The Year of Student Engagement

As a new year approaches everyone is reflecting on the past year and planning for the upcoming one. As a teacher, I always journal my reflections and plans for the new year. As I have reflected on 2019 and thought about what worked well in my classroom and areas that I wish could be improved, one of the things that I feel very confident and proud of was my ability to create a learning environment with student engagement as the focus.

As many of you know, this school year I decided to make a move to an unfamiliar grade level. I had never taught 3rd grade but I wanted to take a leap and try something new to help build my teaching experience. That meant I was going to be able to loop with my 2nd graders to 3rd grade. I had never looped with a class and taught them more than one year and I was very eager to see how it would go. I was excited to have all 22 of them choose to go with me to 3rd grade and we were ready to do it again together!

The beginning of the school year was a breeze! I didn’t have to build a classroom community (because we already had one) and focus so much of our time on rules and procedures because all my students knew how things worked in my classroom. We, of course reviewed and practiced but I was very happy with how easy the start of the year went. I was off to a great start thinking this was going to be a total breeze! That quickly changed after just a few weeks! I started noticing that my 22 second graders that are now eager third graders were becoming bored with the old way of doing things. They needed new and exciting things because they were big deal 3rd graders! I had to really start digging into my magician hat of tricks to get them to love 3rd grade. I didn’t need to go buy things to excite them. I didn’t have to invent something new to gain their interest. I just needed to build student engagement. 

Without student engagement your lessons and activities won’t be meaningful and I believe that students will remember the importance of the lesson focus only if they are engaged and interested. So what is student engagement? This teaching term can look very different in each of our classrooms. For some teachers music, songs and dancing help build an engaging community. For others the use of science, technology and STEAM grabs their student’s attention. You are the teacher. You are the pilot of the classroom airplane. You decide which direction you will go and what tools you will use. When you are planning lessons think about what you are comfortable with doing and what excites you. I am not a natural talented singer. In fact, nobody wants me to sing in any choir. Music isn’t my intelligence. I love to play music and dance but it isn’t the only way to build student engagement in MY classroom. We are teaching in a time where social media plays a huge part in what we do in the classroom. We see AMAZING things happening in other classrooms and feel it is necessary to do that same thing in our classrooms but that isn’t the truth! You need to create your own way! You are a creative and talented teacher. You went into this profession to share your love of learning with students. Don’t get me wrong, you might find some great ideas out there and give them a try and see that they do work in your classroom but you may also find that some can be a total flop. This upcoming year, my hope is that you really get to know yourself as the classroom teacher. Do what you love and feel will benefit your students!

So what did I do in August when I realized my class needed some excitement and newness? I decided to make a list of my students and next to their names listed their interests and what they are good at. I decided to start pulling my student’s interests and intelligences in how I engaged them in my 3rd grade classroom. I got to know my same students from last year even more this year by focusing on them!

Let me tell you about a 10 letter word that has changed my entire classroom for the better.  If you look up the word technology integration on Wikipedia this is what you will find.

Technology integration is defined as the use of technology to enhance and support the educational environment. Technology integration in the classroom can also support classroom instruction by creating opportunities for students to complete assignments on the computer rather than with normal pencil and paper.

My students love using their love of technology in our lessons. So as I plan my units I always make sure we are utilizing the tools that we have available in our classroom. We can make learning come to life by using the tablets, laptops, and websites to create meaningful lessons for our students to remember and love. We have a classroom of brilliant minds. They are capable of doing so much if we just allow them the opportunity.

This year thanks to Nearpod, my students have become some of the most interested learners I’ve ever taught. They ask meaningful questions about the world around them because I am using technology as a way to build the student engagement. They are diving deeper into content because they want to know more. Nearpod gives students that access. They can learn, research, create and do so much with just the use of one device or platform. Now my students ask often, “Are we using Nearpod today Mrs. Ellsworth?”

Not only does Nearpod excite students but it helps teachers with lesson planning and creating. It gives you the tools to build lessons with student response, conversations and checking for understanding. Not to mention my student’s favorite part of Nearpod… the virtual field trips. This year my 3rd graders are learning all about Arizona history as part of our new state standards. Unfortunately, we can’t travel to all these places that we are learning about but we can bring them to life by showing them virtually with Nearpod. The moment I saw my student’s eyes light up when they got to see a 360 degree tour of the Petrified Forest, I knew this was what students engagement really is for my classroom!

My extra time thinking about each one of my students and how they learn best, paid off in the end because I know that most 9 year olds love using technology and then I have a few others who have this intelligence to teach it to others. Nearpod will continue to be a huge part of my 2020 lesson planning because student engagement really is all that matters.

If you are interested in learning more about Nearpod and bringing it into your classroom this upcoming year click here and get started with a free membership. You will quickly see how great this program is and will want to do more with it. Nearpod has different membership levels and you can learn more about Nearpod today!

Remember make this upcoming year a year of student engagement for your students and their future!