Component 3C

Early in 2021 I had the great opportunity to work with an eight-year-old girl with Down syndrome in her home. Because engaged learners "[develop] understanding through what they do," my classmate and I went to extra measures to make sure our student was engaged in the learning activities we completed with her. Because we were doing at-home interventions, the backyard was our "classroom." We chose to take advantage of this setting and create engaging activities using the environment around us. To practice sight words, we set up an Easter egg hunt, similar to the one in this picture. We learned the difference between right and left playing games in the pool. We learned to take turns while we were blowing bubbles. This experienced really showed me the importance of engaging students, since any non-engaging activity was only successful for a few moments before our student would try and escape the activity. We learned this early on and adjusted our lesson plans accordingly.

Remote learning presents new challenges when it comes to student engagement. One way that I kept my students engaged in my online reading class was through activities that were fun yet challenging. I played "I Spy" with my K-2 students. The difficulty of the game varied depending on the grade level. Kindergarten students had to find and image that represented a word beginning with a specific letter. Second-grade students had to find multiple images, and sometimes had to do it for blends or digraphs instead of just one letter. This activity was ideal for engagement and learning because students wanted to do it and the goal of the game could be altered to align with the learning objective for that day.