STUDENT ENGAGEMENT
Student engagement is one of the most important factors of education. Without engagement, teachers cannot ensure the success of all of their students. When it comes to student engagement, making lessons fun and focusing on classroom management is important. However, while fun activities and classroom management help to keep students interested and present in class, it does not solve the problem of getting students engaged through the entire education process and creating life-long learners. John Hattie (2012) states: "Attention needs to move from how to teach to how to learn - only after teachers understand how each student learns can they move on to make decisions about how to teach" (pg. 103).
Learning for so long has been seen as a passive act -- one that cannot be seen directly, but is inferred to have occurred based on assessments and performance. John Hattie (2012) believes that it is the job of the teacher to make learning visible. An environment must be created where risk-taking is the norm; one where there is "some form of tension, some realization of 'not knowing', a commitment to want and understand" (pg. 103). Hattie also suggests that for learning to occur in this environment, teachers must provide guidance in this risky undertaking and that the "operative requirement to enhance student learning is for teachers to see this learning through the eyes of the student" (pg. 103).
Learning for so long has been seen as a passive act -- one that cannot be seen directly, but is inferred to have occurred based on assessments and performance. John Hattie (2012) believes that it is the job of the teacher to make learning visible. An environment must be created where risk-taking is the norm; one where there is "some form of tension, some realization of 'not knowing', a commitment to want and understand" (pg. 103). Hattie also suggests that for learning to occur in this environment, teachers must provide guidance in this risky undertaking and that the "operative requirement to enhance student learning is for teachers to see this learning through the eyes of the student" (pg. 103).
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Backwards DesignUnderstanding by design and backwards design focuses on identifying the desired results and then working backwards towards lesson plans and lesson progressions that will help get the students to the desired result. Backward Design is unit design method to reverse engineer how to get learners to know, understand and do goals that are set before anything else is done.
This is contrary to other design methods because instead of selecting learning activities then deciding what and how to test if goals have been met teachers first decide what students will know and be able to do. This is followed by determining what evidence will be collect to prove the goal has been met. Finally, the learning activities are selected to ensure that every step of the process is aligned and always moving toward the goal(s). There are three phases of the backwards design process:
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Student GroupingWhen done effectively, student grouping can be a great strategy for teachers and students when working with new or practicing content. Students are able to learn from their peers which promotes teamwork. Grouping can be used to benefit students' learning process by relying and using their classmates to gain an understanding of where they are in their journey to success.
Teachers can use student grouping to help assist peer interaction and provide help and assistance for those students that would benefit as they work through difficult content. “The aim is to not necessarily to group students by their phase of learning, etc., but rather to group by a mixture of those at and those +1 above, so that peer mediation can be part of moving all forward,” (Hattie, 2012, pg. 110). Ben Johnson (2014), in his article Student Learning Groups: Homogeneous or Heterogeneous? sites Marzano, Pickering and Pollock stating that effective learning in groups must have at least the following elements:
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See Some Examples & Resources:
Differentiation |
Backwards Design
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Student Feedback
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Student Grouping |
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