Creating an Actively Engaged Classroom

Book excerpt: Make your lessons interesting, interactive, and engaging Successful lessons are explicit, yet also inspire active learning and opportunities to respond. As the one shaping lessons, can you do better? Probably, and you’re not alone. Research shows teachers consistently offer students far fewer than the recommended opportunities to respond, leaving all students—including those with special needs and behavior challenges—less than engaged and falling short of their best chance for success. With this book, you’ll discover 14 strategies you can translate directly to your classroom, complete with descriptions, advantages and disadvantages of each, and how and when best to use them. Divided into three parts, you will be guided through Verbal engagement strategies, such as whip around, choral responding, quick polls, and individual questioning Non-verbal engagement strategies, such as stop and jot, guided notes, response cards, and hand signals Partner and teaming strategies, such as turn & talk, cued retell, four corners, and classroom mingle Dive into these strategies and transform your classroom into a rich and interactive environment—no matter the subject, context, or age of your students.