Achieving Student Engagement - Four Important Teacher Behaviors - Part 1

Sitting in the back of the room, I observed Shelly, my student-teacher run a class discussion. I was impressed with her technique. It seemed the whole class was fired up and engaged. This was in huge contrast to what I’d seen her do much earlier in her student teaching.

She was using 4 essential techniques that nurture student participation.

1. Engagement Language

2. Pyramid questioning

3. Level of concern

4. Wait time

Let’s look at the wrong and right of each of these. This article is only about Engagement Language. Look for future posts on the other three techniques.

Engagement Language

When Shelly first started, she would often say something like this after presenting information; “Would anyone like to comment on this?” Or “Anyone think they know what might happen next?”

The nature of her language allowed students to avoid engaging in the lesson. After all, she said “does anyone . . .” To my daydreamers, that meant someone else will answer. Surely that smart girl in the first row will say something.

Shelly’s language also expressed a lack of confidence that her students would be able to respond. “Does anyone . . .” means she wonders if it’s possible for her students to answer. All her timid students will keep their mouths shut since their teacher doesn’t think they would know the answer.

Today she was saying things like, “Ok, we saw what happened with A and B. I want you to raise your hand when you have an idea of what might happen with C.” Then she would wait. She waited with her hand in the air to show students she expected students to raise their hand when they had prepared an answer. Her expectant smile showed she had confidence in their ability to answer her question.

She also used the words, “I want you to . . .” Students are hardwired to care about what their teacher wants. Teachers are accessing deep parts of students’ brains when they say things like, I want you to . . ., I need you to . . ., It makes me feel happy when you . . ., I’m disappointed you choose to do that,  and so forth. Shelly showed me she understood this when I would often hear her explain to students what she wanted them to do and feel.

Going back to Shelly’s question about what happened with A, B and C, after Shelly asked the class the question, she noticed that only half the class had their hands up. To Shelly, this meant they either lacked the information to answer, or the confidence to raise their hands. Before calling on anyone, Shelly knew she had to either 1) provide more information so everyone could prepare an answer, or 2) give some confidence to the students who were unsure.

Shelly dealt with the situation by telling students to find out what their neighbors were thinking, giving them enough time to share, then repeating her call: “Raise your hand when you think you know the answer.” This was followed by enough wait time to make sure everyone had their hand up. Students expected that Shelly would wait until their hand was up, so students without a solid answer were genuinely curious about what their more confident classmates were thinking.

Shelly, like most teachers, would need about three years of teaching before she could use all her techniques intuitively, but she had the most important element of classroom management solidly fixed: aim for 100% engagement when presenting information, and this meant she should use language which nurtures student participation. I’m sure no student will be daydreaming when Shelly’s teaching.

Teaching Tech: The No Spelling Program Program

I confess: I used no spelling workbooks or weekly spelling lists for an entire school year.  What happened?  I noticed four significant outcomes:

1.     My students learned to spell anyway.   The class took the year-end spelling test and scored nearly identically to the previous year’s class.

2.     We had 90 minutes more of literacy time without taking the pre and post tests and weekly spelling study time.

3.     Parents didn’t seem to mind.  No one complained, but I send home a newsletter article explaining, “spelling in third grade”.

4.     I decided never to go back to the canned spelling program.

Why Do This?

After 30 years of running various spelling programs, it struck me how much time these programs take up, and I didn’t see a huge turnaround in spelling no matter what program I used.

Then I ran across some research in The Power of Reading by Stephen Krashen.  His investigations indicated that students learn to spell whether or not they receive instruction, and that students who read a lot, make adequate gains in spelling.  As much as I respect Dr. Krashen, I could not have no spelling program at all.

Krashen’s findings got me looking at other research.  I pondered some studies showing that the most effective way to help students spell well was to provide motivation.  If students ached to spell well, they would.

Personally

For years I struggled with the burden of being a poor speller myself.  Some teachers made me feel dumb since I seemed to rapidly forget spelling words I had learned the previous week.  Since there are 40 sounds in the English language, and over 200 ways to spell them, I just didn’t seem able to be able to keep track of them all.  Bill Bryson, in his book The Mother Tongue, gives this example: “there are 14 ways to spell the /sh/ sound: shoe, sugar, passion, ambitious, ocean, champagne, etc.” 

Given all this, my spelling program consisted of these elements:

1.              Lots of reading.

2.              Lots of writing.

3.              A weekly “published” piece of writing in the style whichever author we were reading during Reading Instructional Time.

4.              Study of "hard" words as they came up in our literature.

Since our class noticed that published writings have no spelling errors, we decided when we studied an author and attempted to write something like that person, we would spell everything correctly.   Writing to publish provided my class with the motivation to spell everything correctly.  Sometimes this published piece was only a few sentences, other times it was a whole essay.

Published Writing, in our class, means writing that goes up on the wall, the class web site, gets bound into a classroom book, or other ways of displaying student work.  These are published and may not contain spelling errors.

Really Poor Spellers

I would also direct certain naturally poor spellers like myself to study specific high-frequency words based on repeated errors.  For example, Leonard would always misspell the word friend.   He also used that word weekly, so he really needed to learn it.  I met with him and explained that he simply couldn’t get that word wrong any more.  He and I figured out how to spell it, and he never misspelled it the rest of the year.

Really Hard Words

Each day’s literacy lesson involved author studies.  During this time we would examine how our author tackled tricky spelling problems.  For example, we noticed that Beverly Cleary always spells the possessive form of the word /thâr/, t-h-e-i-r.   We decided to spell this tricky word just like our author.

That year I was so nervous about not doing a conventional spelling program, I thought about spelling constantly.  I really paid attention to the spelling in my students’ weekly published work, my weakest students’ problems and the really hard words we ran across in our Reading Instruction period.  When we took that end-of-the-year test, I noticed my fabulous spellers nailed it, my regular spellers did regular and my struggling spellers struggled.  Just like last year.

What I also noticed was that nearly every student exceeded on the reading test.  Maybe all that extra time for literacy made the difference.

Teacher Tech: Rookie Management Mistakes

Allowing Students to be Inattentive

It was like something out of an old movie: the teacher droning on while spit wads, paper airplanes and a student (David, my ADHD boy) wandering behind the teacher blithely unaware that she was presenting a lesson.

After her lesson, I asked Betty, my student-teacher, how she felt the lesson went.

            “Oh it went well,” she said,  “I covered all the material.”

Betty determined her success based on how far she got through her notes.  Clearly I had failed as her mentor teacher if that’s how she judged success.

In order to help Betty, I had to examine my own behavior.  What was I doing so my students would stay with me, behave themselves and learn so well? 

The first thing I noticed was that my attention was intensely focused on my students.  I kept asking myself if every student was engaged.  If one or two students had their attention wander off, I instantly changed something to bring them back. 

For Betty to get control of the class, she would need to turn her focus on the students.  The first time a student’s attention wandered off, she would need to bring that student back.

Six Ways to Bring a Student's Attention Back to the Lesson

These are in the order in which they should be tried: from the lightest touch to heaviest.

1.              Give a look at the student who is not paying attention.  This need not be a mean look; it can be one of benign interest.  It can say, “Are you done doing that now, because I need you to pay attention.”  This can be more effective if you interrupt yourself momentarily so the student notices a change and looks up at you.

2.              Make a non-verbal gesture toward the misbehaving student.  For some reason, students do not seem to count non-verbal messages as corrections.  As a result, students don’t feel they lose face among their classmates if a teacher uses a non-verbal correction.  These corrections can be a head shake, a touch to the student’s desk, a finger to the lips, pointing to written directions, pointing to the student’s paper or standing next to the inattentive student. 

Sometimes you need to make a small, attention-getting noise before the non-verbal.  For example, you might snap your fingers or clear your throat, then when David looks at you, then you point to the directions.

3.              Praise students who are following directions.  “I like the way the students in this table group are listening.  If you are following directions, you are doing what these students are doing.”

4.              The first three corrections are the softest.  They usually don’t result in a hit to a student’s self-esteem.  The rest of these carry a cost.  If you use one, you need to find a way to return self-esteem to the student by citing him or her as a model, or some other positive stroke.

Call the student’s name softly.  If you say, “David.” Then when he looks at you, give a little head shake to show him you disapprove, other students will see that it’s not yet time to relax and socialize.

5.              Ask a question.  “Are you following directions?” forces a student to evaluate his behavior and can bring him back to the lessons.  It's usually a mistake to repeat directions.

6.              Give a choice to the student.  For example, Betty could have said to David, “David, you can either return to your seat, or sit here beside me.”  This should always be two choices you and David can both live with, but one choice should always be the conventional behavior that the rest of the class is doing.

Unlike all the student-teachers before and after her, I was never able to lead Betty to the place where she could judge her success by observing her students vs. looking at her lesson plan.  Presenting a lesson while watching her students proved to be beyond her abilities.  Perhaps this was a failure on my part.  Fortunately, Betty decided not to be a teacher.  Some people are not cut out for the job.

Teaching requires a person to multitask.  Perhaps the most important task off all is to keep the attention of the class.

Teacher Tech: Rookie Management Mistakes

Underestimating Teacher-Student Relationships

Alice had issues.  Although possessing plenty of book-smarts, she seemed to be missing any ability to empathize with others, and her dominant personality trait was a selfish impulsivity.  Her universe orbited around itself in an ever narrowing and destructive trajectory.  As a result, she had no friends, consistently irritated her peers, and found herself mired in a nearly relentless state of conflict with students and adults.

I dealt with Alice on the playground and decided I didn’t want her as a student when she got to the grade level I was teaching.  I wanted sweet, cheerful Julie: Alice’s opposite.

You can imagine how I felt when Alice appeared on my list the next fall.  Determined to have a good year with her, I decided to make her my special project.  I would try to form a professional bond with this dislikable person just like I would my emotionally healthy students.  Given how many behavior corrections I knew I would need to make, it seemed a daunting task.

Here was my plan for Alice:

     1.     Give her a cheery personal greeting each day.

     2.     Show an interest in her interests.

3.     Make sure I give her 5 positive comments for every behavior correction.

I had no idea how difficult this plan would turn out to be.  She whirled into the class the first day like a storm –making it one of the worst first-days-of-school I’ve ever had.  She put Julie into tears by telling her that those new shoes were ugly, upset one of my timid IEP boys by telling the class he was dumb and asked me why I looked so much fatter than she remembered.

I found out she loved pugs, a breed of dog I find annoying, and math, a topic I loved.   Each morning I would force myself to cheerfully greet her with a question about her dogs.  I put a special math puzzle on her desk each day.

It was a difficult year, but I found myself truly caring about Alice’s smile when she chattered about her dogs.  She sometimes would follow me on the playground discussing her problems with others and her dreams of being popular some day.  This gave me a chance to counsel Alice about how to make friends.   I had her model her social interactions after Julie.  Alice forced herself to smile more. 

Her mother dropped by class on the last day of school to tell me it was Alice’s best year ever: no suspensions and a birthday party invitation.  Maybe the smiles paid off.

I think the year turned out so well due to the relationship I was able to forge with Alice. 

Robert Marzano, a researcher of effective teaching, writes about how important teacher-student relationships are to a well-managed classroom.  His suggestions include these teacher behaviors:

  •  Talk informally with students before, during, and after class about their interests.

  •  Greet students outside of school—for instance, at extracurricular events or at the store.

  •  Single out a few students each day in the lunchroom and talk with them.

  •  Be aware of and comment on important events in students' lives, such as participation in sports, drama, or other extracurricular activities.

  •  Compliment students on important achievements in and outside of school.

  •  Meet students at the door as they come into class; greet each one by name.

Be sure to check an earlier blog post of mine for some additional ideas on establishing relationships.

If you have an Alice in your class, I suggest you come up with a plan that allows you to form a positive relationship with that student.

To form an effective relationship with a student, you don't need to be that child's friend.  You should maintain an appropriate professional aloofness, but still show special interest, even if it involves pugs.

Teacher Tech: Getting the Class Into A Discussion

Teachers recognize the value of a class discussion. One of the problems with this technique is that some students avoid becoming engaged and give little thought to the topic. Kelli, my student-teacher figured out how to engage everyone.

First, Kelli told the students that she was going to pass out a paper. She instructed the students to put their name on the paper, read it over silently and think about their answer to the first question, but not to write anything besides their name.

It was obvious that students had been trained in how to efficiently distribute papers. In moments, the papers were passed out. Kelli was free to roam and point out models: students who were following directions. By identifying models, Kelli was able to get full compliance in record time.

After students had a few minutes to examine the first question, Kelli explained how she expected the students' answers to look. She put up a model answer on the board, and asked if anyone had questions.

Kelli then announced that students would have 3 minutes to record a rough-draft answer on their sheet.  Afterwards they would share their sheet with a partner assigned by Kelli.

By giving them a time limit, Kelli let her students know that they had no time to waste and needed to get started. When she informed them they would share their answers with a partner, she plugged into the students' desires to look good in front of their peers.

Kelli told her students to begin and snapped her fingers. The snap seemed to wake up a quiet boy in the back who immediately began to work on his sheet. Nearly 100% of students were complying. Kelli approached Elle,our shy girl who appeared very uncomfortable. Later, Kelli told me that since Elle was new and far behind the other students. Kelli told the new girl just to copy the model from the board. Voila! 100% on-task students.

After students had finished their partner sharing—where they were encouraged to change and/or develop their answers based on their peer interactions—Kelli asked if any students wanted to share their answers with the class. A forest of hands went up and an amazing class discussion ensued.

Kelli put the key points on a poster. She planned to use the poster for her next lesson.

What amazed me was how she was able to engage every student in discussion. She said the worksheet caused every student to think about the topic deeply prior to the discussion, so they could all contribute.  Her classroom routines allowed her to move efficiently through her lesson.

Teacher Tech: Getting Control of Your Out-of-Control Class

It was my first class, and I did it badly.  They were often completely out of control.  The only thing that seemed to bring them back was when I yelled over their noise or blocked the door at recess/lunch time until they could become quiet.  My class was an unpleasant place.

How I wish I could go back and make it up to those students!  Especially Booney, my most difficult student.

Since I can’t go back, perhaps I can make it up by helping another teacher gain control over a dysfunctional classroom.  Maybe I can help a Booney out there grow to love school.

Start Over

If your students are noisy and sloppy about following directions, you’ve basically trained them to be that way.  They know that if you “get mad” and force them to be quiet, in a few minutes it will be perfectly all right to strike up a conversation.  The signal for students to start up a conversation is for one student to begin talking and not face a correction by the teacher.

Simply improving your behavior management will result in slow, uneven progress.  You will need to tell your students that the class will be different.  

Name It

If you name the set of classroom behaviors you want, your students can understand the change better.  For example, if you say, “Today we are going to do things the Westgate Way for the next lesson.”  Then you explain the Westgate Way is when we work quietly during independent times and raise hands to contribute to a discussion or ask a question.  Later you can do the Westgate Way all the time.

Control Yourself

Your class can never learn a new way of behavior unless you discipline yourself.  Be patient with yourself as you learn this and feel free to point out to your students that you are learning the Westgate Way as well.

Here’s what you will have to learn:

•            Never talk over your students.  Never.  You won’t give directions or deliver content while they are talking or not paying attention.

Rookie teachers often talk over students.  They, like I did, probably figure that since most students appear attentive, it's ok to talk.

Signals

If you teach your students to respond to practiced signals, you can get and keep their attention with very little effort.  Teach them some behaviors to do on a signal like Heads Down, Hide Your Eyes, Clear Your Desk, and Sit On Your Hands.  Other signals like Echo Clapping, Hands on Your Head if You Can Hear Me, should also be in your toolkit.  These behaviors and signals should be age-appropriate. 

Practice and reinforce your signals and realize that each time you use a signal, it loses power.  If you do Echo Clapping more than once or twice in a 45 minute period, you are over-using it.  If students do not respond correctly to a signal, practice it then avoid using it so it can become fresh and effective in a future lesson.

You can limit distractions and use carefully planned seating arrangements to help students become successful at the Westgate Way.

•  Make sure each and every student follows your directions.

This means you need to be very careful about what you say to your class.  If you say No talking, when would it be ok for them to talk?  Should they wait until you are busy, then talk?  That’s how they got out of control in the first place.   Don’t tell them No talking unless they know when they can begin talking. 

Is it reasonable to expect a class full of children to work quietly for 45 minutes?  Some teachers tell the class something like this You need to work silently for the next 5 minutes, then only use quiet voices so you don’t disturb the other children working nearby.  Watch the clock and your students like a hawk and confront any student who talks prior to the 5 minutes.

Use the least harsh corrections first.  If you smile sweetly and put your finger to your lips to signal a student who’s talking out of turn, that’s a less harsh correction that telling the student to follow directions.  If the non-verbal doesn’t work, ask a question.  If you say Booney, is our 5 minutes up yet? that’s less harsh than Booney, quiet down.

If you tell your students to raise a hand to ask a question, you can not respond to a called out question.  If a student calls out a question, you should ignore it and call on a student whose hand is up or look directly at the student who called out and raise your hand and smile so he knows what you want him to do.

• Make Sure They Know What To Do When Done

After a student finishes an assignment, there should be clear expectations about what to do next.  If the class is noisy, then silent reading is an unrealistic expectation.  Some teachers deal with this by having on-going projects students can work on.  For example, a poster or comic strip about a topic the class is discussing.  The when-you-are-done activity should be clear prior to students starting their independent practice.

•  Constantly analyze the work you give your students to determine if it’s at the right difficulty level.

Even the most compliant student will misbehave when the work is too easy or too hard.  One way to address this is to have an example up on the board and whisper to your low-ability student that she can copy the example.  Have an engaging extension ready for your high-ability students.

Avoid giving assignments with short, fill-in-the-blank answers, but instead, provide opportunities for students to write their responses out.  Put examples of strong student efforts up in front of the class (after getting permission from the student) to show what you want and what they are capable of doing.

•  Point out success.

How do you know when you are riding a bike correctly?  It just feels right.  Students need to know how a pleasant, well-functioning classroom feels.  Maybe one of your behavior signals is FREEZE!

I have “frozen” my class when they are behaving perfectly and told them that this is what they should expect in a class: hardworking students who are enjoying their learning.  I tell them they should feel good about their behavior and decide that next time we have independent work, this is how they will approach the time.

There are other aspects and techniques to learning how to get your out-of-control class on track.  This article was meant as a place to start.   A teacher can further improve classroom management skills by observing other teachers, asking a principal or colleague to teach a lesson in the class and reading up on the subject.

I remember what my first principal told me when I complained to him about my out of control class, If Booney misbehaves, he needs to learn control.  If the whole class is misbehaving, the teacher needs to learn control.

The Flipped Classroom: How Mr. Crowsen Would be Teaching Today

My high school geometry teacher, Mr. Crowsen, would put our assignment on the board at the end of class.  Typically we would need to read the next section as homework and do the practice problems.   In class, we would correct these then begin on the next section.  Mr. Crowsen was an assigner/corrector.   He never really taught us anything in a lecture.

In the early 1990’s a lot of teachers were talking about allowing students to construct their own meaning and knowledge based on teacher-assigned explorations.  This style was known as “guide on the side” since it was so different from the strict lecture format known as “sage on the stage”.  Perhaps Mr. Crowsen, our head football coach, was trying to get us to construct our own meanings, but I think he just didn’t want to teach.

Now we hear a lot about the flipped classroom.  This is a model where students  go home and watch a web-based video  that contains the content the teacher wants the student to learn.  The student then completes exercises and discusses them the following day with the teacher.  Depending on the student’s performance, the next video is assigned.  This system reminds me of Mr. Crowsen’s style with the improvement of videos over the dry math book for conveying the content. 

Another advantage of the flipped classroom over Mr. Crowsen’s technique is that motivated students are able to move more quickly through the material.

After Mr. Crowsen’s class, I would go to Mrs. Tyler’s English class.  I remember a lesson where she had us read a chapter of Huck Finn at home.  The following day she had us rank the characters from least moral to most moral.  Our task was to come up with the correct ranking.  After doing this individually, we met with a partner and made any changes to our ranking.  Finally, Mrs. Tyler revealed her ranking: the right answer.  However, it was different from mine. 

What followed was an amazing discussion of right and wrong that explored historical, religious and literary interpretations of morality.  Mrs. Tyler urged us to think about To Kill a Mocking Bird and the morality in that book.  I emerged from that class a different person.  Mrs. Tyler had caused me to question my own believes and marvel at the skill of the writers.  I burned to understand and to read more.

What if Mrs. Tyler had been an assigner/correcter?  Would I have become the person I am today?  I think not.

The flipped classroom certainly has a legitimate place in modern education, but it’s far too weak a model to replace an engaging, encouraging teacher and a transformative classroom discussion.  Sorry Mr. Crowsen, I don’t remember any of your lessons.