Student Engagement
Increasing Student Engagement as the Academic Year Continues
Student engagement is a vital component in any classroom. As the academic year moves on, students may begin to lose focus. Here are some fresh ideas to keep your students engaged and motivated.
Implement Cooperative Learning Strategies
Cooperative learning strategies enable your students to share their ideas, practice vocabulary, and check their work with a partner. While you may be familiar with the cooperative learning strategy “Think/Pair/Share,” consider expanding your repertoire of strategies with “Jigsaw,” “Gallery Walk,” “Hot Potato,” and more!
Jigsaw by Reading Rockets: Review the steps for implementing a jigsaw and watch a video of a jigsaw in a second grade classroom.
Gallery Walk: This video explains the protocol for Gallery Walk in a clear way for your students.
Hot Potato: Learn more about the hot potato strategy.
Study Team and Teaching Strategies by College Preparatory Mathematics (CPM) 2015: This PDF contains 32 strategies for engaging your students. Print the PDF and cut out each card to always have a strategy at hand.
Brain Breaks
Giving students frequent brain breaks can keep them engaged and focused. Here are two resources you can use to build in breaks:
- Class Dojo: Encouraging and supportive behavior management device. Teachers can encourage and support students for any skill or value — whether it's working hard, helping others, staying on task, just to name a few.
- Go Noodle: GoNoodle is a fun website with a variety of brain breaks and indoor PE fun right in one place!
Additional Resources
Differentiation: In this newsletter, we offer suggestions and resources to differentiate your instruction, with a special focus on differentiating in a coteaching placement.
Emergent Bilinguals: Two focus areas in this newsletter are building connections with families and providing opportunities for emergent bilinguals to build academic English.
