Student Engagement

John, Daren, Harumi, Ann and I had a useful conversation at our department meeting last Tuesday. We mulled over a bunch of topics, but one of our themes was how to maximize student participation and engagement in the classroom.

These are some of the things we noticed:

1. Preparation really helps. Something that I have been trying this quint is setting Reading Questions with every night's assignment. Of course, we are free not to pursue this subject...but creating some sort of expectations seems to set up richer conversations than simply asking the students to come in with with passages which are "interesting."

2. Daren noted that he often begins a discussion with a brief response exercise. Taking a few moments to write gives the students a chance to collect their thoughts before being called upon to articulate/defend them.

3. Even the tried-and-true "Share with a Partner" technique can be more productive if you add a step: Think-Pair-Share. If students are given a moment to flip through their texts and make notes, they will often make better use of the moment when they are invited to turn to their neighbor and share an idea. (How often have you noticed that small groups/pairs often start off off-topic?)

4. Harumi has found that setting goals with students is useful in increasing participation. Conference can be a comfortable place to draw students out; once they have ventured a few ideas there, you can challenge them to wade into section discussion. Even give them a deadline: "By the end of the next week, I expect you to_____________." Or even," Tomorrow, I am going to ask your opinion about ____________. " (Of course, you have to remember that you told them that!)

5. Both Daren and Heather M have attested to the usefulness of Opening Broadly to increase student engagement. Heather and Daren recently started their class with accessible State-Your-Opinion kind of questions, i.e.: "What constitutes a "right?" or "Is there value in reading a play written over 2,000 years ago?"

Students like to weigh in on this sort of thing...and then they feel invested in learning more. Content you present after this kind of a warm-up falls on a relatively receptive audience.

6. Finally, I am reminded of an article JB sent me earlier today, an article in The Washington Post by Daniel Willingham, who reflects on how Prior Knowledge Affects Reading Comprehension. Willingham points out that any student tackling a reading assignment will understand more of it if they have a frame of reference for approaching the issue: some vocabulary, key concepts or a sense of why they should care. Armed with these, students have a measurably easier time actually understanding the text. If they've simply been told to read it "for tomorrow," students understand measurably less of what they read...and reading strategies like Highlighting and Annotating don't seem to change that.