Is Student Engagement Easy to Evaluate?

One of the many common educational beliefs teachers can have is that student engagement is easy to figure out. That is, scanning the room quickly can determine whether or not a particular student, a group of students, or the entire class is engaged in the task at hand. However, being able to make this determination is much harder than we think.

Huh? 

I know, I have definitely fallen into thinking that I can just look at the class to see if their eyes are at the front or see if they are completing the task they have been given to complete in a group or alone and determine from there whether or not they are engaged. What I have been looking for is not engagement, but rather compliance; engagement and compliance are not the same thing.

When a student is engaged, they are actively thinking about the concepts being presented to them and thinking about them at a level that challenges them to grow in their understanding of the concepts in a captivating way. I emphasize the "and" because students are not engaged if the content is too easy or too challenging for them. With the former, the thinking that is taking place is simple recall that is relatively mindless; thus, their engagement to the task in very minimal. On the flip side, if the task is too challenging, the student is likely to become frustrated and becomes disengaged as a result, I understand that these arguments are seemingly only pertaining to activities given to students. However, the same logic can be translated to any classroom discussion or lecture. For students who already understand the concepts, they can appear to be engaged by looking at the teacher, but mentally they could be checked-out due to boredom. On the other hand, students who do not have the prior background knowledge cannot be appropriately engaged in the dialogue happening as they are unable to process what they are hearing. Despite this phenomenon, students are learning how to adapt their behavior and appearance in class so that they can look to be engaged (Price, 2014). We must then work to captivate students, hopefully just as much as Jon Stewart is here.

Now how do we accomplish this? Ellen Skinner and Michael Belmont offer a motivation model for the psychological needs of a students in order for the student to become engaged.

Skinner & Belmont, 1993 

They also offer an argument that there is a reciprocal relationship between teacher behavior and student engagement that justifies this model. Take a look at the abstract of the article below to see a summary of the article's premise and findings related to the model. The entire article does a nice of explaining this phenomenon.

In a different study, Helen Marks looked to examine student engagement at the elementary, middle, and high school levels through three driving questions. The first concerned how the student's orientation to school, or their perception of school, impacted engagement. Marks found that "at all grade levels, positive orientation toward school, as reflected in school success, solidly predicts engagement; negative orientation, as reflected in alienation, just as solidly predicts disengagement." For the second question, Marks examined the efficacy of authentic instructional work and social support. It was found that, for all students, authentic instructional work contributes strongly to student engagement as well as social support of learning (i.e. a positive classroom environment and parental involvement). Finally, with her third research question, it was found that the subject matter influenced engagement at the elementary and high school levels, but not at the middle school level. It is important to keep these findings in mind when evaluating student engagement.  

Shedding more light on student engagement, Adene Klem and James Connell worked to show the relationship between student engagement and teacher support. They are summarize their findings well below.

"These results indicate teacher support is important to student engagement in school as reported by students and teachers. Students who perceive teachers as creating a caring, well-structured learning environment in which expectations are high, clear, and fair are more likely to report engagement in school. In turn, high levels of engagement are associated with higher attendance and test scores - variables that strongly predict whether youth will successfully complete school and ultimately pursue post-secondary education and achieve economic self-sufficiency. Links between teacher support, student engagement, and academic performance and commitment hold for both elementary and middle school students, providing further support for an indirect link between student experience of support and academic performance through student engagement" (Klem & Connell, 2004).

These results indicate teacher support is important to

student engagement

in

school as reported by students and

teachers. Students who perceive teachers as creating a

caring, well-structured learning environment in which

expectations are high, clear, and fair are more likely to

report engagement

in

school. In turn, high levels

of

engage-

ment are associated

with

higher attendance and test scores

-

variables that strongly predict whether youth

will

successfully complete school and ultimately pursue post-

secondary education and achieve economic self-

sufficiency.” Links between teacher support, student

engagement, and academic performance and commitment

hold for both elementary and middle school students,

providing further support for an indirect link between

student experience of support and academic performance

through student engagement.

With all of this in mind, I would have to agree that evaluating student engagement is definitely complex. We can see from the research that it depends on variables outside the classroom; thus, these studies provide evidence that glancing around the room is not sufficient in determining classroom engagement. Even though it may be challenging to reach an accurate conclusion of the engagement of learners in the classroom, it does not change the fact that we, as teacher, should still strive to create lessons that are accessible and challenging to all learners (i.e. differentiated instruction) and captivate their attention in an effort to engage them in the learning process. If a teacher would say that student engagement is too complex to strive for, I would say that we are doing a disservice to our students and not giving them the learning opportunities we deserve. We should be constantly searching for the many ways we can engage learners, even though it might mean leading lessons in an array of formats so that we reach all learners. C'mon, who wouldn't want to see smiles like this everyday from their students? 

References

Klem, A. M., & Connell, J. P. (2004). Relationships matter: Linking teacher support to student engagement and achievement. Journal of school health,74(7), 262-273.

Marks, H. M. (2000). Student engagement in instructional activity: Patterns in the elementary, middle, and high school years. American educational research journal, 37(1), 153-184.

Price, D. (2014).  Are your students engaged?  Don’t be so sure.  Retrieved from http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/01/21/are-your-students-engaged-dont-be-so-sure/

Skinner, E. A., & Belmont, M. J. (1993). Motivation in the classroom: Reciprocal effects of teacher behavior and student engagement across the school year. Journal of educational psychology, 85(4), 571.

Transcending Engagement Beyond Review Games

This past week, my partnering teacher assistant and I were observed leading a lesson for Math 8 students where we reviewed their review unit on integers by playing Integers Jeopardy, a Jeopardy game the two of us created. The lesson itself went really well, only having to work out a few kinks. What I noticed most about this lesson was that student engagement in this lesson was the highest I have seen thus far. Every single student seemed hooked into the game! Granted, it is not surprising that it would come during the first game we played. However, it did get me thinking as to how I can bring 100% engagement into the classroom daily. After all, wouldn't we all like to see each student raising their hands as eagerly as Hermione is?

Sara Van Der Werf's article on achieving 100% was definitely helpful in learning about ways to increase daily engagement. I'm going to summarize a few of her methods here that I found the most helpful and will look to implement here, but please feel free to check out the article or her video presentation for more methods.

Unfair to Assume
The first method she hits on is to model the engagement we are looking for. She makes an excellent point in stating that we cannot assume students know how to function in our classroom. We must teach and model how to engage in group work, partner work, and other social norms in our classrooms so that students can be successfull in our classrooms and we can see the engagment we want to see. For me, when I have my own classroom, I will take time at the beginning of the year to teach these norms in the first few days of the school year with a rich, accessible task (task TBD).

Changing the Language
Instead of asking "What questions do you have?," what if we started asking "What do you notice?" or "What are you wondering?" What kind of responses would we be getting? My bet is that we would see more than the same few students responding and it would lead to some rich mathemtical converstations that would lead to the breakdown of misconceptions and thus deeper conceptual understanding. Further, what if we changed "explain" to "convince me"? Again, I would bet that the responses would allow us to peer deeper into the minds of students and engagment in the mathematics would soar, since they are being required to display conceptual understanding.

Stand and Talks
I'm guessing that most of us are familiar with Think, Pair, Share and that a good chunk also use it in their classroom. Now, does it happen exclusively with students adjacent to each other? If so, what do you think about adding movement to it? Instead of the activity being essentially sit and talks, they would now be transformed into stand and talks. Adding this movement piece gets student up and moving, which can only benefit students. The movement engages the students not only with the mathematics, but also more students within the classroom.

Partner Work, Not Group Work
One of the chief complaints of group work is that one student does all the work and/or other students not doing any work at all. Van Der Wark argues that changing it up so that students work in pairs will work to resolve this issue. In supplying the partnership with one set of materials, the students must rely on each other and thus must both be engaged in the task and discussing the mathematics at hand. This method makes it difficult for students to hide.

With these in mind, I can see how the tasks already going on in my teacher assisting placement can be easily transformed to tasks that have a stronger impact on students. The unit I am planning will definitely includes some of these elements in the math workshop style lessons. I cannot wait to test these out and work toward bringing engagement levels to 100% on a daily basis!

Questions: Unquestionably Important

With one on my goals for the semester being to promote productive struggle, the types of questions I am asking students becomes a critical component in reaching this goal. So far, I am finding myself being successful in some situations but stuck in others, both in leading parts or all of a lesson and assisting students when they ask question. Some of these questions are leaving students like this.

Uh oh, that's not what I want at all. Rather, the questions I am asking should be leaving students thinking deeply and productively so that they can make sense of the mathematics at hand and have a reaction like Andy Dwyer after taking the time to think about the question.

"Oh, I understand it! It makes sense!"

Given that this reaction has not always been commonplace as of late, Steven Reinhart's article "Never Say Anything a Kid Can Say!" was definitely a helpful read! There were many takeaways from this article, and I would like to share a couple of them here: one involving leading a lesson and one about helping students.

"Be Patient. Wait Time is Very Important."(Reinhardt, p. 480)
As Reinhardt mentions earlier in the article, it is important for students to do the talking and explaining and the teacher to do this listening if students are to really learn mathematics. Thus, if students are taking more than a couple seconds to answer a question, I must become comfortable with the awkward silence, which may contain students looking this this.

Students may simply just need more time to process the question. After all, shouldn't we be asking some though-provoking questions, anyway? If I am not waiting and the same students are answering the questions because they process them quicker, I am doing a disservice to the students who take a few seconds more to process by taking away their opportunity to learn through making the connection the question is directing them to make. Better student responses and responses from more students will come from waiting. Thus, I will work to raise the wait time.

"Never carry a pencil." (Reinhardt, p. 483)
I have found that, when assisting students, I like to draw the pictures, write the expressions or equations, etc. I believe this practice stems from my 2+ years in the Math Center at GVSU, since we have lots of whiteboards and whiteboard tables at our disposal. Although this method is not inherently bad, since it allows me to make my responses not exclusively verbal, it is important that students be the one's creating the representations of their thinking as I assist them in making sense of what their struggling with. Carrying a pencil or using a whiteboard marker tempts us to do the thinking for the student or can unintentionally supply too much that we giveaway the opportunity for the student to make sense of it themselves. Thus, I will strive to ask thought-provoking questions that will allow students to develop a deep conceptual understanding of mathematical topics and to have the same reaction as Tony Stark does here.

These two takeaways, as well as the many others from the article, will definitely be taken into account as I answer and provide many questions for students as they learn, I hope to improve in asking thought-provoking questions that allow the students to do the thinking and sense-making themselves. Any feedback or methods that work for you are most definitely welcome! After all, asking better questions allows us to teach mathematics better.

"It [is] not enough to teach better mathematics; [we have] to teach mathematics better" (Reinhart, p 478)

Middle School Ain't So Terrifying Anymore

With a week of introductions to ourselves, classroom expectations, and general school procedures behind us, the second week of classes much more normality and familiarity to what middle school education looks like. As the responsibilities being handed to me were growing (first copies, attendance, and checking homework and now those plus discussing a daily practice problem and leading some classroom activities and lessons), so did my passion for teaching and my affirmation for going into the field! There was just something so natural and so right to being up in front of the classroom; many joys and challenges came from it, and I definitely continue to grow each and every day as an educator through both of them.

Teaching to Relieve an Itch
A first happened this week: teaching a lesson in its entirety.

This is something I have looking forward to for a long time as my itch to teach has been being scratched for years now. On Wednesday, I was able to co-teach a lesson on multiplying and dividing real numbers for Algebra 1 students. Then, on Thursday, I co-taught that same lesson adapted for Math 8/Pre-Algebra students twice and then solo taught a lesson on absolute value and opposites for Algebra 1. You could say my itch was satisfied.Generally speaking, each of the lessons went really well! There was not a moment of panic in any of the lessons and it seemed as though the students understood what was going on. Granted, these lessons were already created by my cooperating teacher and the content was review; however, having this set-up be there for my first experience as a teacher was definitely welcomed. It allowed me to focus more on the pacing and the management side of teaching.

With the first hour Math 8 class, it has been noticed that it feels like they have less time than the same class second hour to cover the same material. In this lesson, this meant that second hour was able to make it to and through a study of application, real-world problems whereas first hour had no time to even begin studying them. It truly feels like there is a ten-minute bonus in second hour. This observation has definitely caused me to think about how each class, despite being called the same thing, can be very, very different. I have yet to determine the cause for this (students, having run the lesson already, beginning of the day duties taking more time than anticipated, etc.), but it is forcing me to think about what my response to this should be as a teacher. Should I plan for the amount of time in first hour and then give second hour an additional activity that extends the content? Would that be unfair to the students in first hour who would benefit from the extension? Should first hour become a little faster paced so that each hour does the same activities as a whole? Is that a disservice to students in first hour? There is a lot to consider and I have not formed a conclusion that serves the students best. Thoughts on the matter are definitely welcomed!

Prior Proper Planning Provides Power
Given this predicament, I have grown fond of these tubs.

What a time saver that gives students so much power! With the students creating their own interactive math notebook that serves as their textbook, having resources such as glue and highlighters at their disposal has definitely been a blessing. It creates organization and normalization for students so that having the materials on the desk are not distracted by their presence, gives students materials they need to succeed, and allows for efficiency to be even more present in the classroom. The latter is important as we only have 45-minute periods. Those extra minutes saved from passing out the materials daily are crucial, and I am so happy that they can be devoted to content. They definitely provided these benefits and were extremely helpful during the lessons I facilitated. Use of tubs will definitely be a part of my future classroom!

Not Just a Teacher
One my goals for the semester is to better know my students so that I can better serve them. This past week, I was able to form what I thought were connections with a few of the students. Its affirming that these students are wanting to see you as more than a teacher, and I cannot wait to see what more relationship building I can do this week. Breakthroughs can happen when students are able to see you as more than someone who delivers content. In fact, as one of my fellow teacher assistants put it, "students wont care what you know until they know you care."

I think this statement is true, and that means I have a lot of work to do. Not only does it mean I would like to make lessons that show I care for each students' learning, it also means that I should be striving to get to know the students' lives and create a sense of trust with them. I'm ready to take on that challenge, starting with week 3 tomorrow! 

These experiences have shown me just how much middle school does not have to be a scary place anymore--both as a teacher and as a student. I used to want to avoid it at all costs, but now that I have have been immersed over the past year, I cannot wait to see how further immersion will help me become a better teacher!

Student Blogs: A Definite Part of My Future Classroom

Once I was introduced to the idea of having students blog, I was hooked! As a student, I was feeling more connected to the course and the students in the class. The conversations happening beyond the four walls of the classroom added a whole other dimension (an exciting one!) to the course, and I believe I was learning more than course content by blogging. In fact, I was able to learn something for each of these 10 reasons!

Thus, I see so many ways that a blog can benefit students and make a math class come alive. Let's take a look into how I envision this coming to life on both the teacher and the student end.

The Teacher Side of Things. My cooperating teacher has a class website that allows her to communicate many parts of the class with her students. They can view items such as the online textbook, assignments, answer keys, important class information, and more. I see this as an excellent way to convey information to students and parents about what is going in inside the classroom. Although student blogging is not a part of her classroom, I see that her model can be expanded to include blogging to create even more benefits for students.

If I were to make a class blog, it would have different pages for assignments and answer keys, important class information, a class calendar, links to commonly used sites (desmos, geogebra, etc.), additional resources to help learn course content, my personal blog posts, and more. I would loosely model it after Zach Cresswell's page. I plan to integrate technology into my future classroom through various online activities from Desmos, Geogebra, the Math Twitter Blogosphere (#MTBOS), and more; thus, this would be a nice place for me to post links for these activities for absent students, students who would like additional practice, and a common place to access them in class. A teacher having a blog has so much potential for efficiency in the classroom as well as potential for immense transparency about your classroom, both of which I would advocate for.

The Student Side of Things. A student having their own blog gives the student so much power to become better, well-rounded students. Literacy is huge for students, and blogging serves as a great avenue for digital, written, performing, viewing, speaking, reading, and listening literacy skills to be developed. This blog can be used across multiple classes, which allows the student to practice literacy skills in each discipline. Specifically with math, there is so much  potential to work on mathematical literacy, an area a lot of students need development.

With class activities, student can post reflective blog posts about the activity so that the teacher can get a better scope of how the individual student is learning course content. If a blog post is the method of submission, it is an excellent way to elicit student thinking and get inside the student's head. Students can write out a response, post pictures of their work, post a video of them explaining their work, and more. They can even do more than one of these in one post! As a result, the student can better convey their understanding to the teacher and be more accurately assesed,

On the more organizational side of things, having information about the class posted in one, convenient location only makes things easier for students. Plus, if comments on other student's blog posts are required, a blog offers a space to have the other blogs linked.

Students get to create it and make it their own. It gives students a voice. It connected students in a way they love to connect--digitally. This only begins to crack open what blogging can do for students!

Where This Could Become Problematic. There are definitely a lot of areas where this model could become problematic. Some of them are

• students having limited or nonexistent internet access at home or in the classroom,
• having to take class time to go over the process of creating and using a blog effectively,
• the potential for students to be inappropriate or unproductive,
• the potential for unequal benefits for communication between students, and  
• if parents be on-board for students being present online in this manner. 

While I recognize these areas for potential problems, I believe that there is so much for students to gain from this experience and would choose to implement these in my classroom in a heartbeat. They can stake the skills they gained from using a blog later in life, no matter what they choose to do. Student blogging is bigger than my classroom, and that's why I want it to be a part of it. 

Saved by the Bell

As a part of being a teacher, I will be analyzing my students to better understand them a person and learner. Thus, getting practice in this skill--even if the students is fictional--will only be beneficial. To get some practice, I will analyze Zack Morris from Saved by the Bell. His character arches over multiple series, so we can get a deeper look into him as a student.

Here are some observations of Zack based on Wikipedia and YouTube:

• During eighth grade, he received help from his friend and classmate, Mikey, on his schoolwork. He was also a troublemaker at this time, since he was often found being called out by the principal for various acts and schemes he instigated. 
• In high school, Zack receives poor grades in the classroom, but scores a 1502, a very high score, on his SAT. The latter allowed Zack to be accepted into Yale University, even though he attends California University in the follow-up series Saved by the Bell: The College Years. Based on his marks, his classroom performance would not deem him college ready, but his SAT score would.
• Zack also showed an interest for business and demonstrated strong leadership skills in high school. 
• His extracurricular activities in high school included cross country, basketball, track, being in a band as a vocalist and guitarist, played the trombone, glee club, restarting the school radio station, the JROTC program, student council, yearbook committee, and being manager of the school store. 
• He was rarely seen having a job. 
• One of his major interests was betting. In combination with this habits that began eighth grade, he is the type of student who is more distracting than engaging.
• He was one of the first characters to be seen carrying a cell phone, giving evidence that he is likely from a higher socioeconomic class.
• At college, Zack got along with his professors most of time. 

Based on these observations, if he were a student of mine, I would try to engage him as a student through the use of technology. I would find an effective and meaningful way to integrate his cell phone into lessons, assuming that each student could have access to a phone or each group of students had one. The lessons would surround something that would be of interest to Zack. It could take the form of the mathematics and statistics of gambling. This would likely pique his interest so he could become a better gambler. Making lessons like this would allow Zack to still have his personality, but would also allow for him to start comprehending the topic.

Watch Zack in action below!

Just Another Friday Afternoon Exploring the #MTBOS

I always knew that the MTBOS was a great place for math teacher to communicate and collect resources since I was exposed to it about 2 years ago and have been collecting what resources I would like to draw from in my classroom since. However, in digging a little deeper today, I found some pretty neat things (resources and blogposts) I thought were worth sharing.

Resources

Desmos activity on exploring aspects of linear functions through legos and superheroes

Desmos activity to learn geometry vocab by playing a guess who style game

Musical Chairs game from Brooke for expression review, could be use with many concepts

Interesting Blogposts

Justin talks about students becoming inquisitive and their rusty integer skills

The power of literacy in math-how big is it? See it at work with Bridget

Mark discusses feedback to students and its importance

Julie shares some neat first day math problems

Fawn shares her first two days of each of her classes and the syllabus for each

Victor debunks 5 myths about the Standards for Mathematical Practice

John on teaching students quadratic through misconceptions

Becoming a Reflective Teacher

With the beginning of another school year comes an abundance of opportunity for teachers and any kind of educator. Opportunities to learn, to grow, to productively struggle, to learn from mistakes and failure, and to impact the lives of students only begin to name them. But with all this opportunity in our hands, we must be ready to seize them in order to become the best educator we can be. This means that we cannot become complacent with who we are as a teacher currently. We must be constantly critiquing and evaluating ourselves as teachers, our teaching strategies and how effective they are for students, if the needs of our students are being met, and much more. In essence, w must be cognitively aware of what impact each and every moment of our day has on us as an educator and be striving to change as necessary to become better each day. Thus, as I immerse myself into the realm of teaching, I will be trying my best to become a reflective teacher.

I have been challenged to be intentional about picking a few areas where I want to grow as teacher over the semester. Let's dive right in to see the areas I want to seize opportunity in!

Specifying and Reinforcing Productive Student Behavior
One of my biggest fear going into this semester--just like a lot of new and training teachers--is classroom management. That is why I am so glad I have a whole college class on the topic this semester. Having worked as a camp counselor for middle schoolers this past summer, I am super glad that I have been able to try various methods to see what works and does not work. I realize that each class will likely be different and that camp is different than the classroom, but I hope that I can use those experiences to have a healthy classroom environment that promotes and reinforces productive student behavior. Some of the specification of what the classroom norms are is out of my hands, since I am learning from my absolutely amazing cooperative teacher, but I look forward to contributing to further specifying them and reinforcing them with students this semester.

Learning about students' cultural, religious, family, intellectual, and personal experiences and resources for use in instruction
I recognize and can identify the power of a lesson striking home to something familiar in learning the content of a lesson. Thus, I want to be intentional about building genuine relationships with my students and be able to find ways to relate to them and ways to relate the content to their lives. One of the most common frustrations with students in a math class is identifying where the concepts can be realistically applied to their life or what life-skills they have gained through understanding the concepts. Therefore, I want to make it my mission to find creative ways to explain the concepts through relatable experiences for students. I would like for students to view math more like Stanley rather than how SpongeBob does, and it begins by getting to know students better.

"Oh, I see how math is useful now!"

"Math is so useless I don't even want to see it!"

Support Productive Struggle in Learning Mathematics
This one I feel as though is going to be an ongoing pursuit to find the sweet spot between giving a student too much assistance that we have done the thinking for the students and too little assistance that the students begins to flounder. In other words, I want to be able to rescue a students in an appropriate manner, or in one where both the students and I can feel confident that they can continue on and understand what is going on.

Thus, I will be working for students to not feel like a flopping fish

 and more like George Lopez.

Currently, I feel that I go back and forth between too much help and not enough, so I want to be intentional about finding the sweet spot in order for the student to have the most powerful learning opportunity they can have.

I know that there are many more ares to improve--and I hope that I can make strides there too--but I feel as though these are important to develop as I develop as a teacher through teacher assisting this semester. Check back with my weekly updates to see how I am doing in these areas!