Do you feel like you are teaching to blank stares? Are you spending time and energy on planning, but your students aren’t interested in what you are presenting? Do you ask yourself, “How do I improve student engagement in my classroom?”
You are not alone. Teachers all over the world, feel the same and ask the same questions. Sometimes, you need new ideas and strategies to help you think it through. We have a new book. It is titled, Meet Them Where They Are gives you 10 tips to jumpstart student engagement. It is written by educator, Cassandra Washington and edited by Fabia Fuenzalida. Here are some example topics.
· Create a Vision for Your Classroom
· Plan It Like You Mean It
· Stop Teaching to the Test
· Let Them Talk
Think and Reflection
Meet Them Where They Are: 10 Tips to Improve Student Engagement helps teachers to think and reflect about their instructional practice. This book gives prompts and practice situations to apply the tips in their classrooms. It is an easy read and packs in great information and advice for teachers of all levels.
Find out how to improve student engagement. Photo by Eye-On-Ebony
For ten chapters, you will discover the possibilities of meeting our students where they are and reflect on your practice. This book helps you consider how to implement new or different strategies in classrooms and make some shifts in the way students think and learn. Like our students, educators are continuous learners, too. We search for new ways to engage and push our students’ level of thinking.
Easy to Read
Please note this book is in everyday language. You will see some educational jargon, but the pages do not have hard-to-pronounce words or much education jargon. Who wants that stress? Although the book contains quite a bit of educational information and quotes from professional articles, you can easily read the book. Take it all in like we are having a professional yet friendly conversation. Now, let us see how to teach and meet your students where they are and include additional options into lessons and activities.
Purchase books for your favorite educators or colleagues. Don’t forget to buy one for yourself, too. Teachers read it with your grade level or subject area teammates. Principals and instructional coaches, Meet Them Where They Are: Ten Tips to Improve Student Engagement is great for starting a book club of PLC. The book is available on Amazon.com. The cost is $15.
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Effective Teaching
“What is effective teaching?” This question generates a variety of answers from teachers and administrators. Most educators have their perception or definition. Despite one’s opinion, teaching is a process and has several components and principles.
To become a certified teacher, one must attend a teaching program at a university or college. While participating in a teacher education program, future educators must take methods courses in the core subject areas and their area of certification. Future teachers learn theory, best practices, instructional strategies, lesson planning, and more. Then, they complete a semester of student teaching in a controlled setting with a cooperating teacher for support. Afterward, the real-world awaits in real classrooms with real students. In other words, welcome to the trenches.
Teaching is not an Easy Process
Experienced and new teachers search for effective and engaging strategies to ensure that their students successfully learn new skills. Teaching is not an easy process, and it takes much thinking and preparation to create great lessons for students. In this chapter, we will explore how effective teaching begins with planning. As educators, we subconsciously know some of these things, but it is good to refresh our memories.
Qualities of Effective Teaching
According to Qualities of Effective Teachers, 3rd Edition by James H. Stronge, 2018, “Effectiveness is an elusive concept when we consider the complex task of teaching. Some researchers define teacher effectiveness in terms of student achievement.
Others focus on high-performance ratings from supervisors. Still, others rely on comments from students, administrators, and other interested stakeholders. In fact, in addition to being uncertain how to define effectiveness, we vacillate on just how to refer to successful teachers.”
If you ask a variety of teachers and administrators to define teacher effectiveness, you will hear many different interpretations. Our perceptions and opinions are different based on our education, experiences, school population, and expectations. However, despite our perceptions and views, we can agree that effective teaching begins with lesson planning.
Strategic and Effective Planning
Effective teaching, along with a great and engaging lesson begins with strategic and effective planning. During the planning stage, effective teachers recognize how to reach their students best and being intentional. Jeff C. Marshall in Highly Effective Teachers states, “When we focus more on the why and thus the intentionality of our teaching, we begin to ask richer questions that guide our instruction, such as: How can I better engage the learners who appear to mentally check out? How can I make sure that my lessons are aligned so that the learning matches my goals/objectives? How can I create a learning environment that challenges all while providing scaffolding for those who need it?
Successful Teaching
Successful teaching cannot occur without effective planning. As educators, we learned to write lesson plans using formulas and templates. The procedure we are very familiar with is Students Will Be Able To (SWBAT) – Skill (Verb) – Concept – Context. The skill is “What am I going to do? The concept equals the topic, big idea, or strategy. Lastly, the context is the specific condition, what are you using, and how will I get there. Here are two examples.
Lesson Plan Formula and Templates
1. SWBAT state the characters, plot, setting, and theme for a story.
2. SWBAT compare measurements made using different units.
It takes professional development, practice, and experience to learn to create lessons with intentionality. Always keep the learning outcomes in mind in all of the stages of designing a lesson or unit. Indeed, you want your assignments and activities to be engaging, effective, and relevant for the students. Let’s explore backward design, strategies, and questions to ask to help you create lessons that meet your expectation and students’ needs.
Planning Process
Whether you teach children or adults, keep these ideas in your mind. As part of your lesson planning process, ask yourself these four questions.
1. Who are your learners? Understand the learning characteristics, styles, and needs of your students.
2. Why is this lesson or unit necessary? Students, want to know, “Why do I need to know this? What’s in it for me?”
3. What do learners need to be able to do?
4. How can the students best learn the subject or skill?
Think about using the backward design method to create your lesson and keep the learning outcomes in mind. Also, it helps to keep your lesson relevant to the needs of your students. Now let’s begin with steps to get you started with your design.
Strategic and effective planning is the starting point for a great lesson.
Photo by Nils Stah on Unsplash.com
Begin with the End in Mind
1. Imagine what students will say and be able to do at the end of the lesson.
2. Think and reflect on how to imagine the end.
3. Build your beginning with your end in mind.
4. Plan with students’ needs in mind. Will the lesson satisfy their needs?
From Imagination to Reality
Now you are ready to head to the next step by moving from imagining what the lesson looks like to the beginning to make it a reality. Begin to ask yourself more in-depth questions for students, materials, resources, and instructional strategies. Here are a few questions to ask yourself. Reflect and answer the questions in a way to help you stay focused on the learning outcomes. Remember always to keep the learning outcomes in mind.
1. What prior knowledge or skills do students need to be successful?
2. What vocabulary, terms, information, or skills do you need to introduce to participants?
3. What materials and resources are best in building the desired skills and knowledge?
4. What instructional strategies are most likely to result in your desired outcome for your students?
5. How can you progress monitor or check for understanding along the way? What type of assessment tools will you use?
Discount Supplies
Understanding by Design
A great resource to review is In Understanding by Design by Wiggins and McTighe. They state that “backward design is focused primarily on student learning and understanding. When teachers are designing lessons, units, or courses, they often focus on the activities and the instruction rather than the outputs of the teaching.
Therefore, it can be stated that teachers often focus more on teaching rather than learning. This perspective can lead to the misconception that learning is the activity when, in fact, learning is derived from a careful consideration of the meaning of the activity.”
For more information on backward design, check out Three Stages of Backward Design.
1. Identify the Desired Result
2. Determine Acceptable Evidence
3. Plan Learning Experiences and Instruction
Let’s quickly take a look at three stages of a road trip to the learning outcomes you desire.
Stage 1 of Backward Design
Stage 1: Desired Results
Here is where you establish the goals and enduring understandings of the lesson. You will think about: Acquisition, Understandings, Essential Questions, and Transfer.
Acquisition
What key knowledge or skill will students acquire during the lesson or unit?
Understanding
What big ideas or specific understanding will students have upon completion of the lesson or unit?
Essential Questions
What questions will provoke inquiry, understanding, and transfer of the knowledge? The essential questions usually frame the lesson. If your students attain the goals of the lesson, they should be able to answer the essential questions.
Transfer
How will students transfer the knowledge from the lesson or unit? Then, how will they apply the information or experience outside the context of the class?
Evidence and Assessment
Stage 2: Evidence and Assessment
You must decide what you will evaluate students on or what is the evaluative criteria. Will you use performance tasks, projects, papers, quizzes, tests, homework, or other evidence?
Students must demonstrate that they attained the goals of the lesson. They must show their level of understanding, and you must determine how students will do so.
Learning Path
Stage 3: Learning Path
Summarize key learning events and instructional strategies. Will you present key learning events via individual learning activities, lectures, discussions, problem-solving sessions, or other techniques.
You must decide the individual learning activities and instructional strategies to use during the lesson or unit.
Successful lessons begin with strategic planning and backward design is thorough practice. It takes time to master; however, time and with practice, it will become normal to you. The steps for using backward design allow you, the teacher, to be more reflective when creating lessons. The process makes you clearly think about the students’ needs, learning styles, resources, materials, and assessments. More importantly, the backward design allows you to plan and teach with intentionality. Remember effective teaching begins with effective planning.
Resources
Qualities of Effective Teachers, 3rd Edition by James H. Stronge, 2018
Stronge, J., 2018. Qualities of an Effective Teacher. 3rd ed. United States: ASCD.
Jeff C. Marshall in Highly Effective Teachers: 7 Classroom Tested Practices That Foster Student Success
Marshall, J., 2016. The Highly Effective Teacher: 7 Classroom-Tested Practices That Foster Student Success. 1st ed. United States: ASCD.
In Understanding by Design by Wiggins and McTighe
Wiggins, G. P., McTighe, J., Kiernan, L. J., Frost, F., & Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. (1998). Understanding by design. Alexandria, Va: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
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a small commission may be paid.
This post contains affiliate post. If you click on a link,
a small commission may be paid.
Areas of Reflection
If you were a fly on the wall, what would you see and hear in your classroom? As an administrator, what would you see and hear in your school? Self-Reflection is key to effective teaching and learning. Successful educators know that no matter how good a lesson is in the moment or how good the school rating is, there’s always room for improvement. Great teachers and administrators look for ways to become better at their craft. We will explore five areas of reflection for educators.
According to Beverly Flaxington of Psychology Today, self-reflection is a lost art. In the article, The Lost Art of Self-Reflection, Flaxington states, “It’s quite unpopular today to engage in healthy self-reflection, or to put it in another way, “What’s my role in my problems and how could I address things differently for different results?” Looking outside is so much easier. You can point to the other person, outline their foibles and failings very easily, and then rest comfortably knowing the culprit has been identified!”
