Engaging Students

Engaging Students

Vineyard Elementary

I believe one of the hardest parts about being a teacher is keeping your students engaged during learning. Kids have wandering minds, so keeping them on track is a difficult task to do. In this module we've learned about multiple ways how teachers can help their students be active learners. Playing games, singing, doing projects, being physically active are all examples of how to keep students interested and engaged. There are many other strategies to use as well. For one of the class prompts we needed to discuss a listed activity and how we would change it to make it more active. The one I chose to talk about was an activity where students write the words and definitions out of dictionaries. How boring is that? My suggestion for this activity was to replace it with the Content Cognitive Dictionary. This is a more fun and interesting way of learning that the kids can actually enjoy!

In my fieldwork experience at Vineyard Elementary I've seen multiple ways the cooperating teacher has helped her students stay active while learning. Some days they sing songs about different language phrases, words, and rules (the kids get so in to it). Other days they use hand gestures to remember "different parts of a whole" to help them remember fractions. Simple phrases and physical movement help trigger memory and make learning fun. The cooperating teacher also has the students direct the morning routines; such as reading the date and time, along with big numbers and their place values. I've seen the students make flash cards to memorize book names and their authors. Each of the students each have a plant they keep in the class next to the window and monitor its growth every day. There are many ways to engage students. Finding out what their interested in and taking action so they can learn in a fun manner will make all the difference.