The Highly Engaged Classroom

Student engagement happens as a result of a teacher’s careful planning and execution of specific strategies. This self-study text provides in-depth understanding of how to generate high levels of student attention and engagement. Using the suggestions in this book, every teacher can create a classroom environment where engagement is the norm, not the exception.

Make your lessons interesting, interactive, and engaging Successful lessons are explicit, yet also inspire active learning and opportunities to respond. As the one shaping lessons, can you do better? Probably, and you’re not alone. Research shows teachers consistently offer students far fewer than the recommended opportunities to respond, leaving all students—including those with special needs and behavior challenges—less than engaged and falling short of their best chance for success. With this book, you’ll discover 14 strategies you can translate directly to your classroom, complete with descriptions, advantages and disadvantages of each, and how and when best to use them. Divided into three parts, you will be guided through Verbal engagement strategies, such as whip around, choral responding, quick polls, and individual questioning Non-verbal engagement strategies, such as stop and jot, guided notes, response cards, and hand signals Partner and teaming strategies, such as turn & talk, cued retell, four corners, and classroom mingle Dive into these strategies and transform your classroom into a rich and interactive environment—no matter the subject, context, or age of your students.

Facing greater challenges from increased expectations and global competition, America's public schools can pass the test by thinking and acting differently about selecting teachers and principals, nurturing the talents of students and teachers, and the importance of community involvement. Can America's public schools, long resistant to change, meet the challenges of globalization and new educational alternatives? Not by doing what they're doing today. So argues Building Engaged Schools, a book that challenges the faulty assumptions that guide American public education. In our efforts to create the best possible schools for America's kids, we've allowed process concerns such as standards, curriculum, and testing to overshadow the importance of people. But the fact is, what we've come to think of as the "soft" aspects of education are actually what make truly effective learning possible. Building relationships, nurturing student and teacher talents, fostering engagement...these are what motivate great teachers and inspire students. Indeed, if schools can learn anything from the business world, it's this: The "soft" stuff drives results. Corporate leaders have realized that the best way to improve productivity is to tap the talents and motivation of their human assets. This approach is even more critical in the classroom. An overemphasis on process reforms has set the education system at odds with both teachers and students. Too many students are lethargic or alienated, too many teachers have become disillusioned and cynical. We must find a way to bring public schools back to life, and to tap the enormous potential that exists in America's classrooms. Drawing on decades of Gallup research, Building Engaged Schools offers a fresh approach: Leverage student and teacher talent, on a school-by-school basis. Focusing on talent may lack the political appeal of process reforms, which can be implemented in broad strokes. This approach is surely more complex . But the return on the time and effort invested is far greater. In fact, that return is no less than a more fully engaged society, and a better future for America's children.

"This book's focus is on taking action in the world and making students better-prepared citizens"--

A must-have resource for coaches, leaders, and teams, this book covers approaches for boosting professional growth and macrostrategies that are responsive to student needs. Learn how to offer targeted feedback to teachers, empowering them to identify how they can improve their knowledge and skill. Step-by-step guidelines will help teachers increase their performance on the 280 research-based strategies from Becoming a Reflective Teacher.

Based on over 1000 nationwide student surveys, these 10 deep engagement strategies help you implement achievement-based cooperative learning. Includes video and a survey sample.

Describes nine different teaching strategies which have been proven to have positive effects on student learning and explains how those strategies can be incorporated into the classroom.

In this follow-up to his popular book, ''Is This English?,'' Bob Fecho explores dialogic teaching—what it is and how teachers can move toward more reflective teaching practices. Fecho provides a framework to help teachers develop the necessary focuses, perceptions, and intellectual habits that will result in an ever-enriching dialogue with their practice. Chapters like ''Using the Difficulty'' consider how an obstacle in the classroom can become a teachable moment, and "Wobble" asks teachers to be alert to when their beliefs are challenged by students and colleagues—and what can be learned in the balancing act. With anecdotes and scenarios from the author's own experience teaching adolescents and pre-service teachers, this engaging book will resonate with educators busy with today's overcrowded curriculums.

Just as successful athletes must identify strengths and weaknesses, set goals, and engage in focused practice to meet their goals, so must teachers. Learn how to combine a model of effective instruction with goal setting, focused practice, focused feedback, and observations to improve your instructional practices. Included are 280 strategies related to the 41 elements of effective teaching shown to enhance student achievement.