Disengaging instruction in the classroom is more likely to happen when the teacher doesn’t incorporate engaging activities into their lesson plans. Engaging instruction leads to more student participation and can help with the student’s overall behavior (Himmele & Himmele, 2017). Teachers’ effectiveness in the classroom dramatically influences student behavior more than other aspects of their lives, such as race, social class, and class size (Himmele & Himmele, 2017). Educators must remember that their job is meant to benefit students. Lecturing a class about the different parts of cells may not be as effective as a hands-on model of a cell made out of candy. Teachers must be able to relate their lessons to the students and make their lessons more personal to them to create an environment where the students want to get involved. Teachers should also positively frame students’ learning experiences (Milner et al., 2019). With a positive outlook on engaging students, I will be able to make my classroom activities enjoyable. My job as an educator is not to look down upon my students for sleeping or misbehaving in class but to make engaging activities that will help contribute to effective learning and find the causes for the misbehaviors, whether it’s something I would need to fix in my lesson plan or reaching out to the student. The artifacts I’m choosing are ones that I believe will help student engagement and are based on my knowledge of engaging instruction.

Journal Entry (Writing Prompt)

For the first fifteen minutes of class, I want my students to write a journal entry based on a prompt I have on the board in front of the class. An example prompt could be writing about a time when you felt proud of yourself or writing about something that makes you happy and trying to go into as much detail as possible. My students will be able to write in lists, through stories, and poetry, but they must make it personal to themselves.

I took a course where every day, we walked in and had to complete a journal entry. It was nice to have time to unwind and write about something that usually related to me. I would have two different journal entries to allow students to choose what they wanted to journal about. I would also give a free write some days so they could have that creative opportunity to write about whatever they wanted. It could be a story, a dream, how their day is going, basically anything they could think of. As someone who wants to be an English teacher, I believe that any form of writing improves their writing, reading, and vocabulary (Himmele & Himmele, 2017). Creating an activity that caters to them personally is important because it allows them to express their thoughts and beliefs. This activity could help bring out a student’s creativity and help get their brain working for the rest of the class period. Examples of writing prompts could be: Do you think you could survive the Zombie apocalypse? If yes, describe your survival plan; if no, why don’t you think you could survive? Do you believe in second chances? Why or why not? Many of the prompts can be used to write about fun, complex, and thoughtful topics. Also, letting them talk about their journal entries to their peers can help improve engagement by involving a think-pair-share or having my students share in small groups (Himmele & Himmele, 2017).

Group Projects

I want to incorporate group projects into my classroom because group work promotes engagement (Himmele & Himmele, 2017). My idea for a group project is to research different topics related to Khaleed Hosseini’s The Kite Runner (2003). Each group will research one of the four topics: the historical context, political context, cultural context, and the author of The Kite Runner. We will work on this project in class and before we read the book, and they will be presented in class so everyone can see everyone’s research before we start reading the book. This will include a worksheet allowing my students to take notes of their classmates’ work. I would make the group projects something they would work on for a class period or two. I wouldn’t make it an outside-of-classroom activity because that’s when students become less engaged. I would make the assignment low stakes, so none of the students are freaking out about the short time period of the group project being complete. Two types of group projects I would do are background research for a book we are reading for the class or a short analysis of a poem.

My second artifact is group projects that require presentations. Although many people don’t like presentations, having students present their projects in class lets students teach the class, helps with public speaking, and makes it so the teacher isn’t lecturing in front, which can cause disengagement of the class, creating a student-centered classroom. (Milner et al., 2019). A student-centered approach in the classroom helps build on students’ assets and provides a highly engaging, collaborative space for everyone to grow and learn (Milner et al., 2019). Group projects encourage participation, help involve everyone’s ideas, and it will make a class period more fun while also engaging in important material.

Peer Review

My final engaging artifact is peer reviewing. The activity will involve my students getting into pairs and reviewing each other’s rough drafts. I would want my student to look for grammatical errors (prescriptive and descriptive grammar), wording, and citing. I would provide a specific classroom direction with a rubric for the paper that they can check as they are peer reviewing, so they have a guide on what they should be looking for. I also want my students to let them know of any changes they would suggest and things they liked in the paper. I would state that I don’t want them to be afraid to make suggestions for their peers’ papers because you want them to have a great paper, just like they want you to have a great paper! I would ask them to use their favorite pen to make corrections, and once they are done looking at each other’s papers, I want them to talk to each other about the changes they would make to each other’s papers.

Having a paper peer-reviewed by your peers is helpful because you get to have a fresh pair of eyes on your paper. They may catch mistakes that you may have overlooked. I want my classroom to be a safe place, so I want them to feel like they are a part of a community (Milner et al., 2019). Peer reviewing creates a sense of community in the classroom because we can create a growth mindset that shows that when the students make errors and receive feedback on their errors is a positive notion because it will lead to improvement (Milner et al., 2019). Peer reviewing also allows students to discuss with each other, creating engagement. It may also help prevent teachers from having to mark up the paper completely. Having red marks all over a paper you worked hard on is not the best feeling, so having a chance to review your paper with a partner is beneficial to increase confidence in your paper and help fix things you wouldn’t have thought about. It can also increase positive framing by having the students get enthusiastic support from their peers on their work (Milner et al., 2019). It’s also beneficial for engagement because it keeps the focus on the paper but allows them to act like a teacher by grading a paper for themselves and avoiding lecturing.

References

Milner, H. R., Cunningham, H. B., Delale-O’Connor, L., & Kestenberg, E. G. (2019). These kids

are out of control”: Why we must reimagine “classroom management” for equity. Corwin.