Blog 18

Prompt: How do you plan to implement active engagement strategies in your classroom? How will this impact your instruction?

I believe that active engagement is a choice that students make. Certainly, teachers can create an environment or structure that keeps students actively engaged, but it is ultimately a choice that they make. There are a couple of ways that I think teachers can engage students, and a few of these ways I intend to try for myself (since I just learned about them):

1. Changing the method of questioning to include all students (e.g. instead of: "Who can tell me?" use: "I want everyone to think about...")
2. Creating roles for each person when students are grouped together (e.g. Student A will describe as many ways as they can on how to graph a linear function, Student B will hold up a finger for every correct response)
3. Allowing for sufficient think time (i.e. 3 seconds) and a signal for responses (especially for choral responses)

What worries me most is the disparity in student understanding for these activities. There is often a tendency for one student to dominate the activity (especially during group work or choral responses) and a culture of allowing that one student to mask the participation of other students. Creating those expectations and helping students overcome their own tendencies to be non-participants is tricky, since many students struggle to do even basic arithmetic and have developed a learned helplessness that has persisted for many years. Still, there is merit in allowing peer learning to occur, and engagement is definitely higher when such activities happen. If there is more active student engagement, indubitably, instruction will improve as well.