Kids Speak out on Student Engagement - by Heather Wolpert-Gawron
Student engagement is what every good teacher is looking for in their classroom. I think every teacher asks the questions "What can I do to get more engagement in my classroom?" I think many teachers have a variety of different ideas of what will get their students more engaged, but how many teachers actually asked their students what they think about what keeps them motivated to do assignments. In this article, the author actually took the time and asked her students what they thought. She came up with a list of 10 categories that her students came up with.
Student Engagement (according to students)
1. Working with Peers
2. Working with technology
3. Connecting the real world to the work we do/project-based learning
4. Clearly love what you (teacher) do
5. Get me out of my seat
6. Bring in visuals
7. Student choice
8. Understand your kids (students)
9. Mix it up
10. Be human
In my classroom, I really try to include as many different activities I can do per lesson. I will always keep my daily routines to start the lesson, but I will change up the activity as much as I can. I will always get my students into groups. Group work and science class goes hand in hand. I like to incorporate technology in my classroom. I have a class set of iPads and will try to get my students on them as much as I can. Currently we are doing an organism research project for my Natural Selection unit and the students are on the iPads doing their research on an organism of their choice. Which leads me to the next strategy I use is giving the students more choice in their assignments. I like to have the students to choose what they are going to research and present their information. If the students are in charge of their own learning, they will be a lot more engaged in the classroom. If we as teachers can get our students more engaged in our lessons, then they will get more out of each lesson.
Student Engagement (according to students)
1. Working with Peers
2. Working with technology
3. Connecting the real world to the work we do/project-based learning
4. Clearly love what you (teacher) do
5. Get me out of my seat
6. Bring in visuals
7. Student choice
8. Understand your kids (students)
9. Mix it up
10. Be human
In my classroom, I really try to include as many different activities I can do per lesson. I will always keep my daily routines to start the lesson, but I will change up the activity as much as I can. I will always get my students into groups. Group work and science class goes hand in hand. I like to incorporate technology in my classroom. I have a class set of iPads and will try to get my students on them as much as I can. Currently we are doing an organism research project for my Natural Selection unit and the students are on the iPads doing their research on an organism of their choice. Which leads me to the next strategy I use is giving the students more choice in their assignments. I like to have the students to choose what they are going to research and present their information. If the students are in charge of their own learning, they will be a lot more engaged in the classroom. If we as teachers can get our students more engaged in our lessons, then they will get more out of each lesson.