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I was a classroom teacher for over two decades and now I support teachers in developing quality math instruction. One of the most challenging things I see educators encounter is student engagement. Engagement can be particularly challenging in a math class where students can become overwhelmed, and your own teaching success is often contingent on the skills taught by the teachers who preceded you.
The Education Insights Report shows that engagement is a key driver of success. In fact, over 90% of teachers, principals, and superintendents agree that student engagement is a critical metric for understanding overall achievement.
Even so, the topic of engagement dominates much of my coaching conversations because many teachers I support can’t put a finger on exactly how to foster student engagement. When you think of maintaining student engagement, do you picture yourself performing a nonstop comedy routine or redesigning every lesson to be a visual masterpiece? Unfortunately, that’s a recipe for burnout.
The good news? Fostering student engagement doesn’t require a circus act; instead, it’s about discovering the key that unlocks student learning. Each student has a unique lock and is waiting for the right engagement key. This really is the art of teaching: understanding the engagement’s natural cycle and adjusting accordingly.
Below are some advice and keys to build classroom engagement in math instruction:
The Engagement Cycle
Engagement follows a rhythm as engagement naturally rises and wanes. If you recognize engagement, and disengagement, as a natural cycle, then managing it becomes another tool in your teaching toolbox.
The duration of each cycle varies based on factors both within and beyond your control, so recognizing the signs to an engagement reset is essential. The key is knowing how to activate, sustain, and reset engagement.
Activate thinking with a math challenge. Reframe a problem from the day’s lesson and have students solve it using any creative thinking process they can devise. This could include modeling, descriptions, or illustrations.
Sustain attention by changing the lesson format. This can be done in several ways.
- Reconnect students by going beyond the trusted KWL chart to incorporate a variety of instructional strategies. You can include things like multiple formats of graphic organizers, a variety discourse setups, and scaffolded collaborative tasks. I recommend the vast array of SOS strategies available on Discovery Education Experience.
- Reduce the length of a long worksheet and turn some of the questions into an activity or a game. A fast, low budget yet highly interactive way to do this is to cut up questions from the worksheet and put them in a grab bag. Then, students can grab- and-go the questions and answer them. You could take this a step further by making teams or implementing a rapid-fire round!
- If your lesson runs for over 15 minutes, mix it up. Turn to Edpuzzle or Wevideo to help instruction in multiple ways while also freeing you up to provide personalized and small group instruction.
Reset the engagement cycle with a brain break. A whole bunch of numbers and concepts all at once can freeze students. Give students a quick break by asking them to decipher an optical illusion, solve a brain teaser, or you can insert a corny joke. This mini moment gives them a moment to breathe and helps realign student focus back to the lesson.
Personalized and Individual Attention
Personalized and individual attention also helps sustain interest in learning, especially when difficulty levels increase. Engaging students in your small group is easy. The hard part is engaging the students not in your small group. I find that personalized attention is easiest to achieve through technology tools. For example, with Wayground, you can differentiate your students’ tasks to align with learning needs and levels, all in just a few clicks.
I also have found success with Dreambox Math. With a focus on conceptual understanding, you can count on this tool to keep your students in the zone of proximal development as it adapts to each student’s skill level to guide them through learning curriculum-aligned math lessons.
For example, if you’re a do-it-yourself kind of teacher, like me, Google Forms might be a good option for you. I’ll create a Google Form with sections to offer a learning experience with targeted remediation and learning support contingent on student responses.
Sustain Interest During Direct Instruction
Let’s be real here: you cannot expect students to understand mathematical relationships and apply mathematical reasoning by clicking and talking through a presentation.
Hands-on learning can save the day and transform a student’s understanding of a math concept. A good tool for this is FluidMath which places each student into the center of the learning experience with interactive direct instruction. I also recommend Geogebra for a community-generated library of activities created and tested by fellow teachers.
Finding the Right Key
Learning, especially in mathematics, develops in layers as concepts unfold and conceptual understanding leads to math application. When we view engagement as a natural ebb and flow, we develop professional practices and integrate technology to shape learning environments that are both productive and enjoyable. The heart of this journey is the teacher. The teacher-to-student connection supported by the integration of thoughtful tools brings math to life.
With a combination of tools and connection, the question shifts from “Why won’t they listen and do their work?” to “How can we unlock the key to their potential?”
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