Number 6!!!

April 3rd, 2015:   What strategies does the teacher use to actively engage the students? How effective are these? 

The teachers have a ton of different roles that they have to accomplish during the day and sometimes it can be stressful. There are many different types of strategies that they have to try to get all of the students engaged and feeling like they are being included in everything. And that is hard. There are many different kinds of personalities in the classroom with so many different students, and it is difficult to try to get everyone in on something. In my classroom which I have been volunteering in over the past couple of months, I have noticed a few different ways that the teacher does things to keep all of her kids engaged. 

One of my favorite methods is here, party rocker. It is this speaker/disco ball that is connected wirelessly to the iPad. You go into the app and turn on the music and the disco ball. She does this when the kids are working really hard for longer periods of time. She will let them work, and after a few minutes she will turn it on for about 30 seconds and let them dance all crazy. After she turns it off they have to get immediately back to work or she won't use it the rest of the day. I love it because it keeps them all active and they love it. 

Another thing she does is pair share. All the students get into pairs and share something that they have learned during the lesson. I like that because it gets all the students talking and they are talking about what they learned. There are many other strategies that teachers can do, and I am excited to see what works best for me when I am a teacher!