How to Increase Student Engagement S. 2 Ep. 24

Listen to this episode to learn tried and true ways you can increase student engagement. 

Show Notes:

Episode summary: 

Do you ever wish that your students were more engaged, that they cared more about what they were learning or that they would take learning more seriously? If so, you might need to increase student engagement.

Let’s face it, it is more fun and less stressful to teach students who are engaged. When students are engaged, you have fewer behavior challenges. Your lessons run more smoothly, and you accomplish more in less time. Students complete tasks and turn in their assignments. They also remember more of what they learned. Does that sound like a dream?  It’s possible. In this episode we’re talking about tried and true ways you can increase student engagement.

In this episode: 

It is more fun and less stressful to teach students who are actively engaged. When your students are engaged, there are fewer behavior challenges. Discussions are fluid and energizing. Your lessons run smoothly and you accomplish more in less time. Students will complete tasks and turn in their assignments. They will also likely remember more of what they learned. The chances are that when students are engaged, they are also having more fun and enjoying learning!

What’s not to love about that?

We are always excited to talk about student engagement because few things are better in teaching than watching students when they are fully engaged in their learning.

Today we explore these 4 tips to increase student engagement in more detail:

First, take a lesson from the business world. Before you shut off the podcast, trust us on this one. You will understand why in just a few minutes. The second tip is build and activate a learning strategy toolbox so you can plan engaging lessons. We will also explore our third tip which is about switching up the learning environment. Finally, we will talk about the importance of adding joy to the classroom.

These 4 tips will help you to increase student engagement exponentially.

Engagement Tip 1: Take a lesson from the business world.

One of our favorite authors is Dan Pink, the author of Drive and A Whole New Mind , both which we have referenced on other podcast episodes, among other best sellers. In his New York Times bestselling book Drive- The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us, Pink looked at four decades of research on motivation and then summarized into one book for business leaders to help them keep their employees motivated, satisfied, and performing at their highest levels.

What Pink learned has direct application to the classroom. Basically, in order for people to be motivated to work and learn and be engaged in what they’re doing, they must feel a sense of autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Once those three things are incorporated, motivation and engagement skyrocket and management issues decrease. Let’s take just a minute to talk about autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Autonomy

Autonomy means that students have some say in what they are doing or learning. They don’t need total control, but they need to make some of their own choices. This might be setting their own learning goals, choosing which learning materials to use, or choosing between several types of projects. You might give them a choice in partners or groups, a choice in tasks, or a choice in which book they read.

Students will still need some sort of accountability, but giving them some say in what they do will greatly increase the chances that they will do it.

Teachers are sometimes nervous about giving students control, thinking that they will lose control, but the opposite happens. Students don’t need ALL the choices, they just need some choices. Teachers can control the choices.

Daniel Pink offers this advice: Control leads to compliance, autonomy leads to engagement. 

Mastery

The second thing that creates engagement is the opportunity for mastery.

Engagement leads to mastery. Think about it, did you ever really master anything without being engaged in it?  We’ve all had the experience of memorizing something for a test, only to forget it the minute we walk out the door. That is not mastery.

Mastery is the ability to get better and better at something that matters. Our educational standards require students to master skills. What can teachers do to increase mastery?

• Make sure tasks are not too easy or too challenging.
• Give students time to get into flow, time where they can focus and work on a task uninterrupted.
• Make work look like play. There is often joy in the pursuit of a goal. Have you ever been so involved in something that you lost all track of time? Learning and work and enjoyment are not mutually exclusive!
• Encourage a growth mindset where students believe that with effort, they can get better and better at something.

For example, think of kids and gaming, where they work hard trying to reach the next level. Or think of adults with golf, or completing their step rings on their watch. It becomes a competition with yourself to keep getting better and better and reach the next level. It is why professional musicians who are at the top of their profession keep practicing for hours a day. It is also why athletes keep running, or keep shooting hundreds of baskets every day. They are going for mastery.

Purpose

The third aspect of motivation from Daniel Pink’s discussion is purpose.

When students understand the purpose for their learning, they are more motivated to learn. Students are less likely to engage when they view work as a waste of time. Can students answer the question, “why is this important?” If so, they understand the purpose of the lesson.

Tell students the objectives of the lesson. Share the outcomes. Show them the learning standard.  However, that is not enough, standards can seem dry and unimportant without context. Make sure students know what they are going to learn. Tell them and post it on the board. For example, you could use this prompt:

“Today you are going to learn to…” Then make sure students understand how they will use this information or why it is important.

This piece creates relevance. When students understand how they might use something, or how it will help them in the future, or how it will improve their skills such as critical thinking or the ability to analyze, they will be more likely to buy in to the activity.

You could say, “Here are some of the ways you will use this information or skill in the future…”

Or, better yet, ask students how they think the information or skill will be useful in their future.

You can increase student engagement by paying attention to autonomy, mastery and purpose. It is not just a solution for the business world. It is also a powerful formula to increase student engagement.

Engagement Tip 2: Build an active learning strategy toolkit so you can plan engaging lessons

Are you using active learning strategies in your classroom? Teachers who are looking to build engagement are always adding new active learning strategies to their toolbox and then using these strategies when planning to make sure their lessons are engaging. A great active learning can usually be used in any curriculum area and across different grade levels.

We love active learning strategies and have written several blog posts with our favorite active learning strategies, all of which we will link in the show notes so you can have easy access to them. Most of our favorite active learning strategies can be completed in 10-15 minutes.

Here are four of our favorite active learning strategies:

Walk the Walls 

This strategy works as a strategy to get students ready to learn new content or as a way to review what they have read or discussed. It is a good warm-up and generally takes 10-15 minutes.

Determine a set of 6-8 questions related to the day’s lesson. For example:

Which mammals have you seen in person? (3^rd grade science)

Why do you think enslaved people joined the confederate army? (9^th grade US History)

How do you think you would have reacted to finding an abused dog? (5^th grade reading)

What are some different ways to greet someone in Spanish?  (1^st year Spanish)

Gather 6-8 large pieces of paper. Place one question on each sheet. Place the sheets on the walls around the room. Instruct students to take a marker or pen and walk around the room quietly writing their answers on each sheet. When time is up, discuss their answers.

Speed Dating (or for elementary students “Line Learning”)

Prepare a list of questions for discussion. The questions can help to introduce new content or review previously learned content.

Have students stand in two lines, facing each other.

Set a time limit, such as one minute. Determine which line will talk first and which line will listen. Ask a question. Students have one minute to talk about the answer with the person facing them. Then reverse speakers. For the next question, have one row move one place to the right so that each person is facing a new partner. The person on the end goes to the other end of the line. Repeat.

In addition to these strategies, remember you can always add small engagement elements to your toolbox and lessons as attention grabbers, community builders, and learning disguised as fun. For example, introduce a lesson on states of matter by playing music from the movie Frozen. Then conduct experiments with ice, snow, and water.

Engagement tip 3: Switch up the environment.

Too much time in the same environment can make anyone feel restless. New and unique environments can increase engagement dramatically. There are many ways to switch up the environment without abandoning your curriculum or academic standards.

Consider what you can do to switch up the environment:

• Move to a different space for a lesson or a day- consider going outside. On beautiful weather days, if students are staring out the window longingly, let’s face it, you probably are as well! Consider how you could take all or part of the lesson outside. Or could individual student work portion of a lesson be done in the hallway? Could you go on a nature walk or use sidewalk chalk to practice spelling words or math problems?
• Change up your classroom. Rearrange the desks. Add a reading tent in the corner. Make your bulletin board and interactive board where kids can engage with the classroom content.
• Bring in more “things”. Let the students see, feel, hear, touch and maybe even taste what you are learning about. These can be used for manipulatives in learning and can help students see relevance.
• Add “Walk and Talks”. Have students pair up. Give them an assigned topic to discuss. Often you can use the discussion questions you would have used with the entire class. Have them walk and talk in your school hallway or outside about the question for a minute or two, then switch partners. Bring them back to a large group to share their insights. Repeat as time allows. This activity is also great for language classes when students must talk in the language they are learning!

We do want to remind you to be clear and specific in setting your behavior expectations and directions when you switch up your environment. For example, you might say something like, “I know we would all like to work outside today. Before we can do that, I need you to agree to follow my rules and behavior expectations. First, while we are outside, you promise to focus on doing the work of the lesson. When I call for your attention, you promise to stop and listen to directions. If you do not follow these rules, we will immediately return to the classroom. Please raise your hand if you can agree to these rules.”

Engagement tip 4: Add joy to your classroom.

Joy helps students love learning. If students love learning, they will be engaged. Joy encourages creativity, which opens the door for creative problem solving. Joy encourages curiosity and self-motivated learning.

Here are just a few of our favorite ways to increase joy in the classroom:  

• Try to incorporate laughter into your lessons. Laughing reduces stress. Look for opportunities to inject humor into the day’s activities. Offer to tell a joke if students line up quickly and quietly. Get a joke book if you need one. Telling a joke takes less than 30 seconds and adds fun. We all remember a teacher who told corny jokes. Notice that we remember that teacher.
• Add Music. There are songs that fit into all areas of the curriculum. Check out You Tube for songs about multiplication or grammar from School House Rock. Better yet, let students work in groups to write and perform their own songs based on their topic of study. Music brings about engagement and as a bonus, it also helps with retention!
• Read funny literature. When you are reading aloud to your students or finding literature to incorporate into your lessons, look for and choose funny stories. When students have positive experiences with literature, they learn that reading is fun. If reading is fun, they will be more likely to do more of it.

Joyful classrooms are less stressful, less anxious places. Neurological studies have shown that students’ comfort levels can influence long-term information storage and transmission. Teachers and students face many challenges in today’s educational climate. Living without joy does not have to be one of them.

Recap: 

We often hear that students today aren’t engaged. The days of “sit and get” learning are in the past. By understanding how autonomy, mastery, and purpose lead to motivation, and by following up with lessons that include fun and actively engaging activities you can increase students’ engagement and maximize learning in your classroom.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

4 Great Active Learning Strategies for All Content Areas

Mix and Match Active Learning Strategy

8 Simple Ways to Create a Joyful Classroom

How to Engage Students the Week Before Break

Spring Fever? Take Students Outside!  

 Related Podcast Episodes

Episode 2: What Every Teacher Needs to Know About Motivation

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