Teaching Techniques: Five quick ways to engage

Teaching Techniques: Five quick ways to engage

Within the first week of observation, I picked up on a couple of tips to engage students in the classroom that were different from the traditional model. This is the first of a long series of teaching technique lists I will create based off what I see in the classroom and learn from other sources. I hope that they can be of use to you in your classrooms as well.

1. Attendance question

High school students in Clark County are expected to be awake and alert for learning as early as 7am. In order to engage their minds slightly before actual instruction and get them to speak, my mentor teacher posts an "attendance question" on the board. As students walk in, they read the question and think of an answer. The question is typically simple such as "what is your favorite food" or "what do you want to be when you grow up". The students then give their short answer when called on for roll instead of the typical uninterested "here". This gives the teacher an opportunity to learn about their students while taking role. This can also be a great transition into the lesson if the question pertains to an idea to be brought up later.

2. Polling the class: Individual whiteboards

Want to get immediate feedback while engaging students who need to move and be active? Sometimes asking kids to raise their hands gets chaotic when they vie for attention. It also excludes the quiet and shy students or the ones who need a second to respond. One way you can resolve this issue if you give each student a small whiteboard to use during class. When you ask a question, instead of everyone raising their hands, give them a minute to write their answers on the boards then hold them up. This will give you immediate feedback on all the students, keep them active (because who doesn't like to write on white boards?), and if everyone is looking forward, keep answers anonymous. Think a whiteboard for each student isn't cheap? Check out the prices on Amazon for an affordable investment.

3. The leader of the group

Don't want to get too intricate or spend too much time having kids choose who will do what in a group? Try this. Once students are broken up in groups of 3-5, get everyone's attention and tell them that on the count of three they have to silently point to someone in the group to be a leader. One. Two. Three. All groups should have someone singled out. That person typically is a natural leader or has a quality that the other group members don't mind following. However, to give them the chance to choose instead of just being thrown out there, explain that the chosen leaders have great responsibility, and that one of those responsibilities is the power of delegation. If they are confident that someone else in the group is more qualified to lead, then they can delegate the role of leader to that individual. This stresses the importance of the position and gives the groups some flexibility. This should keep group leader selection pretty simple.

4. Class Differentiation

This technique is often tricky because of its controversial nature. Looking at the name itself, you can tell that it could spell trouble if it ends up looking like you are splitting the class unfairly based off of visual biases. However, the true nature of this technique is to split the class up based on skill and ability, interest, etc. I'm not an expert (check out this blog post on "defining differentiated instruction" here) so I will mention only what I saw. My mentor teacher broke the class up into two parts - those who passed the proficiency exam and those who didn't. I was in charge of lecturing the students who passed. The assignments were slightly different but the concept was the same. Non-proficient students received in-depth lecturing on how to structure an essay based off of a sample writing proficiency prompt. Proficient students were given guided practice on writing an essay for a college entrance exam. The rationale behind this was to target the area of need for the students in one lesson.

5. Flipped Classroom

The typical classroom sees a teacher lecturing on new concepts and ideas, then group work or activities to enforce those ideas. However, studies have shown that students are better off the more face time they have with their instructor. In short, too much time is wasted on lecturing on new information in the class and homework that is typically the time when students work on applying that information is not getting done at home. In this digital information age, students are learning at younger ages how to access the limitless amount of info via technology. The Flipped Classroom proposes that educators take advantage of that mentality and begin posting lectures as homework and doing synthesis and application more in classrooms. This can be done in the form of videos and online lectures to be accessed from the internet outside of class.

I actually picked this up when I attended a workshop hosted by Downtown Las Vegas' Learning Village. I highly suggest looking at Jonathan Bergmann's website to learn more.

I hope that these first few techniques will be useful to you if you are a potential teacher like myself. If not, then maybe it was an interesting peek into what I have been seeing as a student teacher. Please leave a comment below if you like what you see or want me to try any of your techniques in the classroom!