How Do We Know When Students Are Engaged?

Educational author and former teacher, Dr. Michael Schmoker shares in his book, Results Now, a study that found of 1,500 classrooms visited, 85 percent of them had engaged less than 50 percent of the students. In other words, only 15 percent of the classrooms had more than half of the class at least paying attention to the lesson. So, how do they know if a student is engaged? What do “engaged” students look like? Teacher-Directed Learning You will see students…

Paying attention (alert, tracking with their eyes)
Taking notes (particularly Cornell)
Listening (as opposed to chatting, or sleeping)
Asking questions (content related, or in a game, like 21 questions or I-Spy)
Responding to questions (whole group, small group, four corners, Socratic Seminar)
Following requests (participating, Total Physical Response (TPR), storytelling, Simon Says)
Reacting (laughing, crying, shouting, etc.)

Student-Directed Learning You see students individually or in small groups…

Reading critically (with pen in hand)
Writing to learn, creating, planning, problem solving, discussing, debating, and asking questions)
Performing/presenting, inquiring, exploring, explaining, evaluating, and experimenting)
Interacting with other students, gesturing and moving

The solution is simple: If a teacher wants to increase student engagement, then the teacher needs to increase student activity — ask the students to do something with the knowledge and skills they have learned. Break up the lecture with learning activities. Let them practice. Get them moving. Get them talking. Make it so engaging that it will be difficult for students not to participate.

The ultimate engagement is to put the learner in charge of learning. Create a rich learning environment and a motivation to learn, and the students do all the hard work of learning, while the teacher merely facilitates.

SMALLab Learning specializes in creating rich learning scenarios, custom-made motivators and engaging learning content. With Flow, students are up out of their seats – playfully engaged – and physically moving as they learn. We have a track record of research demonstrating that embodied learning has a positive impact on student achievement.

From a special blog series from Edutopia, March 1st, 2012. Ben Johnson served as an administrator in large and small schools, and at a charter school. He was the assistant superintendent of the Natalia Independent School District where he helped bring about major improvements in student learning.