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How Do We Know When Students Are Engaged?
March 1, 2012 | Ben JohnsonEducational author and former teacher, Dr. Michael Schmoker shares in his book, Results Now, a study that found of 1,500 classrooms visited, 85 percent of them had engaged less than 50 percent of the students. In other words, only 15 percent of the classrooms had more than half of the class at least paying attention to the lesson.
So, how do they know if a student is engaged? What do "engaged" students look like? In my many observations, here's some evidence to look for:
Teacher-Directed Learning
You will see students...
- Paying attention (alert, tracking with their eyes)
- Taking notes (particularly Cornell)
- Listening (as opposed to chatting, or sleeping)
- Asking questions (content related, or in a game, like 21 questions or I-Spy)
- Responding to questions (whole group, small group, four corners, Socratic Seminar)
- Following requests (participating, Total Physical Response (TPR), storytelling, Simon Says)
- Reacting (laughing, crying, shouting, etc.)
Student-Directed Learning
You see students individually or in small groups...
- Reading critically (with pen in hand)
- Writing to learn, creating, planning, problem solving, discussing, debating, and asking questions)
- Performing/presenting, inquiring, exploring, explaining, evaluating, and experimenting)
- Interacting with other students, gesturing and moving
To boil the descriptions above down and get at the essence of student engagement, whether for teacher-directed learning or student-directed learning, engaged means students are active. Is that surprising? I shouldn't think so. If true learning is to occur, then students have to be at the very least participants in the process, and not merely products.
Activity and Ownership
I believe that the majority of teachers pick up on the audience cues as they direct-teach and can tell if a student is not interested or not engaged. Most teachers act on what they see and adjust their instruction to try to engage all of their students. However, no matter how hard teachers work at making it interesting, a lecture is still a lecture, and having students simply listen is still a passive action. The solution is simple: If a teacher wants to increase student engagement, then the teacher needs to increase student activity -- ask the students to do something with the knowledge and skills they have learned. Break up the lecture with learning activities. Let them practice. Get them moving. Get them talking. Make it so engaging that it will be difficult for students not to participate.
The ultimate engagement is to put the learner in charge of learning. Create a rich learning environment and a motivation to learn, and the students do all the hard work of learning, while the teacher merely facilitates. It sounds so easy.
I do not minimize the hard work involved in creating those rich learning scenarios, custom-made motivators and engaging learning content. And it is a bit risky. Sometimes it works like a charm, and other times it would have been better to assign seat work. But we keep trying, improving, and enhancing until we get it right.
How have you found success in engaging your students?
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Comments (21)
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Curriculum Integration Project
At Fraser High School, in Hamilton NZ, we're trying a subject integration approach to increase our student engagement. Students work on an authentic project (producing a visual culture magazine) where its up to them to write and produce everything themselves, with the teachers (three of us involved) facilitating the process. Your comments about these kinds of approaches being risky, sometimes working like a charm and somtimes seeming like seat work would have been better (or safer at least!) rings true. I blogged aobut this just yesterday! http://curriculumintegrationproject.blogspot.co.nz/2012/03/structure-int...
Dr. Cambourne and What is TED
Ben,
Thank you for your reply.
You might be interested in Dr. Cambourne's webinar this Sunday (3/4) at 7pm ET: http://globalconversationsinliteracy.wordpress.com/
As for "What is TED?" - I blogged about it, too: http://deltascape.blogspot.com/2011/09/whats-ted.html
Enjoy,
Dave
Immersion
David:
Dr. Cambourne seems to know what he is talking about. As a former Spanish teacher, immersion had a special meaning for me. I viewed my job as creating a learning environment in which students would find it difficult not to learn. My greatest tool was immersion. First of all I spoke the language to the students, in addition to gestures, writing and visual cues to meaning (comprehensible input). Second, the learning space inspired curiosity about Spanish speaking countries, different cultures and customs (the walls were covered in travel posters from Spain, Mexico, Argentina, etc...). Third, learning was participatory- Students were invited to speak, dance, sing, cook, eat, smell, draw, sew, act, present, and teach...all in Spanish.
It was nice to see immersion at the top of Dr. Cambourne's list.
Thanks for sharing.
What is TED?
Ben Johnson
San Antonio, Texas
Measure Learning by the Decible
Jody:
This is a great topic. I am so frustrated with teachers clamping down on students for making noise in the classroom. We want them making noise, the more noise the better as long as it is about learning. Yes, there are times to be quiet, but learning is a loud, messy business when students are excited, enthusiastic and engaged. Way to go!
Ben Johnson
San Antonio, Texas
Being Intrigued
Sue:
I found that when I was "intrigued" about something, that "intrigue" tended to rub off on my students. First they wanted to know why I was so interested, and when they found out, they were also interested. There is a lesson here. If you as the teacher are not interested in something, guaranteed the students won't be. If you think something is cool, most likely your students in general will too (my students never got into my jokes though- I suppose they matured beyond my version of fifth grade humor).
Thanks for sharing your great ideas.
Ben Johnson
San Antonio, Texas
Leave them wanting More
Don:
When students forget there is a clock in the room and are actively working there is an electricity in the air. It is exuberating. You mentioned they were writing-- what was the project/topic that made them so interested?
Ben Johnson
San Antonio, TX
How do I know if my students are engaged?
For me, after a few years of teaching, the clues were pretty obvious. When my students lost track of time, or didn't care about time as in how much time it was taking to do whatever project they we working. This is especially true of writing. One of the great feelings I got as a teacher was when the class ended and the kids moaned that they."weren't finished writing yet and could they stay awhile longer so they don't lose their grove."
Hoping by planning
Engagement, flow, kids talking to each other about science because they want to. Best part of my job when it sometimes happens. Some things that seem to help:
- Listen/watch first. No taking notes or filling in a worksheet. Just enjoy it. Then tell your neighbor one thing you got from it. Then write a few notes.
- Stuff that's funny and links their lives to the concepts to be learned.
- Being intrigued, interested and well-informed on what I'm teaching, including the history and personalities involved: Better stories that way.
- Instead of doing it all myself, having students take on as many tasks and demos as possible.
- Co-constructing concepts with magnetic cards - Concept ConstruXions rocks (at teachersforlearners.com).
- Responding via whiteboards shared between two. (Ridiculous how much they love this AND a great way to get a beat on where they are. See post on kids concepts of atoms at http://takeactionscience.wordpress.com/2012/03/01/kids-concepts-of-atoms...)
- Changing the class arrangement frequently, and during lessons too, so they get up and move a bit.
- Individual relationships.
What is engaged learning
I think that there has to also be a noise factor. I have so many 'outsiders' come into my classroom and say what an unruly bunch, they are so noisy and I keep telling them to listen to the noise. If I can hear words about the topic that we are covering that isn't noise that is learning.
If what I am doing is
If what I am doing is relevant to their curiosity, creativity, intelligence, emotional spirit and to their psychology... They talk, share and engage themselves in the conversation/activity.*