3c: Engaging Students in Learning

Student engagement in learning is the centerpiece of the Framework for Teaching; all other components contribute to it. When students are engaged in learning, they are not merely “busy,” nor are they only “on task.” Rather, they are intellectually active in learning important and challenging content. The critical distinction between a classroom in which students are compliant and busy and one in which they are engaged is that in the latter, students are developing their understanding through what they do. That is, they are engaged in discussion, debate, answering “what if?” questions, discovering patterns, and the like. They may be selecting their work from a range of (teacher-arranged) choices, and making important contributions to the intellectual life of the class. Such activities don’t typically consume an entire lesson, but they are essential components of engagement. 

A lesson in which students are engaged usually has a discernible structure: a beginning, a middle, and an end, with scaffolding provided by the teacher or by the activities themselves. Student tasks are organized to provide cognitive challenge, and then students are encouraged to reflect on what they have done and what they have learned. That is, the lesson has closure, in which teachers encourage students to derive the important learning from the learning tasks, from the discussion, or from what they have read. Critical questions for an observer in determining the degree of student engagement are “What are the students being asked to do? Does the learning task involve thinking? Are students challenged to discern patterns or make predictions?” If the answer to these questions is that students are, for example, filling in blanks on a worksheet or performing a rote procedure, they are unlikely to be cognitively engaged. 

In observing a lesson, it is essential not only to watch the teacher but also to pay close attention to the students and what they are doing. The best evidence for student engagement is what students are saying and doing as a consequence of what the teacher does, or has done, or has planned. And while students may be physically active (e.g., using manipulative materials in mathematics or making a map in social studies), it is not essential that they be involved in a hands-on manner; it is, however, essential that they be challenged to be “minds-on.” 

Danielson, C. 2013

Plurals Activity: For my lesson about plurals I used engaging activities to help the students be excited about what they were learning about. I used paper plates with different nouns on them. Then I had them make a line and jump to the side with -es or -s respectively according to how the noun would be spelt when it was plural. I also did another activity where the students got a petal with a noun on it and then they had to pick whether it would go under -es or -s.  Danielson component 3C states that students are "intellectually active in learning important and challenging content" (Danielson, C., 2013). The students enjoyed these activities and were engaged with the content. This helped them be intelligently active in learning when to use -es and when to use -s to make a noun plural. These activities helped the students discern patterns as they noticed words that ended in –s, –sh, –ch, –x, or –z, they added –es. For the other nouns, they added –s to make the noun plural. Discerning patterns helps the students learn the material better.

Artifact 3c-2

Artifact 3c-1

Decimal Game: I engaged students effectively in this lesson by doing an activity related to decimals. This helped the students be engaged with the material hands on and got them discussing and working with each other. It helped them be intellectually active as the game had them practice adding decimals together using Hierarchical Materials. This helped the students think about math in a different way by having them think what two numbers added together will equal a specific number. They then tried to create as many variations of the two numbers added together to equal that number before the timer went off. Working together in teams helped provide more classroom unity and understanding.