Engagement Strategy of the Week



Engagement Strategy of the Week 

One important way to reduce behaviors in your classroom is to engage your students. There are so many great engagement strategies out there. The more your students are engaged the less behavior problems you will have and your students will definitely take away more from your lessons. Every week I will share a simple yet effective engagement strategy you can use with your students. 


Engagement Strategy of the Week #1: Think - Pair - Share

I have used this strategy many times. I’m sure most of you reading this have too. This is a great strategy to get all of your students involved and participating in your lesson. First, ask your class a question and give your students a few minutes to think about their response. They can write it down or just think about it. Students then turn to a partner and pair up to discuss their responses. Give your students a chance to have a good discussion with their partners. Circulate the room to hear the discussions. As you’re walking around your classroom and based on the responses you hear you will already know who you are going to call on when you return to a whole group discussion. This is also a great opportunity to speak with a shy student or a student who normally doesn’t participate by hearing his or her response and rehearsing it with them before they share with the class. When you bring the class together for a whole group discussion and ask who wants to share, you already know who you’re going to call on. We call this bogus hand raising. (Thank you to consultant Naomi Isaac-Simpson for this!) By selecting the responses you decided on during the “pair” part of this strategy, you are controlling the direction of your lesson. This is a simple, yet effective way to get all of your students involved. 


Engagement Strategy of the Week #2: Turn and Talk

One of my favorite (and most overused) strategies, Turn and Talk! Again, another simple, yet effective way to maximize your students participating. This is best with open ended questions or questions that involve some thought. Very similar to last week’s Think - Pair - Share, pose a question for students and they turn and talk to a partner. As I said in the previous post, give your students time to discuss the task and circulate the room to hear the discussions. The more consistent you do this, the better the conversations will become. I utilized this strategy several times throughout my lessons. Student collaboration is important and strategies like these first two will maximize students participating in your classroom.


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