Fifty Strategies to Boost Cognitive Engagement


Book Description

The author presents 50 teacher-tested instructional strategies for nurturing students' cognitive abilities across the full range of thinking levels and building a culture of thinking that emphasizes essential 21st century skills- from critical thinking and problem solving to teamwork and creativity.




Creating an Actively Engaged Classroom


Book Description

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.




Assessing Critical Thinking in Middle and High Schools


Book Description

This practical, very effective resource helps middle and high school teachers and curriculum leaders develop the skills to design instructional tasks and assessments that engage students in higher-level critical thinking, as recommended by the Common Core State Standards. Real examples of formative and summative assessments from a variety of content areas are included and demonstrate how to successfully increase the level of critical thinking in every classroom! This book is also an excellent resource for higher education faculty to use in undergraduate and graduate courses on assessment and lesson planning.




Assessing Critical Thinking in Elementary Schools


Book Description

This practical, very effective resource helps elementary school teachers and curriculum leaders develop the skills to design instructional tasks and assessments that engage students in higher-level critical thinking, as recommended by the Common Core State Standards. Real examples of formative and summative assessments from a variety of content areas are included and demonstrate how to successfully increase the level of critical thinking in every elementary classroom! This book is also an excellent resource for higher education faculty to use in undergraduate and graduate courses on assessment and lesson planning.




Student Engagement


Book Description

This book provides cutting-edge, evidence-based strategies and interventions that target students’ engagement at school and with learning. Coverage begins with the background and 29-year history of the Check & Connect Model and describes the model and assessment of student engagement that served as the backdrop for conceptualizing the engagement interventions described in the book. Subsequent chapters are organized around the subtypes of student engagement – academic, behavioral, affective, cognitive – that were developed based on work with the Check & Connect Model. Principles and formal interventions are presented at both the universal and more intensive levels, consistent with the Response-to-Intervention/Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) framework. The book concludes with a summary on the lessons learned from Check & Connect and the importance of a system that is oriented toward enhancing engagement and school completion for all students. Interventions featured in this book include: Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS). The Homework, Organization, and Planning Skills (HOPS) Intervention. The Good Behavior Game in the classroom. Check-in, Check-out (CICO). Banking Time, a dyadic intervention to improve teacher-student relationships The Self-Regulation Empowerment Program (SREP). Student Engagement is a must-have resource for researchers, professionals, and graduate students in child and school psychology, educational policy and politics, and family studies.




Total Participation Techniques


Book Description

Providing easy-to-use alternatives to the “stand and deliver” approach to teaching that causes so many students to tune out--or even drop out--Total Participation Techniques presents dozens of ways to engage K–12 students in active learning and allow them to demonstrate the depth of their knowledge and understanding. The authors, Pérsida Himmele and William Himmele, explain both the why and the how of Total Participation Techniques (TPTs) as they explore the high cost of student disengagement, place TPTs in the context of higher-order thinking and formative assessments, and demonstrate how to create a “TPT-conducive classroom.” Readers will learn how to implement field-tested techniques they can use on the spot (e.g., Quick-Draws, Quick-Writes, Chalkboard Splash); with Hold-Up cards (e.g., True/Not True, Selected Response); with movement (e.g., Bounce Cards, Line-Ups, Simulations); and to guide note-taking and concept analysis (e.g., Picture Notes, 3-Sentence Wrap-Up, Debate Team Carousel). Each TPT is presented in four parts: * A descriptive overview * How It Works--step-by-step instructions for implementation * How to Ensure Higher-Order Thinking--ideas for advancing students beyond surface-level thinking * Pause to Apply--suggestions for how to adapt and personalize the technique for specific contexts and content areas Filled with examples from real classrooms, Total Participation Techniques is an essential toolkit for teachers at all levels and for administrators who want a model for analyzing lessons to ensure that they are relevant, engaging, and cognitively challenging.




The Highly Engaged Classroom


Book Description

Student engagement happens as a result of a teacher’s careful planning and execution of specific strategies. This self-study text provides in-depth understanding of how to generate high levels of student attention and engagement. Using the suggestions in this book, every teacher can create a classroom environment where engagement is the norm, not the exception.




Ready-to-Go Instructional Strategies That Build Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking


Book Description

Craft a culture of engaging, student-centered learning! Meaningful instruction in today’s world of information overload is a demanding task, however, effective instructional strategies increase the odds that students are actively learning and getting prepared for the world beyond school. Alisa H. Braddy and Denise White were questioned continuously over their years as professional development specialists about where teachers could find all the valuable tools they had just learned. This book is the answer! In addition to actual scenarios and vignettes, other features include Reflection questions to challenge readers’ thinking and push them into action A matrix highlighting the benefits of each strategy at-a-glance Step-by-step procedures for implementing strategies Adaptations for various grade levels and subject areas Intended to satisfy teachers’ cravings to make sense of all the standards, initiatives, and other demands, this essential resource presents teachers, administrators, and instructional coaches with the tools to provide intentional, purposeful instruction.




Five Paths of Student Engagement: Blazing the Trail to Learning and Success (Your Guide to Promoting Active Engagement in the Classroom and Improving


Book Description

This is a breakthrough book on student engagement. Join Dennis Shirley and Andy Hargreaves, two award-winning authors and leaders in their field, on a profound educational quest that will take you through exciting and challenging terrain. Five Paths of Student Engagement will open your eyes, heart and mind and empower you to implement practices that lead directly to your students' well-being, learning, and success. By integrating psychological and sociological perspectives, and using inspiring examples from seven years of research, this book delves deeply into the what, why, and how of student engagement. It reveals who and what the true enemies of student engagement are, and shows you how to defeat them. It will enrich and reward your work for years to come. Utilize research-based strategies to promote active engagement in the classroom and build the foundation for student growth: Learn why active engagement is the new frontier of student achievement. Understand how engaging students means so much more than defeating boredom. Consider psychological and sociological theories that cast new light on engagement and motivation. Reflect on how engagement is about mystery and magic, meaning and purpose, and focus and mastery. Understand why increasing classroom engagement requires much more than surveys, rubrics and observation protocols. Learn strategies to battle all five enemies of engagement in order to engage students totally and motivate unmotivated students. Explore five clear paths of engagement that lead to improving student learning and success that all teachers and schools can embark upon immediately. Contents: Preface Chapter 1: From Achievement to Engagement--Two Ages of Educational Change Chapter 2: Theories of Engagement and Motivation--From Maslow to Flow Chapter 3: Three Myths of Engagement--Relevance, Technology, and Fun Chapter 4: The Five Enemies of Engagement--How to Defeat Them Chapter 5: Standardized Testing--The Archenemy of Engagement Chapter 6: The Five Pathways of Student Engagement--In Theory and Practice Chapter 7: The Promise of Engagement--A Battle for Change References Index




Teaching for Deeper Learning


Book Description

Far too often, our students attain only a superficial level of knowledge that fails to prepare them for deeper challenges in school and beyond. In Teaching for Deeper Learning, renowned educators and best-selling authors Jay McTighe and Harvey F. Silver propose a solution: teaching students to make meaning for themselves. Contending that the ability to "earn" understanding will equip students to thrive in school, at work, and in life, the authors highlight seven higher-order thinking skills that facilitate students' acquisition of information for greater retention, retrieval, and transfer. These skills, which cut across content areas and grade levels and are deeply embedded in current academic standards, separate high achievers from their low-performing peers. Drawing on their deep well of research and experience, the authors - Explore what kind of content is worth having students make meaning about. - Provide practical tools and strategies to help teachers target each of the seven thinking skills in the classroom. - Explain how teachers can incorporate the thinking skills and tools into lesson and unit design. - Show how teachers can build students' capacity to use the strategies independently. If our goal is to prepare students to meet the rigorous demands of school, college, and career, then we must foster their ability to respond to such challenges. This comprehensive, practical guide will enable teachers to engage students in the kind of learning that yields enduring understanding and valuable skills that they can use throughout their lives.