Keeping Your Students Engaged:
Tips and Tricks
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According to Herrmann (2013) engagement is defined as emotional involvement or commitment. As a teacher, keeping your students engaged may seem like a daunting task. Using the same strategies day in and day out may get boring and frustrating for you, and your class will most certainly feel the same way. Constantly using professional development to update your strategies is a great way to ensure that your class is always engaged and never gets bored. You can ask new and experienced teachers for ideas they may have on how to engage the class as well as research online. Upon doing my own research I found TONS of ways to keep your class engaged. Pinterest has some excellent ideas for engaging and keeping your class awake and ready to learn!
Some of my favourites were:
- Using a foam ball, toss the ball to students when asking questions. Having students aware that there may be a ball coming their way will keep them alert and focused on the task at hand! It is also active and will entice those who have a difficult time sitting still for those seemingly never ending 40 minute periods.
- Use a special, fun and enticing word and shout it during class. Explain to the students that this word means they must do something active (i.e. clap their hands twice, or do a drum roll on their desk). A word such as "Bazinga!" or "BAM!" shouted slightly louder than your normal teaching voice will wake the kids up, and the action they are required to do will energize them to make sure they are staying focused.
- Change up the classroom a bit. Allow the students to get up and move to a different desk in a different part of the room than they are in right now. Again, the idea of getting up out of their chair is always helpful and will allow them to interact with their fellow classmates they may not be used to! Or another example could be allowing students to sit on their desks with their feet on their chair! For students, (especially in the Primary/Junior grades) the idea of doing something somewhat "forbidden" will be very exciting. With this activity its important to let the students know that this is a special classroom only activity!
The video below, describes 7 other ways in which you can keep your class engaged.
These are just amongst the thousands of ideas that are available out there! However, it is important to realize that some ideas may work better in certain grades and be a total bore in others. When deciding on classroom engagement ideas, educators must be aware of their audience and ensure that the type of engagement he/she chooses is age appropriate! For example, shouting "Bazinga!" in a grade 8 classroom may not be accepted as well as it may be in a grade 2 or 3 classroom!
Furthermore, it would be a great idea to have a few of these engagement tricks up your sleeve all the time. Seeing as the elementary and secondary school year is 10 months long, the trick you used in September may get very boring and not exciting for students come December/January. Changing it up and keeping students on their feet is exciting for not only them, but for you too! I firmly believe that school should be fun, not having your students sitting there with you teaching AT them. I think we should teach WITH them! Allowing your students to be part of the lesson or even teaching the lessen themselves. This type of engagement will increase their intrinsic motivation exponentially.
Herrmann, E. (2013, Dec 11). Compliance or engagement: When are students truly engaged in class? Multibriefs: Exclusive. Retrieved from http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/compliance-or-engagement-when-are-student-truly-engaged-in-the-classroom
R. Lynette. (2015, Oct 5). Minds in bloom: 20 ways to keep your students attention. (Web log comment). Retrieved from http://www.minds-in-bloom.com/2012/04/20-ways-to-keep-your-students-attention.html?m=1
References
Herrmann, E. (2013, Dec 11). Compliance or engagement: When are students truly engaged in class? Multibriefs: Exclusive. Retrieved from http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/compliance-or-engagement-when-are-student-truly-engaged-in-the-classroom
R. Lynette. (2015, Oct 5). Minds in bloom: 20 ways to keep your students attention. (Web log comment). Retrieved from http://www.minds-in-bloom.com/2012/04/20-ways-to-keep-your-students-attention.html?m=1
Keeping students engaged is SO important! I love your idea of sharing ideas about how to encourage student engagement. I love your idea of changing up the classroom. Being a bit of an adventurous-active kid myself, moving around seems very enticing. In one of my lectures, we have 'stretches' every 20 minutes to keep us moving. I love it! It helps me to stay focused. You also made a really good point about the importance of teaching with the students. So often, teachers come off as the bearers of knowledge and knowledge seems inaccessible. It seems like only the teacher has knowledge, and it is not possible to disagree with the teacher. I find this with professor interactions at times when professors out 'qualify' or out 'experience' you. Regardless, of what grade students are in we should be partnering with our students and encouraging them to develop their individual thought and inquiry skills. What are some practical ways that we can encourage individual thought? How can we respond when students disagree with us? These are challenges that educators need to work through in order to be effective.
ReplyDeleteHi Carly,
ReplyDeleteI really like how you've incorporated an awesome assortment of links and resources to your blog post! I too believe that classroom engagement is important as it truly fosters motivation for learning. I even think that movement in terms of classroom engagement will help students who tend to learn more kinaesthetically which further promotes teaching to the multiple intelligences (Gardner, 1983).
I also really like your idea of using a fun word to get kids' attention, I further question how we can utilize this exciting engagement method with incorporating it within an inquiry lesson. I think it would be neat to do during certain periods of the day where kids could shout out "Bazinga" if they had an "I wonder moment". I think this may be a lot of fun especially since students are told all the time to keep their voices down this may be a fun 10 minute classroom activity!
I think by adding in some of the techniques you mentioned above we will better be able to 'spark' interest in our students and we will be able to teach them that school is more then just reading from the textbook.
I look forward to reading more about your exciting ideas!
Carly, I really enjoyed that you not only talked about engagement and it’s importance but gave some great tips and tricks on how to keep students engaged. As you mentioned professional development to update your engagement strategies, even during the school year, is really important and using the resources we already have is a perfect way to do so. It’s almost like a self-reflection on if your engagement techniques are working or have become boring and being able to update them as needed. Also reflecting on whether or not the techniques are age appropriate or not. I work as a preschool counselor in the summer and we use a lot of music to keep the children on task and engaged. There’s a song for almost every activity we do like cleaning up, washing our hands, eating snack and even going to the bathroom but I know that songs will probably not work for older children, even children in Kindergarten perhaps. But it is super easy to get on the internet or ask more experienced teachers for some new techniques for all age groups. Thanks for the great tips and I will definitely be using some of these in my future classroom.
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