My grandson is 20 months old and is such a joy to watch as he plays and interacts with those around him. He loves to play ball with his dad. Max was quite a player in his time so I'm sure that thrills him. The relationship between the two of them is based on a mutual love and understanding. However, Luke has learn the purpose of his little bat, a ball and the tee they use to hit. He stays focused as Max coaches him through how to hold the bat and when to swing Finally, as you can imagine, it's quite challenging for the little guy to hit an object and then run after it. Luke did this over and over. Perhaps for 30 minutes at a time. I'd say he was engaged in the activity and began to show growth as he went through the paces.
I thought a lot as I watched him play and began to make the connection to the reading I did from a book titled Engagement By Design by Doug Fisher, Nancy Frey, Russell Quaglia, Dominque Smith & Lisa Lande.
Understanding engagement-and actively pursuing it-can make all the difference between forging a real connection with students and having a classroom that's simply going through the motions. Engagement By Design
There are three essential components to engagement as outlined by the authors of this book.
1. Relationships: The connection between teacher and content, Student and Content & Teacher and student.
2. Clarity: The focus given toward the direction of learning.
3. Challenge: The expectation of a rigorous outcome as designed by the activity.
When we think about our work and and how we will continue to make the difference in achievement; we can make a connection to our school improvement plan.
- Relationship: We are focused on building an safe environment for students. We do this actively by collaborating with our peers and student support team. We know that when we support students early in their struggle we can turn a corner to help them realize success. Consider the example of Emily Baxter reaching out to individual parents and students through email and video. She works diligently to ensure each individual's success. This is very difficult within our current platform so she needs to continue to find new ways to connect with her students.
- Focus: I observed in many classrooms this week where learning intentions and success criteria were posted. This is an initial first step to remind students what is expected. However, when the language of the intention is repeated throughout the lesson that creates conditions of focus and engagement. Additionally, I had the opportunity to watch all three teachers in one grade level and the collaboration around the focus was evident. Students were engaged at high levels both in person and remotely. So impressive!
- Challenge: Challenge comes through deliberate questioning and patience. During a fourth grade math lesson on arrays this week I observed wait time as students contemplated a prime number. Becky did not overcorrect as students tried to share criteria for a rule. They were working with the number 23 (1x23 and 23x1). Becky asked students to develop a rule. One student said that 23 was odd. Rather than correcting she began to take kids through other numbers 18, 15 until they realized that wasn't a viable condition for a prime number. She also asked kids to set up factors to make certain that 1x23 was the only option. That's challenge, she allowed students to do the thinking and problem solving.
I believe my current strength is building relationships. I know that building positive relationships with students and with the adults at home is the starting key to success. My students and their adults, to get them to buy in to success at school, first begins with positive relationships. I talked to my class this week. They know they will receive emails, vidoes, and phone calls home for the positives and they are ready for the calls to start. My work in progress is aligning LI & SC to optimize student success. This helps with clarity and also helps with determining success and breakdowns of each lesson. This is an area my team will be working on.
ReplyDeleteYour students and families are so lucky to have you! Your focus is spot on. I'm looking forward to watching the huge growth come about!
DeleteOne of the components that I feel is a strength for me is to challenge my students. It is so hard not to over-scaffold for special education students. I try to anticipate what the roadblocks to learning might be and figure out ways to help students overcome them using strategies that will work in different situations.
ReplyDeleteRelationships is definitely my strong point. I really try to make every person feel valued. I'm going to focus in on challenge this year, being mindful not to over-scaffold. I know I do this out of good intentions, but I am coming to realize that what seems helpful is actually holding them back.
ReplyDeleteOne component I feel is a strength for my is keeping the focus. I like to use a variety of activities to meet the needs of my students that keep the same focus as the main point. I work to use consistent language so that students feel comfortable with it and can make connections to what they are doing and the learning intentions and success criteria we are striving to meet.
ReplyDeleteLinnetta
ReplyDeleteI know I have a strong focus to help students problem solve. Lessons are posted to engage student learning causing some to reflect on face to face learning and others to engage virtually. To challenge students at the beginning of class I intentionally open up google classroom to see who did the work. Any excuse shared as to why it did not get done, we share ways to help encourage others to improve as well as see how we can help. Students who do the work are so eager to share why the assignment was short and fun-that I have to hold them back from giving away answers. The challenge is to raise our "mark as done" so we can explore "Rhythm Wars!" Lights will be off and LED lights will be engaged (yes 6ft apart) to avoid being defeated by the "poison rhythm". I'm looking forward to seeing the excitement as students build trust and hope with each to build genuine class relationships that stimulates enjoyment for getting their assignments complete.
I feel that I have strong relationships with the students. They know that they are valued and that we are a community in my room. Evidence of this is that exited students often ask me if they can come back to my class. I have lunch bunches with each grade level of exited students monthly to continue those relationships. I need to work on challenging students. I often feel short on time and even though I give wait time, I too often feel that I'm rushing and over-scaffolding. I need to find my balance with both.
ReplyDeleteI know that building relationships with students is a strength of mine. I enjoy getting to know about each individual student through discussions during lunch duty, morning door duty, in the hallways, etc.
ReplyDeleteI'm a little unsure of what would be considered evidence of relationship building as a strength, but I know students value our relationships when they stop me in the hallway to tell me things, raise their hands in class and the lunchroom to share about their lives, students will email, google chat, and invite me to google hangouts while they're learning from home. Last spring when we closed and I got to meet with students in Jess' class, almost every student would join the google meet so we could chat. In a more recent piece of evidence, I received an email from Jesus that said, "😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀".
I would like to continue to improve on the ways I am able to focus on the specific learning that is to happen in each lesson. By writing learning intentions & success criteria along with a daily formative assessment I am able to hone in on the focus of a lesson more easily. This year I would also like to begin to develop a learning progression within each standard to I'm able to adapt to meet the individual needs of each student.