3c. Engaging Students in Learning

• Activities and assignments
• Grouping of students
• Instructional materials and resources
• Structure and pacing

Virtually all students are intellectually engaged in challenging content through well-designed learning tasks and activities that require complex thinking by students. The teacher provides suitable scaffolding and challenges students to explain their thinking. There is evidence of some student initiation of inquiry and student contributions to the exploration of important content; students may serve as resources for one another. The lesson has a clearly defined structure, and the pacing of the lesson provides students the time needed not only to intellectually engage with and reflect upon their learning but also to consolidate their understanding.

In every lesson that I create, I attempt to appeal to the students themselves. Often we will use popular culture to apply our thinking to something that the students know and love already. For an assignment on the Hero's Journey, students are asked to apply their knowledge to their favorite hero movie and identify each element that we saw in The Odyssey. When studying allusion, students view commercials and written advertisements that demonstrate this type of literary device. Then they apply their knowledge by creating their own ad. Most importantly, not only are these lessons appealing and engaging, but they are also intellectually stimulating and require the highest levels of critical thinking for the students.