Student Engagement Strategies

 

Each year, as part of our evaluation, teachers in my state are required to have a yearly goal, called a Professional Learning Focus (PLF).  Here's my goal this year:

Our evaluation rubric has 20 elements, things like classroom management, leadership, instructional effectiveness, and professional growth.  Each of the 20 elements has multiple indicators for the evaluator to assess and the PLF has to align with one of those.  

After the "pandemic teaching" of the past few years, my school is mostly back to pre-pandemic times and I was determined this year to bring back more active learning to my classroom.  

Last summer, at the OKCTM Conference, Sarah Carter (@mathequalslove) was the keynote speaker and her topic was about Embracing Joy.  During her presentation, Sarah shared this photo of her lesson plan book where she highlights activities and games in order to be more mindful of their use in her classroom.  While I haven't quite gotten to the highlighting part, I loved this idea!  What if I was able to infuse joy and fun in the majority of the days?  Could I get by with minimizing the lectures / notes / homework cycle of the past few years and get back to a more active classroom?

I've taught Geometry for years, so I had a cabinet of slightly disorganized activities, so I set out to clean it up and get things labeled.  I pulled out every set of cards and made a list by chapter so I knew what I had already made, plus took a pile of binders and file folders home to organize my larger activities into a file crate.  Crazy enough, this file crate only holds activities from the 1st semester - things like Around the Room activities, Card Sorting Mats, Stations activities, etc.  In the smaller crates, there are index card boxes with Question Stacks and Task Cards.  

In general, when I'm lesson planning, I have my list of already-made activities handy, plus a list of my go-to strategies in case I need to make something.  I aim for 2-3 days a week of having some sort of activity and hopefully at least one of those days, we are moving around the room, either at the whiteboards or doing some sort of Around the Room activity.

Here's my list of strategies:

• Around the Room (Scavenger Hunt)
• Question Stack (Similar to Scav Hunt but at their tables)
• Card Sort
• Matching
• Whiteboards (either at their tables or on the big boards)
• Stations
• Bingo
• Kahoot
• Blooket

I'm always looking for new strategies, so if you have an idea to share, please let me know!