I wanted to share with you two of my go to active engagement strategies that I think make the biggest impact on my instruction but are also very simple to execute and implement.
This post has me thinking all the way back to my student teaching college days. If you had a similar experience as me, you had some semesters where you taught only 2-3 lessons to the classroom you were in. I remember making those 2-3 lessons so engaging and fun. I pulled out all the stops. I even brought in buckets of sand for one lesson! I would spend hours planning the perfect lesson that would be engaging and exciting for the students.
Fast forward to my first teaching job. The reality is that you really just can’t spend hours planning the perfect, engaging lesson for each subject each day. My exciting lessons that took over an hour in my college days now had to be crammed into 15-30 minute lessons.
So the dilemma is how do you still keep the students engaged when every lesson is not as fun and exciting as they (and you) would like?
I wanted to share two of the active engagement strategies that I use on a daily/hour basis in my classroom. These can be implemented immediately and require no materials. They truly are simple ways to engage your students. Also, they will engage your students in the material without having them bouncing off the walls because they get to make kilogram sand bags (oy!)
What are your favorite (and simple) engagement strategies that you use?
How fun! I like the Teach Okay idea as well.
I hear ya about the student teaching days of pulling out all the stops…the memory made me smile! And I LOVE the "Teach! Okay!" idea!!! Thanks so much!
Thanks for this! I'm totally going to try the "Read where I left off" strategy. It's been irking me lately that when I call on my 8th graders to read, they have almost always "lost their place". Uh…… I think you mean you were revisiting last night's favourite TV episode in your head, or wondering what you're going to wear to the dance, right?
Tammy @ Teaching FSL
I love WBT I use it in my classroom…and the students love Teach Okay. I have never tried read the word I leave off, but it's a great idea. Just today I had 3 different classes fail to read the directions and ask the question "Why are there only 9 vocabulary words, but 10 questions?" UGHHHH it says one word will be used twice in the DIRECTIONS. I will definitely be using this idea…thanks!
Jen
http://endeavorsineducation.blogspot.com/