Teaching Strategies: Actions and Activities to Engage Students in Classroom Activities

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Teaching StrategiesActions and Activities to
Engage Students in Classroom Activities

• Ivy C. Alford

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Pop Corn Share

• What Teaching Strategies does your school use to
  target student engagement?
• What professional development opportunities have
  you been engaged in to enhance your Teacher
  Toolkit

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Key Practice

• Getting every student involved in rigorous and
  challenging learning

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Giving the Curriculum Meaning and Purpose

• Authentic problems, concrete experiences
• A problem-solving approach
• Inquiry-based science
• A senior project
• Integrated projects across the curriculum

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Student Engagement Is

• Choosing a topic students want to learn more
  about
• A challenging assignment that stretches students
  to develop ideas and think and
• Having students go on stage to present
  something they have learned very well.

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Student Engagement Is Not

• drill sheets
• copying notes from the board
• answering questions at the end of a chapter or
• activity for activitys sake.

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Actions for Engaging Students in Research-based
Instructional Strategies

• Reading and writing for learning strategies
• Project-based learning
• Cooperative learning
• Student-designed research
• Integrated, interdisciplinary studies
• Applied methods
• Integration of technology
• Students perform for others
• Student assessment and revision of work
• Authentic classroom assessment

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Final Word Newsletter Review

• Teachers Teaching Teachers Creating a Community
  of Learners to Improve Instruction and Student
  Achievement

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Actions to Target Engagement

• First, disaggregate assessment data by content,
  specific skills and class/teacher.
• Review this information with each department,
  using the data to make changes in curriculum and
  instruction, and determining needed staff
  development.

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Actions to Target Engagement

• Second, recognize that quality instruction begins
  with planning.
• Good, direct instruction works well when teachers
  are prepared, knowledgeable about their
  discipline and excited about teaching it.
• To improve instructional planning, the principal
  must ask teachers for lesson plans and spend time
  observing 25 or more classrooms a week.
• Lesson plans should reflect evidence of teacher
  assignments and exams that are linked to state
  and national standards.

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Actions to Target Engagement

• Third, effective classrooms have teachers who
  know and use classroom management strategies that
  keep students on task.
• Provide staff development for teachers in
  effective classroom management strategies for
  high school students.
• Have teachers use these strategies schoolwide to
  create a climate conducive to learning.

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Actions to Target Engagement

• Fourth, have each teacher work with
  administrators to create a professional growth
  plan that includes goals for advancing content
  and pedagogical knowledge.
• Such plans become part of the basis for the
  end-of-the-year evaluation in which teachers
  indicate goals accomplished.
• Urge teachers to learn from other teachers, use
  distance learning, take courses at a local
  college or university, etc.

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Actions to Target Engagement

• Fifth, for all courses, analyze and evaluate
  instructional practices.
• Although superior examples of instruction and
  student work exist, there is a need for
  consistency in the level of excellence expected
  by teachers for students.
• School leaders need to be very clear about the
  quality of work expected at each grade and in
  each content area.
• Teachers need help in re-focusing instructional
  practices to include the following

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Actions to Target Engagement

• Student choice and participationStudents benefit
  from meaningful involvement in decisions that
  affect them what and how they learn what
  criteria denote acceptable work and choices in
  selecting research topics, methods of assessment
  and rewards.

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Actions to Target Engagement

• Student showcasesStudent work that is tightly
  linked to standards examples of student
  writing, science and social studies projects, and
  student solutions to challenging mathematics
  problems should be displayed throughout the
  school and in accessible community venues.

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Actions to Target Engagement

• Fifth, the faculty and leadership identify and
  prioritize instructional practices as a focus for
  improvement, and provide staff development for
  selected topic(s).
• Structured follow up to the workshops will
  enhance the teachers ability to effectively
  implement the new strategies.

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Actions to Target Engagement

• Reading in the content areas. Use a literacy
  coach to provide reading across the curriculum
  workshops to assist teachers in implementing
  reading strategies. The coach will provide
  on-going training and modeling for classroom
  teachers on reading and writing strategies for
  all content areas.

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Actions to Target Engagement

• Writing across the curriculum. Research shows
  that the more students are required to write and
  reflect on what they are learning, the more
  achievement improves. All teachers must require
  writing from students of at least one page per
  week. Students should be required to complete a
  research paper beginning with the ninth grade and
  becoming increasingly more complex by the 12th
  grade. Develop a generic scoring guide for all
  teachers to use in evaluating student work.

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Actions to Target Engagement

• Integration of technology. Involve the faculty in
  deciding that all teachers will use computers to
  engage students in learning by having students
• Do research using the Internet.
• Use e-mail to complete assignments.
• Use PowerPoint for oral presentations.
• Write all papers using computer word processing
  software.
• Use spreadsheets to complete an assignment in
  mathematics, science, social studies, physical
  education and career/technical classes, etc.

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Actions to Target Engagement

• Cooperative learning. Cooperative learning
  involves assigning a small group of students a
  challenging assignment and holding the team
  accountable for learning the material together.
  The teacher assigns both an individual and a
  group grade. Teachers are taught how to organize
  students into high-performing teams and how to
  get them to do challenging assignments. Contact
  Spencer Kagan, Kagan Cooperative Learning, for
  information.

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Actions to Target Engagement

• Project-based learning. Project-based learning is
  a way to use real-world problems and tasks for
  getting students to master academic standards.
  SREB has developed a two-day workshop to prepare
  teachers on how to design projects to accomplish
  course goals.

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Actions to Target Engagement

• Socratic seminar. The Socratic seminar provokes
  student thought, dialogue and ownership for
  learning by taking a subject, idea, statement or
  argument and raising thoughtful questions without
  proposing answers. Students speak 97 percent of
  the class time as they back up their opinions
  with textual evidence, challenge each others
  views and find, articulate and develop their own
  voice.

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Actions to Target Engagement

• Integration of disciplines. Integrated learning
  gives teachers opportunities to move beyond
  lecturing and giving students facts to memorize.
  Teachers working together to plan instruction
  come to agreement on expectations and standards
  for student success and are more likely to
  encourage students to apply high-level academic
  skills.

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Actions to Target Engagement

• Set the stage for teachers to work together to
  plan and carry out integrated assignments
• Provide common planning times for academic and
  career/technical teachers.
• Provide a one-week summer workshop in which
  teachers come together for curriculum
  development.
• Have academic and career/technical teachers visit
  each others classes to get ideas for developing
  integration strategies.

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Actions to Target Engagement

• Real-world contexts. Student achievement
  increases when students see relevance in what
  they are learning by connecting it either to
  their own lives or to a real-world situation.
  Teachers need opportunities to seek out and
  incorporate real-world scenarios into their
  warm-up activities and lessons. Teacher
  externships and interactions with employers can
  facilitate shifting the focus of instruction from
  learning because its on the test to learning
  because the knowledge has future value to
  students.

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Must Do Actions

• Collect an organize a Best Classroom Practices
  Guide.
• Organize teacher study teams or groups to
  investigate strategies that work with your
  students.
• Establish a system for walk-through observations.

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For Additional Information

• Contact
• Ivy Alford
• Ivy.alford_at_sreb.org
• [phone]