Engagement Strategies

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A procedurally engaged student is one who follows traditional rules of behavior.  He or she is quiet, looking at the teacher, has the book turned to the correct page and may even help the teacher collect the homework.  A substantially engaged student is one who interacts with the content of the lesson in a deep and thoughtful manner.  A relational engaged student is one who is able to have positive interactions with the teacher and peers.  It is the marriage of procedural, substantial (Cognitive Engagement), and relational engagement that we are seeking to build in every classroom.  Research (see Guthrie, 2000; McLaughlin, et al., 2005; Voke, 2002) has indicated that this is how students are able to “get it” and “make the mark” on the performance tasks after instruction. But it is the classroom that adds in the relational engagement with the teacher and peers that brings true engagement to the highest levels.

Catch Yourself Before

Try to catch yourself before you say something like this:

“Who can tell me…?”
“Can anyone tell me…?”
“Does anyone know…?”

Approach your questions and prompts in a way that requires everyone to produce a response.

“Take two minutes to jot down your thoughts, and be ready to share these with partners.”
“Draw an image that captures the essence of what we’ve just talked about.”
“Turn to your elbow partner and tell each other all that you can remember about our topic.”

Creating Academic Student Engagement

During lessons teacher should use as many strategies to engage students as frequently as possible.

  • Pronounce with me – Supports English learners and all students with help pronouncing difficult vocabulary.
  • Track with me – Helps students begin to read new words by connecting the words they hear to the written words.
  • Read with me – Gives student opportunity to rea the words.  Directions are non-fiction opportunities for students to read.  Also helps students learn pacing and intonation for better fluency.
  • Gesture with me – Stores information in multile pathways in the brain by incorporating a kinesthetic movement.
  • Pair-share – Processes information by sharing with a partner, Provides students with an opportunity to vocalize their response in their own words.
  • Attention Signal – Helps but down lost instructional time by refocusing the class with a simple command.
  • Whiteboard – Check to determine if students are learning and thinking so that the correct effective feedback can be provided.
  • Complete Sentences – Require students to respond suing the newly introduced academic vocabulary in a complete statement.

Supporting Documents for Engagement

Within the tabs below you will find many different strategies in printable documents from a variety of sources

Response Techniques

Within the tabs below you will find many different strategies within the four response techniques that can be used to engage with students during lessons.

The Theory of Engagement focuses attention on student motivation and the strategies needed to increase the prospect that schools and teachers will be positioned to increase the presence of engaging tasks and activities in the routine life of the school.

  • The way school tasks and activities are designed introduces variances in the qualities that can be and are introduced into the work.
  • Variances in these qualities produce variances in the level of effort that students are willing to invest in the task or activity.
  • Student decisions regarding the personal consequences of doing that task assigned or participating in the activity provided results in five different types of involvement in these tasks and activities, as listed below.

Engagement

When the student is engaged, they see the activity as personally meaningful.  The student’s level of interest is sufficiently high that he/she persists in the face of difficulty.  The student finds the task sufficiently challenging that she/he believes she/he will accomplish something of worth by doing it.  The student’s emphasis is on optimum performance and on “getting it right”

Students who are engaged:

  • Learn at high levels and have a profound grasp of what they learn.
  • Retain what they learn
  • Can transfer what they learn to new contexts

Strategic Compliance

The official reason for the work is not usually the reason the student does the work when they are strategically compliant.  They substitute her/his own goals for the goals of the work.  The substituted goals are instrumental-grades, class rank, college acceptance, parental approval.  The focus is on what it takes to get the desired personal outcome rather than on the nature of the task itself.  If the task doesn’t promise to meet the extrinsic goal, the student will abandon it.

Student who are strategically compliant:

  • Learn at high levels but have a superficial grasp of what they learn
  • Do not retain what they learn at high levels
  • Usually cannot transfer what they learn from one context to another 

Ritual Compliance

The work has no meaning to the student who is ritually compliant.  There are no substituted goals for the student.  The student seeks to avoid either confrontation or approbation.  The emphasis is on minimums and exit requirements “What do I have to do to get over and get out?”

Students who are ritually compliant:

  • Learn only at low levels and have a superficial grasp of what they learn
  • Do not retain what they learn
  • Seldom can transfer what they learn from one context to another

Retreatism

These students are disengaged from current classroom activities and goals.  The student is thinking about other things or is emotionally withdrawn from the action.  The student rejects both the official goals and the official means of achieving the goals. The student feels unable to do what is being asked, or is uncertain about what is being asked.  The student sees little that is relevant to life in the academic work.

Students who are in retreat:

  • Does not participate, and therefore learn little of nothing from the task or activity assigned.

Rebellion

The student in rebellion is disengaged from current classroom activities and goals.  The student is actively engaged in another agenda.  The student creates her/his own means and his/her own goals. The student’s rebellion is usually seen in acting out and often in encouraging others to rebel.

Students who are in rebellion:

  • Learn little or nothing from the task or activity assigned.
  • Sometimes learn a great deal from what they elect to do, though rarely that which was expected.
  • Develop poor work habits and sometimes develop negative attitudes toward intellectual tasks and formal education.
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