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Engagement /student centered

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New Study: Engage Kids With 7x the Effect. In education literature, "engagement" is a linchpin word, routinely cited as essential. Yet many experts offhandedly provide vague definitions of the term, or skip defining it altogether. So what exactly is engagement? It depends on whom you ask. In a survey of education majors, Shari Steadman and I found that preservice teachers often confuse compliance with engagement -- essentially flattening the meaning of the term. Wrote one education major, "Engagement is an agreement between student[s] and teachers to be there and present during class. " Such a quotidian explanation implies that merely breathing and looking at instructors constitutes student engagement. In contrast, Ruth Schoenbach and Cynthia Greenleaf elevate the term with a more robust definition: Adam Fletcher’s definition is succinct: "Students are engaged when they are attracted to their work, persist despite challenges and obstacles, and take visible delight in accomplishing their work.

" Benefits of Engagement. Creating a Culture of Inquiry. Inquiry is powerful. It can create student ownership in the classroom. It can validate the passions and interests of our students. However, creating a culture of inquiry takes constant work. Teachers need to establish it from the first day in the classroom, and work to keep it vital throughout the year. Here are some important things to know about creating that culture, and some ideas that you might consider. Culture vs. We need to be honest at the forefront. Welcome If students don’t feel welcome in your classroom, they won't ask questions or engage in the learning.

Scaffold and Value Questioning I know that with some younger students, when you ask them if they have a question, you get story instead. Essential Questions One great tool for building a culture of inquiry is essential questions that drive learning. Effective Assignments and Assessments Related to one of the tenets of creating essential questions, we have to make sure that our assignments also mirror and honor inquiry. 5 Strategies for Reaching Disengaged Students. Dear Teachers, Here’s What Kids Who Learn Differently Want You to Know. Kids who learn differently and think differently have something to say to their teachers in a video created by Brain Highways, an educational program based on neuroplasticity — the concept that the brain has the ability to reorganize itself and change. “I know it doesn’t always seem like it,” says a young boy in the video below, “but I really do want to listen and learn.” A young girl continues, “It’s just my brain is kind of different.”

Brain Highways offers programs for people with a whole range of disabilities and learning differences, including ADHD, autism, obsessive compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, depression and dyslexia. Programs are for families, teachers and even adults interested in learning how the brain can change. In this adorable video, Brain Highway kids tell their teachers what they want them to know and how they can use that knowledge to help them learn. Listen and learn in the video below: We face disabilities and diseases together. Student motivation: An adult problem with grown-up solutions. By Vinod Lobo, Learning Upgrade How can we motivate the lowest performing students in a school to complete a rigorous standards-based curriculum and move up to grade level proficiency? Given the challenges of poverty, diversity, special needs, and English language learners, many have assumed that this is a student problem; that the lowest performing students cannot complete a challenging curriculum.

A recent visit to an urban school facing all of these challenges brought to light that with the right approach all students, especially at-risk students, can be motivated to achieve academic success and gain confidence in themselves within one school year. This is an adult problem, not a student one, but thankfully there are grown-up solutions that can be implemented by educators and leadership at any school. The school I visited recently was an urban middle school in San Diego that supports an 88% economically disadvantaged, 98% minority, and 42% English learner student population. Classroom Self-Persuasion | Edutopia. "The fox leapt high to grasp the grapes, but the delicious-looking fruit remained just out of reach of his snapping jaws. After a few attempts the fox gave up and said to himself, 'These grapes are sour, and if I had some I would not eat them.' The fox changes his attitude to fit his behavior.

" - Aesop’s Fables There is a general misconception that our beliefs are the cause of our actions. Often it is the other way around. Just like the fox, people will tell themselves a story to justify their actions. This helps to protect their ego during failure or indicate why they committed a certain action. Punishment, Rewards, and Commitment The issue with classroom management policies in most institutions is that it operates on a carrot-and-stick model. The goal of self-persuasion is to create cognitive dissonance in the mind of the one being persuaded.

Punishment In 1965, Jonathan Freedman conducted a study in which he presented preschoolers with an attractive, desired, "Forbidden Toy. " Rewards 1. The 8 Minutes That Matter Most. I am an English teacher, so my ears perk up when writers talk about their process. I've found the advice handy for lesson planning, too.

That's because both writing and planning deal with craft. In writing, you want your audience to be absorbed. You want them to care about your characters. John Irving, the author of The Cider House Rules, begins with his last sentence: I write the last line, and then I write the line before that. That is the crux of lesson planning right there -- endings and beginnings.

The eight minutes that matter most are the beginning and endings. Here are eight ways to make those eight minutes magical. Beginnings 1. YouTube reaches more 18- to 34-year-olds than any cable channel. 2. If you want to create a safe space for students to take risks, you won't get there with a pry bar. 3. Toss a football around the class before you teach the physics of a Peyton Manning spiral. 4. Kelly Gallagher says that students should write four times as much as a teacher can grade. 1. Myth-Busting Differentiated Instruction: 3 Myths and 3 Truths. In third grade, my daughter struggled with problems like 36 x 12, and she knew her multiplication facts. Fortunately, her math tutor recognized what was needed, and introduced the Lattice Method. For some educators, the Lattice Method is controversial. Just read some of the FB comments. After multiple failed attempts, this strategy made a difference for my daughter. As educators, we know that learning is not one size fits all, and what's best for some students may not be for others.

Myth #1: DI is a collection of strategies. There are many books, workshops, and organizations offering "differentiated strategies" that, when used, will instantly have teachers differentiating for their students. Truth #1: DI is a lens for implementing any strategy in all pedagogies. Consider that effective teachers have a wealth of tools that they use to meet student needs. The RAFTs strategy helps students develop writing for a target audience and improving their authors' craft. Look Through the Lens. 3 Ways to Plan for Diverse Learners: What Teachers Do. In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and crew are so intimidated by the Wizard's enigmatic personality that they struggle to talk with him on equal footing. Fear and frustration overwhelm them as they blindly accept a suicide mission to slay the Witch of the West.

In return, they each receive a treasured prize: a heart, a brain, courage, and a way home. Ironically, they already have these gifts -- which they only discover after unveiling the man behind the curtain posing as the grumpy wizard. Differentiated instruction (DI) casts a spell on educators as to how it meets all students' needs. The skillset required to differentiate seems mystical to some and incomprehensible to others in this environment of state standards and high-stakes tests.

The DI elements were first introduced to me in How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixed-Ability Classrooms by Carol Tomlinson, and my understanding later deepened thanks to my friend and mentor, Dr. Image Credit: John McCarthy Differentiating Content. 5 Alternatives to Think-Pair-Share for Classroom Discussion. Editors Note: Originally this blog featured five alternates to think-pair-share in classroom discussion.

But the post was so popular we've added five more ideas below! Enjoy! All learners need time to process new ideas and information. They especially need time to verbally make sense of and articulate their learning with a community of learners who are also engaged in the same experience and journey. In other words, kids need to talk!! Problem is, sometimes it’s hard to stay on subject without a little guidance. These five techniques (and a little purposeful planning) go beyond the traditional Turn and Talk/Think-Pair-Share to give students an opportunity to deepen their understanding while practicing their verbal skills. 1.

Arrange students into pairs (teacher or student choice). 2. Students mix around the room silently as music plays in the background. 3. Teacher poses a question, sets a time limit and gives students a moment to think before writing. 4. Students work in pairs. 5. 6. 5 Ways of Bringing Student Passions to Student Learning. Exciting classes interest students. These classes spark their curiosity. Sometimes, the learning here feels like play. A school may not be able to use these exciting ideas everywhere, but they should be used somewhere. If a school can't be interested in things that students care about, students will lose interest in caring about school. Curiosity, Passion, and Making a Difference Here are five current practices to promote student curiosity, student interests, and play. 1. Look at Ronald J. Some teachers are afraid that, by giving students too much freedom, they won't meet standards.

Teachers will need to engage with students. All projects are not alike. 2. Many classroom best practices are circulating around Genius Hour and 20 Percent Time. Don't have an hour? I've found that great Genius Hour work revolves around problem solving or creating. 3. Some libraries are putting a makerspace in their learning commons. Where is the makerspace in this school? 4. 5. Turning Excitement Into Action. How to Engage Students in the First few Minutes. I have a wonderful friend who is currently a student teacher.

I absolutely love chatting to her about her experiences and questions, as she challenges me to reflect on my own practice: to re-evaluate my strategies; to work out what it is I do and why; to tweak what isn’t working. Her questions are always intelligent, thought-provoking and full of exciting curiosity – she is going to make an exceptional teacher. A few weeks ago she asked me how to get students to ‘come to the party’; how to entice them to engage and participate in the learning experience so that it wasn’t a one-sided affair. Yikes! What a question. This got me thinking and I came to an interesting realisation: In the first five minutes, I can tell how a lesson is going to be received. I set the scene for my lesson in those first five minutes. I realise this is no small feat, so here are 5 tips for breaking with routine and shaking things up at the start of the lesson: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

I hear you: “What? 6 Ways to Honor the Learning Process in Your Classroom. Roughly put, learning is really just a growth in awareness. The transition from not knowing to knowing is part of it, but that's really too simple because it misses all the degrees of knowing and not knowing. One can't ever really, truly understand something any more than a shrub can stay trimmed. There's always growth or decay, changing contexts or conditions. Understanding is the same way. It's fluid. Yes, this sounds silly and esoteric, but think about it. In fact, so little of the learning process is unchanging. Design, engineering, religion, media, literacy, human rights, geography, technology, science -- all of these have changed both in form and connotation in the last decade, with changes in one (i.e., technology) changing how we think of another (i.e., design). And thus changing how students use this skill or understanding. And thus changing how we, as teachers, "teach it.

" The Implications of Awareness The implications of awareness reach even farther than that, however. 1. 2. 3. Incentivizing Your Class: The Engagement-Based Classroom Management Model. When I think of our most struggling and distracted students, I see how social pain and rejection often hijack their ability to be academically focused and successful. Optimal school performance requires positive emotional connections with those students that we want to prosper while feeling capable and competent. When students and teachers feel this connection, we are all responding from the higher cortical regions of the brain, and our dopamine reward centers are activated by these feelings, these positive emotions. Our interactions with students are intimately connected with our own feelings and agendas. When our efforts in the classroom meet with frustration and opposition, we can inadvertently mimic our students' negative emotions. Introducing and Customizing the Model In this post, I'm proposing a classroom management model that I developed with the help of Judy Willis.

Just as we discuss and model other procedures, we will initially need to teach students about this model. Level 1. Five Strategies to Ensure Student Learning. Mesquite Elementary School, in Tucson, Arizona, attributes much of its turnaround in student performance -- and their ongoing success -- to their Reteach and Enrich program. Within the first year of implementation, even before teachers had worked out all the kinks, Mesquite went from a "performing" school (as labeled by the state of Arizona) in 2002 to an "excelling" school, the highest ranking, in 2003. The school has maintained an "excelling" status ever since. The goal of the program is to give students the opportunity to master essential skills and knowledge before they move on to the next level. Here's the approach: Each week has defined curricular objectives. Reteach and Enrich (R&E) is highly replicable; every school in the Vail School District has implemented the program, and it continues to lead to improved student performance. 1.

R&E depends on a shared set of clearly defined curricular objectives that are scheduled out for the entire year. 2. 3. 4. 5. Minds in Bloom: Differentiation Made Easy. Hello! My name is Heather from My Life At The Pencil Sharpener and I am so excited to have the wonderful opportunity Rachel has given me to connect with you today! We have all heard the word differentiation. It is a part of our daily lives, evaluation systems and for some of us...our nightmares! The word, to some educators, invokes a horrifying feeling that tells us differentiation is another way to make our lives miserable and add more work to our never-ending load. Tip #1 Start Small Big things often have small beginnings.

Early Finisher Choice Board: Gone are the days when students who finish early constantly have their hand up asking "What can I do now? " Personally, I keep it simple and have 2 small pocket charts on by board (the little ones you can find in Target's dollar section around August). Tip #2 Assess Smart As you dive deeper into differentiation and begin really catering student learning to their needs assessment becomes key. Tip #3 There Is No Right/Wrong Answer Tip #4. The 8 Minutes That Matter Most. Student-Centered Classroom: Getting Started. Mini Water Cycle Fun. Active Engagement Strategies. Your Classroom Environment Checklist for Student Engagement - Heinemann. Education Week. Kids Speak Out on Student Engagement. How Student Centered Is Your Classroom?

How Engaged Are Students and Teachers in American Schools?