"Great Teachers Focus on Glorious Connections & Relationships!!!- What about you???"

Boosting Student Learning

Three core attitudes are necessary. First, build the hope in their lives and teach the skills of optimism. Hope can come from many sources. They include having a teacher who is an advocate for their success not an adversary. Ask for their dreams and support them. "I love that you want to be a sports trainer. Let's make a plan so you'll know what to do next each year."

Second, start building mindset for success. Teach students that when things aren't working to change your effort, strategy or attitude. These are more important than just so-called "talent." Affirm what you want most. Say, "I love how you cnaged strategies and ended up with reaching your goal." Or, you might say, "Your positive attitude carried you through. It's one of your best qualities; keep using it!"

Finally, build the attitude of personal responsibility. If something's not working, don't point fingers, change it. If you made a mistake, say so and fix it. If you hurt someone's feelings, apologize and move on. If you were late, don't make excuses. Apologize and ask for how you can make up lost time.

Another core practice is to build their cognitive capacity. Most teachers notice HOW their kids are doing. So, they tell them what to do, based on their apparent "capacity." But the best teachers are building capacity all the time. The biggest areas for leverage and getting quick academic results are in these five areas: working memory, study skills, self-regulation, auditory processing and analysis. Each of these are teachable. Many teachers assume that kids either have these or they don't. That's false; these are built consistently in the classrooms of high-performing classrooms. Few kids are taught basic study skills and these give kids a huge leg up on school success. Make a plan and start small. Keep adding cognitive skills over time and never, ever quit.

Third, foster grit and perseverance. Teach them what "grit" is and point it out in class when it's used. Long-term effort is worth a lot! In the classroom, point out each time a student pushed through obstacles and worked extra hard to complete a task. "I love how you stuck with that until you completed it. Now that's the grit I was talking about. That, my friend, will take you far in life!"

Build social skills. Teach kids basic "meet and greet" strategies as well as how to put yourself in an other's shoes. Teach basic politeness and teach kids behaviors that adults expect of them. Great social skills will go a long way in this world. These can be build in as short as ten seconds. Every single time you have social encounters, throw in the behaviors you want. "Before you head back to your seat, thank your partner."

Finally, connect the learning to their lives. Strong teachers don't teach content; Google has content. Strong teaching connects learning in ways that inspire kids to learn more and strive for greatness. For example, while kids are studying, learning or answering questions, "I love that contribution! That's what will help you understand this better and help you reach your goal. Keep it up!"

Employ Meta cognition

Copious research studies demonstrate time and again that helping students to understand themselves as learners increases motivation and achievement. Two resources to get you started:

• Teaching Meta cognition presentation slides by Marsha C. Lovett of the Carnegie Mellon Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence
• Learner Sketch Tool by Q.E.D. Foundation provides students a look at themselves as learners while also providing them practical strategies for leveraging their strengths. (Bonus: teachers can see their entire class's learning sketch!)

Instill a Growth Mindset

When students understand the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset they are able to better understand that they can grow as learners. This empowerment can help encourage them to take additional risks. The work by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck really fleshes this concept out.

Design for Authentic Engagement

Model-Eliciting Activities or MEAs provide a context for students to explore a data set or challenge with the goal of helping them develop the strategies / skills within the process of the problem. 

You can learn more about MEAs at Pedagogy in Action's Examples page for helping students "invent and test models" for solving problems. And at Purdue's School of Engineering's "Small Group Mathematical Problem Solving" page.

Provide Relevant Content

Novelty is the catalyst for growth. But lasting learning necessitates the learner connect with the novel content. A middle school or high school student hardly connects with Christopher Columbus and his sailing of the ocean blue in 1492. However, put the student adaptation of Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States" in their hands and you'll find them storming out of the classroom saying things like, "Columbus was a jerk." Or, my favorite, "Wow. What a pig."

When students emotionally connect to the content they are more likely to think and talk about it (read as, "analyze and process it") long after they have left your classroom walls.

Leverage Student Voice

Students who find their voice is valued and empowered are more likely to take risks and exercise that voice. Doing so requires educators find connection points for students to authentically express themselves within activities.

One such example combining science and hip-hop is Science Genius, a pilot program that employs music as a catalyst and vehicle for connecting learners with scientific content. The design is fairly simple. As part of demonstrating their understanding and competency, students explain scientific concepts by writing and dropping rhymes over beats.  

• Communicate For Your Audience: The difference in communicating for your audience and communicating to your audience may seem slight, but it is what separates good teachers from great teachers. Great teachers work to reach their students, not simply convey the appropriate information in an understandable manner.
• Question For Kids: Asking questions is something every teacher does. Asking questions that make kids think, causes true conversation, and may lead in a variety of directions is something that is far less common in classrooms. A good tip for teachers is to script questions based on Bloom's Taxonomy - and make sure to ask questions that cause kids to analyze, evaluate, and synthesize information every single day. And yes - this is possible at every grade level.
• Give the Work Back: The most successful teachers don't 'teach' much in the traditional sense. When you think stand and deliver - I think average educator. When you think of a teacher that engages students so that they are active creating and solving their own problems - I think great educator. Simply put, most teachers 'work' too much in the classroom while great teachers find ways to give work back to the students.
• Connection, Not Compliance: Great teachers focus not on compliance, but on connections and relationships. Focusing on connections and relationships is not mutually exclusive from a teacher running a tight ship, but great teachers have the goal of serving and connecting with students first - not creating a compliant culture. In fact, great teachers often use instances of misbehavior as a way to strengthen and further relationships whereas average teachers use their instances to refer students to administration. Classrooms that are defined by compliance are generally not fun places to be - and can actually be stressful and stressful environments generally produce low levels of learning.
• Seek Feedback: Great teachers always want to improve. One of the best ways to improve is to continually seek feedback. The best teachers do this in three ways. First, be informed by the information provided to you in the day-to-day work of a classroom. Assessment must be continuous and ongoing - and for assessment to be meaningful - it must change teacher behavior. Second, welcome feedback. Invite colleagues and administration into your classroom. Reflection is powerful, but everyone has blind spots and a new set of eyes always helps. Lastly - ask for feedback directly through student and parent surveys.

Here are three steps teachers can follow to expand the walls of their classrooms, make connections and participate in projects.

Connect

It’s all about developing your PLN -- Personal Learning Network. Follow blogs, follow bloggers on Twitter, and then follow those who are following them. The more people you follow, the more connections can be made. Engage in professional organizations like International Society of Technology Educators (ISTE).

Explore

Discuss with students the responsibilities of digital citizenship. Create and participate in a collaborative class wiki. Explore and try out different technology tools such as Edmodo, Voicethread, Skype and Animoto.

Create

Decide where in the curriculum a global collaborative project might fit. Align the project with technology and Common Core Learning Standards. Use your online connections to communicate and find other classes to cooperate in your global initiative.

Improving Students' Relationships with Teachers to Provide Essential Supports for Learning

Positive relationships can also help a student develop socially

Sara Rimm-Kaufman, PhD, and Lia Sandilos, PhD, University of Virginia

Improving students' relationships with teachers has important, positive and long-lasting implications for both students' academic and social development. Solely improving students' relationships with their teachers will not produce gains in achievement. However, those students who have close, positive and supportive relationships with their teachers will attain higher levels of achievement than those students with more conflict in their relationships.

Picture a student who feels a strong personal connection to her teacher, talks with her teacher frequently, and receives more constructive guidance and praise rather than just criticism from her teacher. The student is likely to trust her teacher more, show more engagement in learning, behave better in class and achieve at higher levels academically. Positive teacher-student relationships draw students into the process of learning and promote their desire to learn (assuming that the content material of the class is engaging, age-appropriate and well matched to the student's skills).

High quality academic instruction

High quality academic instruction is designed to be appropriate to students' educational levels. It also creates opportunity for thinking and analysis, uses feedback effectively to guide students' thinking, and extends students' prior knowledge.

Real-World Connections

WHAT IS IT?

• Real-world connections draw from, or upon, actual objects, events, experiences and situations to effectively address a concept, problem or issue.
• It involves learning allows students to actually experience or practice concepts and skills, as opposed to learning that is theoretical or idealistic.
• It features learning projects that directly relate to, are relevant to, or provide benefit to students, their families or the community.

WHY USE IT?

• This approach utilizes concepts, problems, or issues that are similar to ones students have encountered or are likely to encounter in life.
• It brings the relevance, complexity and motivation of the real world to learning.
• Sensory experiences are highlighted thereby appealing to and assisting a wide range of learners.
• Making real-world connections promotes student achievement through the authenticity of the learning.
• Learning is based on information derived from real-world sources
• The learning and the results of the learning are directed to audiences beyond the school.
• It supports character education as relationships between the community, the school and students are enhanced.
• It generates many issues or questions to pursue through inquiry.
• Real-world connections provide more opportunities to learn how our communities and society work.

TIPS FOR TEACHERS

• Routinely provide students with living and inanimate objects to manipulate and experience such as 3-D models in chemistry, blocks in mathematics and artifacts in social studies. These hands-on learning opportunities are highly engaging and can help students successfully complete complex tasks requiring abstract thought.
• When possible have the learning process include the making of something useful. (to eat- biology students make yogurt, to use- social studies students make a paddle, to sell- technology students form a manufacturing company to market & and produce a product)
• Where appropriate, focus learning on current issues and problems familiar to the students. Support student action to find solutions or examine relevant case studieswhen circumstances prevent direct student involvement in the issue(s).
• Provide frequent opportunities in all subject areas for students to collect, manipulate and use real data. 
• Find opportunities for students to communicate what they learn to audiences beyond the classroom. 
• Look to the broader community for partnership and mentoring opportunities that will allow students to practice, enhance and apply classroom learning in a real-world setting.

How to Use Real-life Connections in the Classroom To Increase Engagement

How would your students rate your ability to engage them in the learning process? This one measure of how you connect with students will determine how you perform in all aspects of your duties as a teacher – lesson plans, behavioral management techniques, collaboration in the classroom, and ability to create a safe and supportive learning environment.

Before students apply this all-important measure to you, evaluate how effectively you use real-life connections in the classroom to increase engagement.

Is The Golden Measure of Teaching Engagement?

The positive link between student engagement and academic achievement is so strong that Canada’s annual student engagement survey has become an international standard. The results of this hard measurement of your ability to connect with your students are not only used in teacher evaluations but also in:

• developing curriculums
• delivering lessons
• implementing classroom management strategies
• determining class size, and
• allocating technology and other resources.

Highly rated teachers use real-life connections in the classroom to make the learning experience fun, engaging, and meaningful to optimize engagement and learning. This involves moving away from lecture-based lessons and making lessons interesting and interactive.

Make Learning Fun

Your lessons plans should inspire creativity, imagination, and the motivation to pursue self-initiated learning in the student. To this end, the following points are all interconnected. They all have the same objective – engaging the student. Making learning fun and meaningful for students requires developing different strategies for each grade level. A high school teacher requires different strategies from an elementary school teacher to keep the attention of restless teenagers.

Make Learning Meaningful

The lessons a teacher implements should have relevance to a student’s life. If they can’t see the point in learning a topic or are totally uninterested in it, they won’t sit quietly and attentively, patiently waiting to be filled with knowledge. At the start of any topic or lesson, you need to give your students as many reasons as possible for listening to what you’re about to tell them. When you give them enough reasons as to why they need to hear something, there is more chance they will listen.

There’s no point in just rambling on about a topic, expecting them to want to learn it. If your answer to the question “Why do we have to listen to this?” is “Because it’s on the exam” or “Because I say so” then you have a disinterested class.

Explaining why a lesson is meaningful is particularly important to science teachers, math teachers, and those teaching other complex topics. With media, technology and mobile apps, it has never been easier to connect lessons with real life examples. If students can’t see the point in learning a topic they will soon switch off. They’ll get bored, stop listening, act out or break the rules. The way to avoid bored students is to ask yourself the same question while you are developing a lesson plan – Why do students need to learn this?

Involve Students in Lesson Development

Once you’ve prepared a few constructive reasons why the lesson is important, you can then put the question to the group at the start of the lesson.

Avoid simply telling students why the information is relevant to them – get them to come up with the answers themselves. This will increase engagement because learning the material will make perfect sense. Moreover, you are empowering the students – the main pathway to engagement. Students are now involved in structuring the lesson based on objectives they have identified. Some teachers make the mistake of equating engagement with alternative teaching methods. In fact, structured lesson plans minimize student boredom.

It’s a sad fact that a lot of the information provided in some schools is of little practical use to a broad sector of the student population – particularly with the less academic students who are less likely to progress into further education. For this reason, you need to be able to develop lessons meet student interests, with their help.

Bring the Real World Into the Classroom

Students will engage more deeply in structuring lessons if the classroom material relates to their real world/everyday life. Always strive for high practical relevance. Students need to be shown concrete examples and see how academic topics relate to them; thus making the concepts less abstract and scary.

You can talk about your experiences, bring up current events or ask students to talk about family values or beliefs. Current events are not only tools for Social Studies teachers! Incorporate guest speakers to bring a face to the subject and demonstrate how children can apply what they have learned in the classroom to real life or a potential future career. Field trips are among the creative ways to energize and engage students to optimize learning.

Media is the main tool used by teachers to bring the real world into the classroom. With the help of YouTube, streaming videos, podcasts, and news feeds, it is much easier to bring the material to life and gain the students’ interest. Students can satiate their natural curiosities by researching related topics via the Internet. You may also want to use national or international online news networks to discover topics of interest and open the classroom to the wider world. Leverage social media to make their interactions with the real world interactive. They can add comments to articles, and tweet and blog their opinions on global and local issues. Seeing their comments read by thousands, and having others respond – possibly from across the globe – will empower them!

Make a Real – Life Connection Through Technology

Employ Gamification in the Classroom

Gamification is the latest buzzword for saying, incorporating games into lessons. Depending on the grade level you teach, it can be hard to get certain students interested in current events. If the topic does not include movies, games, or pop stars, you may be hard pressed to grab students’ attention. Encouraging students to be active, mentally and physically, is the best way to make a real world connection.

You can find games, interactive lessons plans, and many other teacher educational resources to make real-life connections in the classroom to increase engagement online.

There are many ways to relate your lessons and activities to the real world to increase student retention, student motivation, and interest in subject matter while maximizing learning opportunities. Using a real-life connection into lessons will dramatically reduce classroom management challenges because engagement will increase. Iff students have an interest in learning something they are less likely to act out.

In what ways do you develop and implement creative lesson plans? Understand what components make a great lesson.

Tips for getting all your students engaged in learning

Spark students' interest by making learning personally meaningful

What is Lesson One for teachers who want students to successfully grasp, retain, and apply new material? First—say Whitney Rapp and Katrina Arndt, authors of the new Teaching Everyone: An Introduction to Inclusive Education—you need to "recruit their interest." Teachers need to find ways to make learning "relevant, authentic, and valuable" in students' lives.

Here are 5 steps you can follow to actively engage your students and help them feel personally connected to their learning:

1. Connect what you're teaching to real life

2. Use students' interests and fascinations

3. Give students choices

4. Present information in multiple formats

5. Teach students self-monitoring skills

Connect what you're teaching to real life

One key way to involve students in their learning is to ensure the material speaks to them. These strategies, adapted from Teaching Everyone and Systematic Instruction for Students with Moderate and Severe Disabilities, the new text by Belva Collins, will connect your lessons to students' real-life experiences:

• Choose culturally relevant materials. According to the National Council of Teachers of English, students who do not find representations of their own cultures in texts are likely to lose interest in school-based literacies. (Read how one new teacher learned this valuable lesson in this excerpt from Teaching Everyone.) Have your students complete a short survey on their outside interests and use that information to assist in building your lesson plans. This will help your students see the connections between what they're learning inside and outside the classroom.
• Use specific everyday examples. An easy way to help students feel personally connected to what they're being taught is to talk about how they can apply the material in real life. In Systematic Instruction for Students with Moderate and Severe Disabilities, Collins suggests teachers demonstrate how students can apply the math concepts they are learning to help them manage personal finances, ensure nutritional sustenance, and schedule daily activities.
• Link routines to learning. Conversely, teachers can promote learning through classroom routines. For instance, a child learning to wash hands during bathroom breaks can also be taught science concepts (body parts, hygiene and disease prevention, water conservation), reading (bathroom signage), antonyms (hot/cold, left/right), and math (counting).

Use students' interests and fascinations

Find out what your students are passionate about and then use those interests as natural motivators to increase engagement. Whether a child is fixated on one thing or has a few areas of intense interest, there are many simple strategies you can use to work those fascinations into your instruction. The result? Happier, more motivated students.

In "Just Give Him the Whale!" 20 Ways to Use Fascinations, Areas of Expertise, and Strengths to Support Students with Autism, authors Paula Kluth and Patrick Schwarz offer an abundance of suggestions on how to use student interests to boost learning in key areas:

• Literacy. Allow a child to integrate their most-loved characters and possessions into your classroom reading time. In one case, a student was able to participate in reading circle when his turn came once he was permitted to speak through a favorite puppet.
• History. Find creative ways to adapt standards-based content to the fun things your students are excited about. For example, one US history teacher explained the U.S. role in the UN and its relationship to other nations by drawing an analogy with the Super Friends cartoon characters.
• Math. If you're working on a math lesson, consider asking a student to write a problem, diagram, or pattern that relates to his particular area of interest. Sometimes, the best way to combine academic material with a student's interests may not be immediately evident—but your students may see connections that you don't!

Give students choices

As Rapp & Arndt note in Teaching Everyone, engagement increases any time students are empowered to make their own choices about how they learn material. Here are a few suggestions:

• Group students. Breaking the class up in groups increases the likelihood that everyone will contribute to class discussion and problem solving. Poll your students about their working preference, or experiment with breaking them up in different ways. Divide the students in half, place them in small teams of three or four, or divvy them up in pairs.
• Allow students to set the pace. Let your students choose their own starting point on an assignment, and they'll stay comfortable and challenged. For example, try giving your students tiered math problems, with increasing levels of difficulty. From least to most sophisticated, the tiers could be: determine the surface area of a cube; determine the surface area of a rectangular prism; determine the amount of wrapping paper needed to cover a rectangular box; determine how many cans of paint you'll need to buy to paint a house with given dimensions. Once students choose a starting point, the teacher can guide them through increasing levels of mastery.
• Try homework menus. Instead of having all of your students complete the same homework assignment, why not offer a menu of options that tie in with your lesson plan? A little variety and choice go a long way toward relieving the sense of drudgery some students experience when completing their homework. Take a look at this math menu for an example of how to give students a choice of homework problems to complete.

Present information in multiple formats

Every student in your classroom learns differently. So it's important to recognize that differentiated instruction isn't just for helping students with special needs—it's the best way to engage all learners. Incorporate different activities, such as these suggested in Paula Kluth's From Tutor Scripts to Talking Sticks: 100 Ways to Differentiate Instruction in K–12 Inclusive Classrooms, to accommodate diverse learning styles:

• Class response cards. Start by distributing pre-made response cards or individual dry erase/chalkboards to each student. Then, instead of having only a few students raise their hands after a question is asked, instruct all students to write their answers on their boards or select a response from the pre-made cards. This is an easy and effective way to get your entire class involved and keep them connected to what you're teaching, instead of waiting for a single student to provide the answer.
• Rubber stamps. Picture, word, and letter stamps can be ideal for practicing sentence construction, counting skills, and spelling. They're an effective tool for all students, whether they have fine motor problems, struggle with writing skills, or could simply benefit from a fun learning supplement. (There are a wide variety of stamps available to meet most of your classroom needs, but you can also easily find instructions online to make your own.)
• Human calculator. Add an element of fun to addition and subtraction by making an oversized calculator out of an old shower curtain or large tablecloth and letting students jump to the keys. It's an inexpensive but highly motivating change of pace that combines basic math principles with physical activity.

Teach students self-monitoring skills

An advanced way of involving children so that they stay engaged in their learning is to help them develop greater self-regulation skills. Children sometimes struggle with self-awareness, so they may not even realize when they're straying off task or acting in disruptive ways. When children are taught to regulate their behavior and work independently, they develop habits to help them succeed and you are freed to operate more flexibly in the classroom.

Try these strategies, outlined in the new book Building Comprehension in Adolescents: Powerful Strategies for Improving Reading and Writing in Content Areas by Linda H. Mason and colleagues, to assist students with self-regulation:

• Self-monitoring of attention (SMA). Instruct students to evaluate whether or not they've been paying attention at random intervals throughout the school day. This is usually accomplished with an auditory cue like a chime or tone, which prompts each child to reflect on questions like Am I at my desk? and Am I listening to the teacher? Students record their answers on a simple SMA tally sheet.
• Self-monitoring of performance. Students log on a chart or graph whether they've been able to complete a pre-defined problem or task. Viewing an explicit graphical representation of their performance can have a highly motivating effect on students.

Read how one science teacher was able to motivate her students to assess their own performance and significantly improve completion of group projects by following these specific steps of self-monitoring outlined in Building Comprehension in Adolescents.

When you make a concerted effort to engage students in their learning, the result you'll discover is students who are better able to maintain focus, better able to sustain behavior, and better able to grasp and retain the material you are working so hard to deliver—a positive outcome for everybody!