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Connect What You're Teaching To Real Life

The document provides 5 tips for actively engaging students and helping them feel personally connected to their learning: 1. Connect lessons to students' real-life experiences by using culturally relevant materials, everyday examples, and linking classroom routines to learning. 2. Use students' interests and fascinations by incorporating their favorite characters, possessions, and topics into lessons. 3. Give students choices in how they learn by allowing them to choose groups, pacing, and homework assignments. 4. Hook their interest with fun transitions between activities like dance parties, songs, stretches, and challenges. 5. Teach students self-monitoring skills to develop self-regulation habits that help them succeed independently.

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Roscela Mae D. Arizo
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45 views

Connect What You're Teaching To Real Life

The document provides 5 tips for actively engaging students and helping them feel personally connected to their learning: 1. Connect lessons to students' real-life experiences by using culturally relevant materials, everyday examples, and linking classroom routines to learning. 2. Use students' interests and fascinations by incorporating their favorite characters, possessions, and topics into lessons. 3. Give students choices in how they learn by allowing them to choose groups, pacing, and homework assignments. 4. Hook their interest with fun transitions between activities like dance parties, songs, stretches, and challenges. 5. Teach students self-monitoring skills to develop self-regulation habits that help them succeed independently.

Uploaded by

Roscela Mae D. Arizo
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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https://blog.brookespublishing.

com/5-tips-for-getting-all-students-engaged-in-learning/

What’s lesson one for teachers who want students to successfully grasp, retain, and
apply new material? First–say Whitney Rapp and Katrina Arndt, authors of the inclusion
book Teaching Everyone–you need to recruit their interest. And that means finding
ways to make learning “relevant, authentic, and valuable” in students’ lives.

In today’s post, we bring you 5 steps you can follow to actively engage your students
and help them feel personally connected to their learning.

Connect what you’re teaching to real life


One key way to involve students in their learning is to make sure the material speaks to
them. These strategies, adapted from Teaching Everyone and Systematic Instruction
for Students with Moderate and Severe Disabilities by Belva Collins, will help you
connect your lessons to students’ real-life experiences:

 Choose culturally relevant materials. According to the National Council of


Teachers of English, students who don’t find representations of their own
cultures in texts are likely to lose interest in school-based literacies. (Read how
one new teacher learned this valuable lesson in this excerpt from Teaching
Everyone.) Have your students complete a short survey on their outside interests
and use that information to assist in building your lesson plans. This will help
your students see the connections between what they’re learning inside and
outside the classroom.

 Use specific everyday examples. An easy way to help students feel personally
connected to what they’re being taught is to talk about how they can apply the
material in real life. In Systematic Instruction for Students with Moderate and
Severe Disabilities, Collins suggests teachers demonstrate how students can
apply math concepts to help them manage their personal finances, nutrition, and
daily schedule.

 Link routines to learning. You can also promote learning through classroom
routines. For instance, a child learning to wash hands during bathroom breaks
can also be taught science concepts (body parts, hygiene and disease
prevention, water conservation), reading (bathroom signage), antonyms
(hot/cold, left/right), and math (counting).

 
Use students’ interests and fascinations
Find out what your students are passionate about and then use those interests as
natural motivators to increase engagement. Whether a child is fixated on one thing or
has a few areas of intense interest, there are many simple strategies you can use to
work those fascinations into your instruction. The result? Happier, more motivated
students.

In “Just Give Him the Whale!”, Paula Kluth and Patrick Schwarz offer these and many
other suggestions on how to use student interests to boost learning in key areas:

 Literacy. Allow a child to integrate their most-loved characters and possessions


into your classroom reading time. One student was able to participate in reading
circle when his turn came once he was allowed to speak through a favorite
puppet.

 History. Find creative ways to adapt standards-based content to the fun things
your students are excited about. For example, one history teacher explained the
U.S. role in the UN and its relationship to other nations by drawing an analogy
with Super Friends characters.

 Math. If you’re working on a math lesson, consider asking a student to write a


problem, diagram, or pattern that relates to her particular area of interest.
Sometimes, the best way to combine academic material with a student’s interests
may not be immediately evident–but your students may see connections that you
don’t!

To help you discover what your students are passionate about, download these
student surveys from “Just Give Him the Whale!” And read this excerpt from the book
to learn more about innovative ways to use student interests in the classroom!

Give students choices


As Rapp & Arndt note in Teaching Everyone, engagement increases whenever students
are empowered to make their own choices about how they learn. Here are a few
suggestions:

 Group students. Breaking the class up in groups increases the likelihood that
everyone will contribute to class discussion and problem solving. Poll your
students about their working preference, or experiment with breaking them up in
different ways. Divide the class in half, group students in small teams of three or
four, or put them in pairs.

 Allow them to set the pace. Let your students choose their own starting point
on an assignment, and they’ll stay comfortable and challenged. For example, try
giving your students tiered math problems, with increasing levels of difficulty.
From least to most sophisticated, the tiers could be: determine the surface area
of a cube; determine the surface area of a rectangular prism; determine the
amount of wrapping paper needed to cover a rectangular box; determine how
many cans of paint you’ll need to buy to paint a house with given dimensions.
Once students choose a starting point, the teacher can guide them through
increasing levels of mastery.

 Try homework menus. Instead of having all of your students complete the same
homework assignment, why not offer a menu of options that tie in with your
lesson plan? A little variety and choice go a long way toward relieving the sense
of drudgery some students experience when completing their homework. Take a
look at this math menu for an example of how to give students a choice of
homework problems to complete.

Hook their interest with fun transitions


As Julie Causton and Chelsea Tracy-Bronson point out in their book, The Educator’s
Handbook for Inclusive School Practices, “all students are more engaged when they
enjoy classroom life, laugh, and connect with peers.” Transitions between activities
can be the perfect time to infuse more joy and fun into your daily routine–and get your
students energized and excited to learn. Here are a few suggestions from Causton and
Tracy-Bronson:

 Take 45 seconds to have a dance party.

 Find out which songs students are singing in chorus or music. Sing them as
you’re cleaning up and making the transition to the next activity.

 Start a new activity with a fun and interesting way to physically enter the space
(such as a crab walk or backward walk).

 Lead a firework cheer (rub hands together, make a sizzle sound, then clap hands
and say, “Oooh, ahhhh”).

 Organize a walk-and-talk activity (give the class a question related to the content,
set a timer, and tell them to discuss the answer while walking around inside or
outside for 4 minutes).

 Play a short part from an energetic song to cue your students to a new task or
activity.

 Take 5 minutes to do whole-body stretches.


 Pump students up with a “45-second challenge,”  such as jumping jacks, yoga
tree pose, or another physical activity.

 Use musical instruments to signal transitions–a clap of the tambourine can signal
freeze, a light shake can mean start moving, and a repetitive tap can mean get
stepping!

(Want more suggestions on how to infuse joy into your classroom routines? Read this
post.)

Teach students self-monitoring skills


An advanced way of involving children so they stay engaged in their learning is to help
them develop greater self-regulation skills. Children sometimes struggle with self-
awareness, so they may not even realize when they’re straying off task or acting in
disruptive ways. When children are taught to regulate their behavior and work
independently, they develop habits to help them succeed and you are freed to operate
more flexibly in the classroom.

Try these strategies, outlined in the book Building Comprehension in Adolescents by


Linda H. Mason et al., to assist students with self-regulation:

 Self-monitoring of attention (SMA). Instruct students to evaluate whether or


not they’ve been paying attention at random intervals throughout the school day.
This is usually accomplished with an auditory cue like a chime or tone, which
prompts each child to reflect on questions like Am I at my desk? and Am I
listening to the teacher? Students record their answers on a simple SMA tally
sheet.

 Self-monitoring of performance. Students log on a chart or graph whether


they’ve been able to complete a pre-defined problem or task. Viewing an explicit
graphical representation of their performance can have a highly motivating effect
on students.

Read how one science teacher was able to motivate her students to assess their own
performance and significantly improve completion of group projects by following these
specific steps of self-monitoring outlined in Building Comprehension in Adolescents.

***
When you make a concerted effort to engage students in their learning, they’ll be better
able to maintain focus, sustain positive behavior, and grasp and retain the material
you’re working so hard to deliver–a positive outcome for everybody!

A different version of this article appeared in the Brookes K-12 Education newsletter.
Sign up for it today if you haven’t already!

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