Engaging instruction is crucial in maintaining continuous attention and active thinking from students. According to Himmele and Himmele (2017), “the best teaching that we have observed involves teachers setting the stage for students to demonstrate cognitive engagement in activities that require time to process, to make connections, and to interact with peers as well as their teachers,” thus, learning cannot be done passively. Passive learning, such as monotonous lecturing, will only hinder all students’ ability to succeed in the classroom. Students easily lose their focus, forcing their attention to slip away from the material, so getting them to actively work with all the content, by using certain strategies I will discuss, will increase the amount they genuinely learn. This active engagement with the course work is also a vital aspect of cultivating strong classroom management. As explained by Milner et al. (2019), teaching must be a collaborative effort between the students and their teachers, and thus, the students will become the center of every lesson: “Student-centered approaches shift the power from being solely that of the teacher to that of the students, creating a more relevant, engaging environment that clearly reflects the needs, cultures, interests, perspectives, and brilliance of its students” (Milner et al., 2019, p. 101). Therefore, not only does engaging instruction allow for more efficient, and fun, learning for the students, but it can also be a tool to keep my classroom well-behaved and interested in each unit. Himmele and Himmele also agree with this as they discuss how striving “to improve student attention by using student-centered pedagogies at different times throughout the lecture, not only to decrease student attention lapses but also to increase student attention.” Lessons that involve interaction with others, critical thinking, and reflection can lead to the information becoming more understandable and easier to grasp. For my engaging classroom, I want my students to feel as though they can understand complex ideas on their own, where I am there to help support and guide them if they want help. Students, given enough time to reflect and ask questions, are capable of so much more than we think, and I think with the use of the skills I have read about in both the textbooks, I can provide them with the most exciting form of learning there is. At the end of the day, there seems to be only beneficial factors when the classroom shifts from being teacher-centered to being student-centered, and if the studies are anything to go on, there is no reason not to try out different strategies in keeping my students enjoying their time at school while also receiving the best education possible.

Artifact One: a writing prompt

To the students, I will say: “On a half sheet of paper, write down what you believe is the reason for the emphasis on the physical, changing environment within Shakespeare’s Macbeth while, to the best of your ability, using the scenes we have discussed in class into your reasoning. Then, after ten minutes, you will talk within your groups to explain your ideas. We will come together to have an entire class discussion on your varied theories.”

Connecting to research:

According to the research in Himmele and Himmele, there was an emphasis on using these quick-writing techniques to get each student to participate in the discussion. The back-and-forth questions and answering that has become the norm in many classrooms limit the discussion and active thinking to only a few students but allowing each student to write down their thoughts into a coherent, and physical, explanation gets everyone involved. This allows each one of my students to reflect on what we have been talking about, while providing them ample time to share ideas with each other. In this way, I “keep every student accountable for learning by structuring [my] prompts so that every student is given an opportunity to individually reflect on and react to the prompt” (Himmele & Himmele, 2017). Total engaging participation on a topic shifts the focus from me to them, allowing them to make connections on their own and with one another. Using this technique, it is a collaborative effort not only between my teaching and my students, but also between the students who learn innovative ideas from other students. In this way, it shows that I am not the only one who can provide new, interesting thoughts on the topic at hand. I am also proving to my students that they are quite capable of higher-level thinking while forming new connections and unique suggestions on their own.

Artifact Two: a whiteboard activity

In this next artifact, the activity will be as follows during the first day of the poetry unit: I will first show the poems to the class. In this exercise, I will give each student three short poems written by three different poets (Emily Dickenson, Langston Hughes, and Ursula K. Le Guin). The poems are: “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickenson, “The Dream Keeper” by Langston Hughes, and “The Maenads” by Ursula K. Le Guin. After giving ample time to read, think, and jot down ideas about them, I will have three different places around the room (three different sections of whiteboards) that have a question written on the top that asks in what the ways the author’s tone is illustrated (i.e., similes, adjectives, descriptive prose, etc.) and how it makes the students feel (i.e., what kind of emotions are evoked in yourself in the description of death in Dickenson’s poem, and so on). After everyone has had the chance to add their comments to the boards, I will tell them to walk around the room and write down what ideas from other’s catches their attention. Then, I will have them gather in small groups to discuss the differences, and the similarities, in the students’ responses. If there is still time, I will ask for volunteers to talk with the entire class about what they found after talking it over with their small groups. These are diverse poems that explore many different ideas, which introduces my students to the vast world of poetry at the beginning of the unit.

Connecting to research:

In this activity, the students can see the overall trends and feelings that poetry causes. For this specific example, I know that many students are either scared of poetry, or they usually find no interest in them, but I want to create a way to explore this literary aspect of the world in a more interactive way. The students are doing firsthand work with the writings, there are no wrong answers, and there is a collective group effort in understanding the poems given. To connect it with my beginning paragraph of this paper, this activity forces each student to contemplate the material in their own way, then share their ideas without fear of speaking aloud and/or the fear of making a mistake. I want them to be comfortable with thinking on their own, and I want to illustrate that there is a plethora of ways to think about the content. In literature, every reader has the freedom of interpreting the words of authors. Each student has their own history, culture, ideals, and experiences, so each student will bring a unique idea to the table if given the opportunity. Himmele and Himmele (2017) stated how active participation, with the all the students walking around the room and discussing their ideas, allows for active engagement with the material at hand. This lesson can now avoid being boring/monotonous, permitting the students to enthusiastically, and physically, stay focused on the lesson.

Artifact Three: ranking activity

After finishing our reading of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, I will have the students complete the following activity: I will provide each student with a list of selected quotations from the play that we have discussed over the week that describes the multifaceted relationship between Hamlet and Horatio, and on another sheet of paper, I will have the students cut out the quotations and rank them in order of influence on their friendship. Underneath each quotation, the student must provide their reasoning for the placement, with the idea of the servant/master relationships norms of the period in mind (compared to the criticizing servant/master relationship Shakespeare explores between Polonis and Claudius). After the work is completed, I will tell them to discuss their choices and justifications with their groups, and then bring it back to an entire class discussion to see if there is any agreement in the rankings.

Connecting to research:

Himmele and Himmele (2017) explained how important it is to “ripple” a question instead of the classic call-and-response question and answer many teachers are familiar with: “Rather than using the traditional question-and-answer approach where a teacher poses a question to the class as a whole, rippling begins with every student responding (individually) to a prompt, then sharing that response in pairs or small groups, followed by volunteers sharing with the class.” Furthermore, the activity of ranking allows each student to individually process and reason with their choices, justifying it in terms of the cultural norms of the times and with other key points from the play. This lets the students actively engage with these characters and their relationship by physically placing them on the page, instead of passively discussing the significance of their friendship by myself at the front of the room. Students can differ on opinions of the importance of certain quotations, and this will lead to a debate and/or discussion on why some people think one should go above the other. They are interacting with the material in a way that lets them lead the classroom, with me there as a guide to help maintain flowing conversation. The students will not have time to lose focus or let their attention slip with the continuous stream of conversation and debating from the group.

References

Himmele, P., & Himmele, W. (2017). Total participation techniques: Making every student an active learner (2nd ed.). ASCD.

Milner, R., Cunningham, H. B., Delale-O’connor, L., & Erika Gold Kestenberg. (2019). “These kids are out of control”: Why we must reimagine “classroom management” for equity (Kindle). Corwin.