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My grandson entered a teacher credentialling program just as I retired from the classroom, and he’s doing great!  Any school will be lucky to hire him next year.

He’s doing his student teaching and, this week, he asked me for some advice about student engagement.  I assured him that this was an ongoing challenge for veteran teachers, too.

One of the points he raised was that when he asked his students to turn-and-talk, very few said anything.

Here are some of the ideas I offered him about that issue, and engagement in general.

• Be sure to give students thinking time before you ask them to share their responses with a partner.   And use this time to also teach academic discourse.  So, I suggested, begin by saying something like, “In a moment, I’m going to ask you a question.  I don’t want anyone to shout out the answer. I want you to think about it.  Then I want you to write the answer in your notebook by filling in this sentence frame: “I think ___________ because ___________________.”    After I give you a minute to write that down, you’ll turn and share it with a partner.  I want one of you to start first.  Then, when that person gives their answer, I want the other person to respond by using one of these three sentence starters on the board: Either “I agree because _______.” or “I disagree because_____.” or “Your answer has me wondering if _____________.”  After that, the other person gives their answer, and then the first student responds with one of those three sentence starters.
• I also suggested that he try distinguishing the prompts he gives to his students into two categories.  If students can connect their answers to personal experiences, those are the best for turn-and-talks.  For questions he’s using as checks for understanding, have all students use mini-whiteboards are the way to go (“I don’t want anyone to raise their whiteboard until I say to raise them.  This is not a test.  It’s an opportunity for me to see how good of a job I’M doing teaching you.”
• I asked him if he could identify the students in his class who were leaders, who the other students looked up to.  He said there were about four-or-five of them.  I suggested he do walk-and-talks with them for about seven-minutes each (making arrangements with another teacher to pull them out of that class) where he would tell them he’s pulling out class leaders to get to know them better, learn their hopes for the future, ask them ideas for how he can be a better teacher, and ask them to to view themselves as leaders during the class – in small groups and otherwise – and what that would look like.
• To help get students more in the habit of talking to each other, during warm-ups have two questions.  The first one was personal (ranging from sharing the best moment in their lives to their favorite recording artist). The second one would be academic.  After a minute, tell students if they hadn’t gotten to discussing the second question yet, do so then.
• To help build class community, have students take turns dedicating a day of their learning to someone important in their life (see I Think This Is A Brilliant Idea For An Opening Class Ritual).  After everyone’s done it, have them do another round where they share an important learning experience they had.
• I also suggested he consider often ending class with a Wayground or Blooket game.  Students love it, and its a great formative assessment for teachers.
• One of the other issues he’s dealing with student lack of prior knowledge.  I suggested that before he begins a new unit, he gives each student a sheet with a series of questions regarding important prior knowledge for the unit, just asking if students know certain things, and having them circle “I know it,” “I sort of know it” or “I don’t know it,” making it clear that it’s not a test and it’s just designed to help him be able to be a better teacher for them.  This way, he gets the info, and he can return it to students at the end of the unit.  Students can then answer the questions again and, hopefully, show themselves how much they’ve learned.  It’s an example of temporal comparison – comparing their present selves to their past selves – instead of comparing themselves to others.

I’m adding this info to The Best Posts & Articles On Student Engagement.