorm

Group Students to solve problems

Q and A sessions

Offer Students Choices

Do your students have any say over what happens in your class??To?develop a vibrant, productive and memorable style, you should involve students in decision-making. For example, for an evolutionary biology subject, you could let students choose between doing a project on dinosaurs or modern reptiles.

Students are not blank slates; no matter how young they may be, they have opinions that help improve the learning environment. You can do this without handing over control, such as by giving?them options or creating a learning activity requiring decision-making.

To find opportunities to offer choice, focus on outcomes rather than tasks. Some examples are to allow students to choose: (a) which of three titles on the same topic they’ll write under (b) the order in which they complete tasks (c) which questions on a subject they’ll answer in detail (d) whether the class does activity at the start or end of lesson (e) the reward for completing work on time.

?Relate Material to Real Life Situations

Learning materials that connect to real-life aid student engagement immediately and are often more memorable. If you recognize that your pupils seem to be suffering from losing attention or do not understand your instruction, try to?inject real-life examples.

For example, if a pupil inquires why you teach about money, do not use a “because” answer. Use a practical life example, such as, “We need money to buy things in life.” You can make it clear-cut by presenting or using examples from your personal life, entertainment shows, or characters the kids might be familiar with.

Some more tips from Janelle Cox are to: (a) do a news search on the topic (b) invite a guest speaker or show a relevant video of them (c) take a field trip (d) simulate a real-life experience,, such as by having some of the students act out a hypothetical event and (e) give students problems to solve or explore based on case studies instead of purely hypothetical scenarios.

How To Use Mystery To Captivate Your Students

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You can use different ways of creating suspense in your lessons. You can give pupils hints about your next class and tell them to learn more content. You can even set a reward for the students who discover things on their own.

Have students find something each time, turning the instruction into a problem-solving quest. Studies show that using mysteries and investigation helps boost the mood of the class.?Don’t explain everything in a bland sequence. This indicates that you should get their minds ticking by giving hints or dropping actual content without explaining everything straight away.

A history lesson is a series where you can discuss a person or event without naming them or giving away the topic precisely. You could start a class with, “Today, we’ll discuss a famous American whose work still impacts everyone today. He wrote some of the most important rules about how our republic works.” Sometime later, you can tell them what this person is named.

Setting Expectations for Participants

Pupils?fear what kind of effect they’ll have on their teachers, and often this uncertainty makes them hesitant to speak up in class. This self-censoring is an obstacle to collective learning and the exchange of ideas. To fight this, create a climate of psychological safety within your classroom where pupils know that it’s all right to speak up. And make participation a requirement from the start. Here are some ways to encourage participation in your classes:

• Call on pupils—but pay attention when extra support is needed.?Collective learning can’t go on if the same three groups constantly respond. To get broad participation, I cold call students. Each of them knows that I may call on them at any time. For pupils who are especially reticent or eager about that possibility, I might do a warm call and let them know beforehand, so they have some warning. Besides, I also stress that my class has no downside to wrong answers. If I call on you and you’re stuck, I’ll ask your classmates to come to your aid. “Help them out” is an expression I always use, and pupils acknowledge it. So there’s no downside to wrong answers unless you didn’t do the work before class.
• Have pupils grade each others’ in-class engagement.?Students?should be graded on their thoughtful contributions to class, not by the teacher. Peer grading certainly motivates students to participate. But it also gives the teacher an incredibly rich record of how students contributed to their peers’ learning throughout the course.
• Ban the podium when instructing in person.?Many instructors pass whole class sessions hiding behind their stands, clinging to them for dear life. The stand becomes a physical and psychological barrier. Instead, model psychological safety by getting away from it. This is the case that there are limitations when teaching online, but in person, we should be out among the pupils where we can interact with them.

Read the Room

If you’re steadily losing pupils to doodling, off-topic talk, and the pervasive “need to tear and ball up little pieces of paper”, in this instance, it’s time to shake things up.

Cut the activity short if it’s slow, clear up instructions if there’s confusion in the state of mind, or switch to a more student-centered activity for greater engagement.

Remember:?it’s unachievable to have every pupil engaged 100% of the time. The best thing we can do is notice detachment and react to it quickly.

Focusing on Discovery and Inquiry

While “good” discussions?can be?a powerful tool, sometimes the foremost thing you can do for engagement is to get out of your pupil’s way.

The need is that you should let them discover learning for themselves without being spoon-fed. They’ll effectively exercise critical and creative thinking and engage the lines of inquiry that make them wonder.

This doesn’t mean you should retreat behind the teacher’s desk. Try this observe your pupils, listen to them, talking to them about what they’re thinking. Be their guide as opposed to their instructor.

How to Ask Good Questions

Inquire good questioning of your pupils, and you’ll drive rich, attractive discussions open to everyone.

Good questions should be:

• open-ended: to avoid “yes/no” answers
• equitable: open to answers of varying depth and complexity
• legitimate: asked because you want to hear students’ thoughts and opinions, not because you’re fishing for a correct answer.

When pupils reply to a question, engage with their response. Even if it’s incorrect or misinformed, recognize their effort and use it to refine the question further (e.g., “you’re on the right track, but could we also think about…”).

Give Think Time

It’s pleasing to see hands shoot up shortly when you ask a question, but letting your pupils believe it over has two benefits. It leads to more reasoned responses that drive engaging communication and makes the conversation reachable to those who don’t have a fast answer.

After you ask a question, please pause for twenty seconds and allow students to extend their standard responses further. For example, you might ask, “See if you can explain how you came to your answer, too”. You’ll have improved answers and notice some new hands going up.

Shake up Your Classroom

Predictability is safe, but it can take time and effort. Could you occasionally mix up your staple teaching strategies with new and novel activities? Talking to other teachers for ideas will help.?In?addition to engagement, you’ll also be giving your pupils information about what it means to take a risk and attempt to do something new.

Experimentation with any new parts of the teacher toolkit makes it easier to differentiate your instruction.?A?new activity or delivery method might be the shift in engaging that pupil who has been a tough nut to crack all year.