Engaging and Motivating Students

1. Engaging and Motivating Students An Active Participant PD August 11, 2011 Myssi Turner

2. Goals for PD • You will have a better understanding of engagement strategies. • You will walk away ready to use over 50 possible strategies across the curriculum.

3. Why engagement? Engagement increases attendance and achievement.

4. First Day Strategy: • The sooner you learn their name, the better! • Learn more about your students by doing interest inventories, letters to the teacher, quiz about your teacher, or the following ice breaker….

5. Ice Breaker • Take your white paper and fold it into fourths. • On the first fourth, illustrate your favorite part of summer break. • On the second fourth, illustrate a superhero that you would want to be and why. • On the third fourth, illustrate your favorite activity. • On the last fourth, write the title of a movie that best represents you. Do not share at this point. You will have about 7 minutes to complete.

6. Relationships • Story of Mr. Ray Brown 8th Grade Teacher Newport Middle School

7. http://youtu.be/Cbk980jV7Ao Validation Sometimes the simplest things will motive and engage students. Smiles and sincere compliments build relationships with students. Think, Pair, Share Partners speak for one minute. While your partner is speaking, you may not interrupt. After they are finished you must restate the main idea of what they said to prove you are a good listener, add on to their point, or state something you agreed with or politely state what you disagree with. Partner 1 speaks about a time when they felt validated in an educational setting (by their boss, a parent, a student, etc). Partner 2 speaks about a time when they validated someone in an educational setting.

8. Gallery Walk Gallery Walk is a processing and/or review strategy in which students create a product that visually or pictorially represents the learning that has just taken place. The products are posted around the classroom, and the students walk around the room checking out their classmates work. If the students work in groups, one student may act as the docent explaining the fine points of their project. • Now you try…

9. Use your discussion from Think, Pair, Share to… • create a poster that illustrates one validation strategy to use with your students and colleagues. • hang your poster throughout the room for others to view.

10. Question Museum Walk • In groups of five or six, walk to one of the questions hanging on the wall. After reading the question and discussing with your team, write your answer on the poster chart. • After time is called rotate to the next question. • (Early Finishers can look through their 100+ Interactive Strategies) • Video Begin at 29:37

11. ELA Standards Connections to the Question Walk Museum Using your ELA Standards with your table discuss what areas the Question Walk Museum addressed.

12. Give One, Get One • Give One, Get One is a perfect strategy to use at the beginning of a unit. It asks students to write all that they know about the topic being studied, then to talk to a partner to add to their lists of written information. • This prewriting activity helps students reflect on what they already know about a topic and gives the teacher an assessment of prior knowledge before introducing a topic. • It engages students in writing and talking about a topic with partners and is a fast paced activity. (Power Tools for Adolescent Literacy)

13. Give One, Get One • Fold a piece of paper lengthwise to form two columns and write Give One at the top of the left-hand column and Get One at the top of the right-hand column. • In your Give One Column, write take two minutes to write down everything you know about reptiles and amphibians. • Now talk to other teachers about what is in their Give One column; write down any new information you get from discussions in the Get One column along with the name of the person who gave you the information. • Whole Group Discussion; Add to Get One column

14. Take a Stand Strategy After surveying four 3rd grade students about the difference between amphibians and reptiles, I recorded their responses below. On the white paper write your response to: Which student do you agree with and why? Then fold the paper so no one can see your answer. • Chris- Amphibians are the babies of reptiles. • Hunter- Amphibians spend part of their lives in water and part of their life on land. When they are born, they look more fishlike then metamorph into their adult stage. They lay eggs. Reptiles do not lay eggs but have scaly skin and are cold blooded. • Hollie- Amphibians have moist smooth skin and live the first part of their life in water and the second half on land. Reptiles have scaly skin and look like their parent as soon as they are born. • April- Reptiles have live births and amphibians lay eggs.

15. Take a Stand Strategy • Take your folded paper and begin walking to the music. Pass your paper to the first person you come across. Continue passing the paper until the music stops. • When the music stops look at the answer your paper has. • Go to the corner of the room where the name of the student is listed that your paper agrees with. • Discuss the response with the others at your corner. Defend or oppose the answer that your person listed.

16. Top Hat Comparison Strategy While reading the article use the Top Hat Comparison Strategy form to compare amphibians and reptiles. Then use the form to summarize your key points.

17. Strategy DebriefQuestion Museum Walk, Take A Stand, Give One, Get One, & Top Hat Comparison Discuss with your neighbors: • Do these strategies help students practice and deepen their understanding of new knowledge? Why or why not? • Discuss some ways these strategies might be used in your classroom. Choose a team captain to report to the whole group by seeing who had the most exotic vacation.

18. QuestioningGood questions are thought-provoking and clear. These questions stimulate student responses and arefollowed by 3-10 seconds of wait time to allow for processing time. Avoid the use of vague questions orguesses. Instead, include more purposeful prompts which require more than a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response.Great questions will promote critical thinking and get a discussion started easily. For example, a teachermight ask the following higher-level thinking questions for partner or whole-group discussion:Do you agree with _________?What ideas could you add to our discussion?What solutions do you recommend for ___________?How does __________ compare with ___________?What is the main idea of ___________?What do you think about ___________?

19. Evan explains what, why, and how he can use what he is learning. This engages students and provides ownership.

20. Reading Strategy with Questioning Strategies… Text Opener: If your friend was thinking of leaving a safe, quiet life to do something adventurous, but risky- like exploring a remote, wild land- how would you talk him/her into doing it? How would you talk him/her out of doing it? While reading through the passage… • put question marks by things you have questions about • write an A by things you agree with • write a D by things you disagree with When we discuss and as I ask questions you must support your thoughts with the passage.

21. Principles of Shared Inquiry Shared Inquiry discussion is an intellectually rigorous group activity that focuses on the interpretation of meaning in written texts. It is Socratic in style and firmly text-based. It makes use of questioning techniques that help participants read actively, pose productive questions of their own about the ideas in a text, and listen and respond effectively to others. The Shared Inquiry method does not propose a formula for finding truth, and its purpose is not to determine the conclusions that an individual or discussion group might reach. It is based on the conviction that participants can gain a deeper understanding of a text when they work together and are prompted by a leader’s skilled questioning. In the process, participants enjoy the benefit of diverse points of view, focused exploration, and common discovery. Reading a challenging piece of writing and thinking about its ideas cannot be a passive process. Each participant is engaged in an active search for the meaning of the selection at hand. With the energy and encouragement of the group, participants articulate ideas, support assertions with evidence from the text, and grapple with different possibilities of meaning. Often, this results in individuals learning how to build on one another’s insights and perspectives.

22. Time to Debrief • Reflect on the questioning strategies. • Write a few things that you want to remember about them on your reflections page. • Discuss with your table.

23. Vocabulary StrategiesStrategy #1: What’s my word? Each of you will receive a necklace. 2. Do not look at the tag. 3. You will work with a partner to give clues without stating the obvious about your word. 4. First partner group that figures out their words win a prize!

24. Strategy #2: Classroom Feud Split your class into two groups. Name your team. Identify an initial spokesperson who will confer with his/her team during the time allotted (15 sec) and who gives the final answer. Each time the team gets a turn, a new student acts as the spokesperson. Flip coin to see who goes first. Deliver a question. If the team gets it right, they get a point and another turn. If the team gets it wrong, the other team can steal.

25. Other Strategies included in your packet to use: • Opposites Attract • Two of a Kind • Create a Category • What is the Question? • Who Am I?

26. Concept Maps for Vocabulary

27. Word Walls To engage students in writing, use word walls for each subject. Group words according to their unit so they are easily located. The more the student sees and hears the word, the better they will understand it.

28. Goal Setting and CelebrationsFor a complete PD on Goal Setting go to Sharepoint and download my GOAL SETTING 101 PowerPoint or attend Nancy Burn’s PD this summer. You never know what our teachers will wear to motivate kids!

29. Recognition for Reaching Goals

30. Assemblies to Motivate for Testing Each student wore a Derby Hat or made a stick horse to showcase as they walked across stage while their name was called.

31. Taking time for purposeful fun….MOTIVATION!

32. Take time to DANCE…. The element of surprise like me coming in dancing and the HUMOR of me trying to dance engages students so……

33. I hope you DANCE! Task and Expections • In your content/grade level PLC revise or continue to work through BYOC ensuring activities reflect multiple forms of STUDENT ENGAGEMENT