Two quick ways to increase student engagement
We are looking for ways to make things work together. A great deal of focus in school is on integrating behavior and academic support. One area that naturally bridges both is student engagement or school connection. Researchers have found relationships between academic improvement and student connections (see for really good article on this http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1007218). According to van Uden and colleagues, engaging students is about the relevancy of the content, the way it is delivered, and other overall climate of the class. I came across their study that included the voice of students related to this topic. These were from students at both K-12 and university levels. I thought their insights were very useful.
Image from Flicker Creative Commons
Two ways create engagement:
- Simply asking a student about how their day was going was a very effective approach to engagement. One student said the teacher only had to say a few works, but they felt like the teacher cared and understood them..which was motivating..
- Asking if you can help and give feedback. Several students said that just asking if they needed help or providing feedback about performance was “support.”
Two ways to create disengagement:
- Asking detailed questions about the students’ life was not engaging. Many of the students said they did not want to be friends with their teachers. They just wanted the teacher to understand their perspective and if they were going through something that might require some accommodation. I once heard a teacher talk about sharing her early drug use with her students as a way to connect (not how she recovered from this), not a good plan…too much information (TMI) is not good for anyone..
- Just handing out the work was disengaging. The students said a real turn off occurred when teachers just handed out the work without really covering it (e.g., describing, modeling). See Ferris Buellers Day Off for more details on how to create disengagement (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhiCFdWeQfA)
Charge and question
To these students, engagement was not about therapy (although there is a place for therapy). It was about taking short amounts of time to ask how they are doing and asking if they needed help. There is certainly more to engagement, but this is a very efficient approach. This article (link) if full of great quotes from students and discussion points. I would recommend it for a professional learning community or other book club. What examples you have seen of engaging students in really simple ways?
More updates:
REL Pacific at McREL’s webinar on combining data. This looks like a great webinar to support teachers in creating a data dashboard (combing information) using existing data. I have often used and talked about the free Excel function called V-Look Up for combining data sets with common student ID’s (type in V-Look Up in Youtube for several examples). This webinar will provide examples that are ready to use for classroom teachers. Here is the link to webinar, it’s this week so sign up soon.
http://ies.ed.gov/whatsnew/calendar/?id=1234&tid=14&cid=6&va=1