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More Ways to Engage Your Students

8/14/2019

Now let's focus on the three more ways in which the teachers at Auburn Day School engage students in learning.
Offer opportunities for personal response
Make sure there are clear and modeled expectations
Provide a sense of audience

Offer Opportunities for Personal Response

I think the key word here is personal. We know that teachers aren't the only ones with good ideas. Auburn Day School provides curricular experiences throughout the day that invite learners to bring their own background knowledge, interests, and ideas to the lesson.
We allow students to choose how they will show what they know (e.g., writing, drawing, speaking, etc.) and often let them select the context in which a concept is explored (e.g., selection of a habitat, type of materials, simple machine, or variables for an independent experiment) so they can personalize their responses to meet their background, interests, or expertise.
Have you ever heard the expression, “the one who’s doing the talking is doing the learning?” Auburn Day School is a loud and busy place. Discussing, debating, questioning… ahh- these are the sounds of learning. The teachers at Auburn Day School are facilitators of this learning. In this video, a 3-year-old student tells about the parts of the caterpillar he created out of Picasso tiles and then he practices counting the legs. Amazing work!

Make Sure There Are Clear and Modeled Expectations

Does the learner have a clear understanding of what success looks like? This engagement strategy refers to making the intention for the lesson clear and making sure students know what it means to be successful with a specific activity.
After practicing two and three color patterns with puff balls and tiles, the students work together with the teacher to create a pattern using four colors! It's a challenge but they are successful. It's exciting to hear students call out the answers as they begin to see the pattern. After this activity the students go on to build more patterns individually and as a group.

Create a Sense of Audience

We provide opportunities for students to share with one another as well as the teacher. If more students have a chance to share, they have more opportunities to be heard and the teacher is better able to assess understanding from more students. Sometimes it's difficult for young children to share their opinions and ideas with one another. But we're happy to give them lots of practice through partnering to discuss solutions and working on team projects. We want students to share their suggestions, additions, critiques, and long stories about what happened one time when they saw a spider... All of these things are important: they help the child make connections, feel understood, and, most of all, feel important. Sense of audience can be established by cooperative learning or group work where individual members have specific roles. Other examples include larger projects that contribute to the local, school, or classroom community. Activities at Auburn Day School are designed not to keep students busy or kill time, but to help them wrestle with big questions, gain new knowledge and skills and/or make connections to their world. In these photos, the children are completing a team activity where each child chooses an object and then uses that object to create his/her individual part of one cohesive group story. To be successful, the children have to listen to one another in order to continue the story. Needless to say, the children were able to work together to use a cow, a snake and a train to create a funny, silly tale.

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Ways to Increase Engagement in the Classroom

8/1/2019

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In 8 ways to increase the engagement in your classroom, John Almarode writes that engagement requires monitoring students’ emotional engagement (how a student feels about a lesson and in the classroom), cognitive engagement (what a student is thinking about), and behavioral engagement (how a student interacts with an activity).
So how does Auburn Day School increase engagement for students? Emphasizing specific characteristics in curriculum and instruction can engage learners in the lesson and sustain engagement to give students the best opportunity for gaining new knowledge, understanding, and skills. In 17,000 Classroom Visits Can’t Be Wrong (2015) Antonetti and Garver studied eight features of classroom tasks, activities and strategies associated with sustained engagement:

Increased levels of social interaction
Emotional safety
Student choice
Opportunities for personal response
Clear and modeled expectations
A sense of audience
Novelty
Authentic learning

This post will focus on how teachers at Auburn Day School use the first three characteristics to engage students in learning.

Increase the Levels of Social Interaction:

Does the learner have opportunities to socially interact with his or her peers? Providing students with opportunities to talk about their learning and interact with their peers supports their meaning making and development of conceptual understanding. Have you ever heard the saying "The person doing the talking is doing the learning"? At Auburn Day School, our teachers act as facilitators of learning rather than the stars of the show. We encourage students to partner to share ideas and listen to one another so they can work together to solve problems.

Ensure Emotional Safety:

Does the learner feel safe in asking questions or making mistakes? Students have to feel comfortable, respected and encouraged in order to engage. At Auburn Day School, our goal is create an environment where persistence is the goal, not mastery.

Offer More Choice

Does the learner have choices in how s/he accesses the learning? As learners engage in content and process skills at Auburn Day School, we offer choices around who they work with, what materials and manipulatives are available, and which strategies they can use. In addition, students have multiple ways to show what they know.
In the photos below, the children are making their own egg shakers. After experimenting with creating different sounds from the same instrument, the children choose which materials they want to use to create egg shakers that produce different sounds.

We can't wait to begin our journey together at Alabama's only STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) Preschool! Parents may sign up for drop-in classes beginning October 2019.

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Systemic Learning

More Ways to Engage Your Students

Offer Opportunities for Personal Response

Make Sure There Are Clear and Modeled Expectations

Create a Sense of Audience

Ways to Increase Engagement in the Classroom

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