Engagement Strategies

Reciprocal Teaching

Reciprocal teaching strategies center around the concept of “I do, we do, you do.” First, model how the strategy works in front of the whole class. Then, students practice together in groups. Finally, they practice the technique on their own. Reciprocal teaching strategies have been shown to increase student reading comprehension and improve overall literacy. Reciprocal teaching not only helps with learning, but it also gets kids excited to participate in a lesson.

Reciprocal teaching involves four key parts:

• Predicting what is going to happen in the text

• Questioning the text and asking questions like who, what, when, where, why and how

• Clarifying the text and identifying confusing concepts or unknown words

• Summarizing the text and condensing the reading to its most important parts

Stay engaged — Students are actively looking for different clues and ideas throughout readings, helping them to stay interested in a text.

Louisa Moats: Reciprocal Teaching Video

The National Behaviour Support Service gives some great visual guides.

Think-Pair-Share

Think-pair-share (TPS) is a collaborative learning strategy where students work together to solve a problem or answer a question about an assigned reading. This strategy requires students to (1) think individually about a topic or answer to a question; and (2) share ideas with classmates. Discussing with a partner maximizes participation, focuses attention and engages students in comprehending the reading material.

Take this a step further by doing a think-WRITE-pair-share, where each student first considers their own answer, writes it down, then shares it with someone else. Not only does this give them more thinking time, it also forces them to answer the question on their own, rather than “what that guy said.”

3 Step Interview

After a lesson, put students in groups of 3. Each student in the group takes a turn playing a role: Interviewer, Interviewee, and Record Keeper. The team takes 5-10 minutes asking/answering/recording each other about what they just learned. This is a great note taking, discussion and check for understanding activity too!

Journaling

There are several different ways to do journaling in your classroom. Treating journal activities before, during or after lessons as interest based inquiries, is one way to engage your learners. Choices might include, but are not limited to: Sketchnotes, Quick Writes, Sentence Stems, Mindmaps, and Notice/Wonder. As students complete weekly journaling activities, ask them to circle the entry they want feedback from or let them know you will be choosing only one to respond to.

Student-Created Charts/Logs

Involving students in creating their own charts to graph progress when reading facilitates motivation to improve and to set goals. Reading logs can engage students to read if they're trying to reach a goal.

Morning Message/Greeting

Include content into your morning message and morning greeting by asking engaging questions about previous or current lessons. Example: As students enter the room, ask them to name one springtime adjective, or while in a circle for the morning message, ask students to share a rhyming word that follow the rhyming pattern you're teaching.

Play Games!

Games provide an opportunity for student's voices to be heard and "buy-in" to participate. A game like Would You Rather, and Name 5 Things can generate participation from students. Listening to peers while practicing reasoning, cause/effect, organizing/categorizing information skills is effective for writing development.

Primary Literature Circles

Literature Circles are small groups of students who meet to discuss a piece of literature which they have chosen. Each member of the circle is assigned a role which helps guide the discussion. Some examples of roles could be: Discussion Director • Word Finder • Correspondent • Connector • Literary Luminary • Summarizer • Illustrator • Checker • Question Writer • Group Reporter. Literature Circles allow students to become critical thinkers as they read, share thoughts, ask questions, and respond to reading selections. Some engaging extensions when students finish a book: Collages • Story hats • Story quilts • Character bookmarks • Mobiles • Role-playing • Written response • Oral group summary

Gallery Walk

This discussion technique allows students to be actively engaged as they walk throughout the classroom. They work together in small groups to share ideas and respond to meaningful questions, documents, images, problem-solving situations or texts. As students add to each other's ideas, the opportunities for revisions, feedback and modifications (PBL) can occur.

Polls/Interest Inventory

Polls can be quick and effective for participation if you're looking for pre-assessment or observational formative assessments before, during or after lessons. A quick visual gauge can offer more time for instructional planning. Polls can serve as anchor charts throughout lessons that build and progress with content. Interest inventory polls can represent student's ideas and transfer of learning materials; along with great topic generation for reluctant students.