With today's youth, it has become increasingly more difficult to get, and keep, students' attention! We are competing with television, video games, technology, just to name a few! So, you ask, How do you engage students?
In order to engage students you need to understand the various levels of engagement.
Here are some tips that will encourage student engagement:
1. Warm up: Start class with a mind warm-up. Find mistakes on the board, or do a problem of the day.
2. Movement: Have students repeat a snapping or clapping rhythm. Institute a "seventh inning stretch" of sorts. Have a 30 second random dance. Be creative!
3. Collaboration: Allow students to do group work. Set expectations and norms early so that everyone is on task. Give each student a task to be responsible for so that everyone is accountable.
4. Quickwrite: This could be journaling, student reflection. This could be used as a warm-up. Students can write to defend a stance. Using question stems, have student come up with possible test questions.
5. Fairness Cup: The old fashioned "popsicle stick, pull a name out of the cup" trick. Label popsicle sticks with each students' name. Pull a name of someone to answer a question. Place the popsicle stick back in the cup so that the student doesn't get comfortable.
6. Competition: Appeal to the competitive side of your students by making learning a competition of sorts. Whether it is with a group or individually, students respond to competition. Enlist the help of your trashcan and a few wads of paper to make a review game even more exciting. (Grudge Ball Directions)
7. Avoid Dead Time: Try to minimize downtime by allowing students to study vocabulary, summarize a topic, or something else while you pass out papers, move to another activity, etc.
8. Keep 'em Guessing: Change teaching and learning styles. We all know which teaching style is more natural to us and we tend to rely on that particular style more. Mix it up a bit. Move to different parts of the room, teach from a different area, know your students learning styles.
9. Technology: Integrate technology into your lessons. This is an automatic attention increaser! Students know technology and its limitless possibilities. Meet them where they are and let them use their phones, occasionally, with permission, to access Kahoot, or other online reviewing games. Use QR codes for scavenger hunts. Get creative and even ask you students for ideas!
Here is the link to our Google Presentation
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1U3GzxCLDZi0pN4d9i7vVTONI6LTZstZ4Dng2qxcZIu0/edit?usp=sharing
7. Avoid Dead Time: Try to minimize downtime by allowing students to study vocabulary, summarize a topic, or something else while you pass out papers, move to another activity, etc.
8. Keep 'em Guessing: Change teaching and learning styles. We all know which teaching style is more natural to us and we tend to rely on that particular style more. Mix it up a bit. Move to different parts of the room, teach from a different area, know your students learning styles.
9. Technology: Integrate technology into your lessons. This is an automatic attention increaser! Students know technology and its limitless possibilities. Meet them where they are and let them use their phones, occasionally, with permission, to access Kahoot, or other online reviewing games. Use QR codes for scavenger hunts. Get creative and even ask you students for ideas!
Here is the link to our Google Presentation
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1U3GzxCLDZi0pN4d9i7vVTONI6LTZstZ4Dng2qxcZIu0/edit?usp=sharing
Here is what your staff said that they would mostly likely implement in their lessons to increase student engagement.
