Battling Boredom, Part 2

Even More Strategies to Spark Student Engagement

Bryan Harris, Lisa Bradshaw

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351857505
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Technology

Drive boredom out of your classroom—and keep it out—with the student engagement strategies in this book. In the first Battling Boredom, bestselling author Bryan Harris offered strategies on beginning a lesson, ending a lesson, small group work, and large group work. Now in Battling Boredom Part 2, Harris teams up with technology integration expert and former teacher Lisa Bradshaw to provide additional strategies on new topics such as academic talk, feedback, writing, classroom technology, and more. You'll learn how to:

• Increase the quality and effectiveness of feedback to boost student performance.
• Engage students in meaningful reflection with writing prompts and exercises.
• Reenergize a lethargic class using movement-based activities.
• Integrate technology to create a more enriching classroom experience for students.
• Encourage students to speak up, share their ideas, and talk about their learning.

With this toolbox of instructional strategies, you'll have even more ways to end student boredom before it begins, resulting in class time that's more efficient, more educational, and loads more fun!

Part One

Academic Talk

Introduction

Key Idea: Academic talk and academically focused conversations are powerful and effective ways to boost student engagement. When students spend time talking about what they are learning, they become more engaged and they remember more of what they are learning. Quite simply, a quiet classroom where students spend the majority of their time sitting and listening will not lead to engagement, deep learning, or long-term memory.

In the 2014 book, Creating a Classroom Culture that Supports the Common Core, Bryan wrote extensively about the power and impact of academic conversations as they relate to student engagement and achievement, particularly in light of the expectations of the Common Core Standards. While a review of that book is not necessary here, it is important to take a moment to provide some basic definitions and insights into the role of academic talk.

Academic talk can be defined as student talk that builds and deepens content knowledge, enhances skill development, and engages students in the life of the classroom. The key idea here is that the talk—the conversations, the dialogue, the discussions— are being done by the students. Far too often, the primary voice in a classroom is that of the teacher. While listening certainly plays a role in learning, too many teachers assume that listening is all students have to do in order to remember something. We remember something when we interact with it in multiple ways; we must listen, read, write, watch, think, question, and talk about what we are learning. In fact, when students talk, particularly when they are given the chance to teach and tell others about what they are learning, they remember far more (Nestojko et al., 2014).

The research supporting the role of talk and conversation, as it relates to student achievement, is well established (Zwiers & Crawford, 2011). Still, far too many classrooms are places that value silence above all. Unfortunately, too many teachers view student talk as either unnecessary or an impediment to learning. We cannot make it much clearer than this: if you want students to be engaged and to remember more of the content, get them to talk. A lot. Students should be given many opportunities, on a daily basis, to talk about their learning with peers, with the teacher, with other adults, and even to themselves! Harvey “Smokey” Daniels, outstanding teacher, author, and teller-like-it-is, states that students should be talking with a partner “at least 8 times per hour” (Daniels, 2013). A classroom that places a premium on passive, silent compliance may give the impression of engagement, but it’s a house of cards. True engagement requires some aspect of talk and conversation.

The ability to have an effective, focused, and successful academic conversation is a learned skill. Unfortunately, many students come to school without excellent examples nor extensive background experiences in the art of conversation. As a result, it is of critical importance that teachers provide clear models of successful academic talk. This cannot be understated—modeling is essential. Do not assume that all students know how to have a focused conversation, much less an academic one. Make sure that some sort of modeling is a part of every strategy you attempt to utilize.

Academically focused conversations help to make learning self-evident. That is, when you have a conversation with someone, it becomes very clear, very quickly, how Academic Talk well you know something. If you have a depth of understanding about something, you are typically able to talk in more detail about it. If your knowledge is shallow, conversations tend to be very short. When a learner becomes self-aware, they become more engaged. When a student is able to honestly reflect and say to themselves, “As a result of that discussion, I realize that I really do not know this content very well,” they are more likely to become engaged and motivated to learn the content.

Listening to student conversations provides an outstanding source of informal assessment data. If you want to know how well, or how deeply, your students know something, listen to them talk about it. To paraphrase a semi-famous quote, “I thought they were smart until they started talking.”

Our belief is that student talk and student conversation should be a central feature of every classroom. But, we also realize the challenges teachers face. More than once we have heard teachers say something like, “Getting students to talk is not a problem. They love to talk. In fact, they talk too much. They talk about everything except what they are supposed to be talking about. Do you have any ideas for how to get them to stop talking?” For most teachers, this is part of their reality. The fact that kids like to talk is a good thing. The art of teaching is knowing your students and having a solid, thoughtful classroom management plan. As you work to focus student talk on academic subjects, consider these three questions:

1.What is your own personal tolerance level? Some teachers, by nature or personality, simply prefer a quiet environment. Other teachers don’t mind the noise. The point is that yo...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• Introduction
• Part I Academic Talk
• Part II Energizers
• Part III Feedback
• Part IV Questioning
• Part V Technology
• Part VI Vocabulary
• Part VII Writing
• Part VIII Student Engagement Strategies that Don’t Work
• References