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In today’s post, we’re diving into student engagement—in my opinion, a term that gets tossed around often BUT is absolutely vital to effective teaching and classroom management. So, first we’ll take a look at what is student engagement and why it is important. Next, I’ll share five strategies to improve student engagement in your classroom. Are you ready? Let’s dive in!

What is student engagement and why is it important?

In short, student engagement means students are actively involved in learning with an emphasis on their attention, interest, and curiosity. All of which boost motivation. Which is what we really want as teachers, right? The more motivated students are, the more they have opportunities to connect with the content and build knowledge. This really is the number one reason!

Student engagement is just one piece to an effective lesson plan. Check out this other blog post for 4 Factors to Consider When Planning a Lesson to help you plan out your next lesson (perfect for that formal observation that might be coming up!).

But there’s another reason for focusing on student engagement strategies and that’s classroom management! The more students are invested, motivated and excited about what they're learning, the less likely you're going to have behaviors pop up. The less behaviors we have, the easier our job is AND more learning can happen. It all ties together! (High five for that!)

Now let’s take a look at my top five tips on how to boost your student engagement!

1. Hook Them In

The first step to improve student engagement is to hook your students. Find ways to get them excited, interested, or curious about whatever content that you have planned that you're rolling out in your lesson. This doesn’t mean you need an elaborate setup that takes hours to plan or prep—trust me, small, simple strategies go a long way!

Some ideas are to:

Include real-world applications
Find things that they can relate to that they're interested in
Pique their interest a little bit and their curiosity

For instance, when I taught finding text evidence, I connected the learning target and the idea of being “detectives” to an actual mystery-like text about Amelia Earhart’s disappearance. As a result, my students were eager to gather evidence for their own theories and were truly engaged in the lesson. By connecting this lesson to real-world ideas and engaging their curiosity, students then applied their “detective” skills in future texts and applications.

2. Chunk It

What I mean by “chunking it” is to take a lesson and break it into manageable size pieces for your students. Now, I don't know about you, but if I were to sit through a lesson (or a meeting) where I'm supposed to be attaining content and from start to finish there's never a moment to pause or process the information, I am going to struggle to not only grasp that content but also to retain it, and to stay engaged. So, we can’t expect our students to be any different! Breaking lessons into manageable “chunks” helps students stay engaged and better process the information.

For example, during math with my second graders, I might have started with instruction at their desks, then intentionally shifted to different activities, such as whiteboard practice, at the rug. Or with my fifth graders, although their stamina for reading longer passages is an expectation, I would strategically stop my students to turn and talk with a partner or stop and jot something from their reading.

This constant change of pace keeps their focus fresh and improves retention and it just gives students a moment to pause and process.

3. Keep Them Moving and Talking

Physical movement and conversation activate different parts of the brain. The more areas of our brain that we can activate, the more connections we can make to learning. Do you remember Howard Gardner and his multiple intelligences theories? Yep, going a bit old school here, but essentially, he taught that we all have different strengths in how we learn. So, the more we can tap into those different ways of learning, the better it is for our students. Kinesthetic activities can help our students learn in fun and creative ways as well as increases blood flow throughout their bodies. And intentional academic discourse allows students to articulate their thoughts verbally and learn from their peers.

For additional ideas on student discourse strategies, be sure to check this resource here! These templates and strategies can make all the difference in keeping your students engaged in content-based discussions.

4. Prompt with Action

Does this strategy sound familiar? Th teacher prompts the class with a question and students raise their hand to answer, teacher calls on a student and moves on with the lesson. This is such a traditional way of teaching (like it's the way that I grew up in school and I and many other teachers still utilize this strategy). However, how many of your students are truly engaged with this type of teaching strategy? Not as many as you probably think! Because as you know, when you ask a question, you always have the same kids raising their hand, right? And then what are the rest of the students doing? You truly have no idea! You don't know if they're thinking about their answer or if they're thinking about something like Minecraft or Pokemon! They could have just checked out and you wouldn't even know it! Now, I’m not saying don’t ever use this strategy, but there’s a better method for students to actively show their understanding

Prompt with ACTION! Here’s some examples:

Whiteboards are an excellent tool for this. During a math lesson, have every student write their answer on a whiteboard or in other subject areas have them write a word or picture to demonstrate understanding.
Stop and jot is a great strategy to write ideas and thoughts during a lesson. This can be done on paper, post-it notes, etc,
Student discourse allows students to articulate their thoughts and actively listen to their peers.
Show an answer by moving to another area or the room or stand up vs sit down to represent answers can provide opportunites for all students to participate. For more discrete methods, you have students show thumbs up, thumbs down or show 1,2,3,4 fingers to represent an answer at their seats.

By prompting with an action, you can instantly see who’s on track. This also gives every student the opportunities to actively participate rather than passively observing or even checking out!

5. Model Engagement

I'm sure just like me, there are subjects that you love and subjects that you don't love, especially for elementary teachers. As you know, we have to teach it all, right? And we might not be as passionate about teaching some subjects over others.

When I taught third grade, a student once asked me what was my favorite subject to teach. I responded that reading was my favorite. The student then commented on how they thought math was my favorite because I seemed most excited during our math lessons. Now trust me when I say, math is NOT my favorite! However, I realized in that moment that by actively engaging with the material and showing genuine interest, I encouraged my students to join in.

Engagement is contagious! If you’re excited about the content, your students will pick up on it. Even in subjects that might not be your personal favorite, find aspects that interest you, and let that enthusiasm shine through. Remember it’s not about entertainment…it’s about modeling a love of learning.

Alright, friends, that wraps up my top five tips for boosting student engagement in your classroom! You can use these strategies across any subject area and at any point in your lesson when you want to spark that extra excitement. I hope these ideas make it easier to keep your students engaged for learning and help cut down on those tricky classroom behaviors.