Have you ever been so excited about teaching a lesson, but it just flopped because your students were not engaged? Don’t worry, we all have been there. Over the years I have learned lots of strategies to make lessons engaging so that your students will actually learn what you are trying to teach them. So today, I’m going to go over a few ways.
Make sure you are on my email list where I send out strategies, resources and ideas each week. I also have a lot of engagement strategies on my Instagram!
ENGAGING LESSONS
Adding engagement to your lessons is key for actual learning to take place. If your kids aren’t engaged, they probably aren’t making connections to your lessons.
1st : Make sure you have things planned out from what materials you are using to where the kids will be sitting. Start with a learning target or objective and make sure you go over that first with your kids to build the why and what. They can sense if your frazzled, and it makes things flow much more smoothly when it’s planned out.
2nd : Use inflection! Show enthusiasm for what you are teaching. Make sure your voice is using a variety of emotions and volume throughout to capture their attention. I even used a real microphone to make sure all my kids could hear me.
3rd : Use items to add to your lessons! I use puppets, paper cutouts of monsters, my mystery box, beanie babies, pretend microphones, magnetic math manipulatives, mini-posters, and other visuals that the kids could look at and engage with.
4th : Let the kids be part of the lesson. My typical lesson starts with me explicitly going over our learning target and examples (The “I do”), but then comes my favorite part, the “We Do”, in math the kids might be helping come up with story problems for our math monsters like “5 monsters are at the ____ & 3 monsters are at the ____. How many monsters are there?” The kids LOVE being part of the lesson!
5th : Let the kids talk and move sometimes. I give every opportunity I can to let kids partner share, or do different learning protocols (That’s the EL term I learned that are different ways to participate in lessons. You can find examples on my Instagram).
6th : Praise engagement! Kids will repeat what you are explicitly praising! I have a star on my board that I write kids names under for star behavior. I might say, “Olivia, I love that you are participating in today’s lesson by always showing me your math answers using your fingers in front of your chest.” See how explicit? I am praising exactly what I want the others to do.
PLAY
- Yes, I am a strong proponent for play in the classroom. I love both unstructured and structured play. For lessons and independent work, I go with structured play. Sometimes we are fishing for sight words (make sure to get my freebie) and other times I will put out a card game or printable board game that I have made to practice whatever concept I have taught
