 Hello wonderful Paris. Thank you for joining me on this recorded zoom meeting. I'm sorry we couldn't meet in a live meeting, but schedules get crazy in the springtime as you all know. So today we're going to talk about student engagement in the springtime. And this topic came to us from your suggestions so thank you for each of you who reach out and say hey, I think we need some help or some ideas on this certain topic. We really take those to heart and try to get you information that you need. I'm Steph Lundgren from ESU 8 in Mealy. I'm going to move this bar to show you. We also have the link to our Paris website. So it's bit.ly slash Paris of ESU 8. There you will find this recording which you've probably already found it then. And you will also find resources from our previous meetings and our summer day long meetings so that's just kind of your go to place as a para to find more information about topics you need. And so the first thing I want you to think about is some springtime celebrations that you might have what's gone great in your school year this year what have kids achieved or you as educators achieved. What is just making your school year and go well. So if you are watching this with a group go ahead and pause the recording now and you can each share out a celebration. If you're watching this alone just kind of think through something that's going really well. We need to pause in the springtime and really all throughout the year and think about those wonderful things and the successes of our students maybe you've worked really hard on fluency with some kids and their cadence scores are fantastic this spring. Or maybe some behaviors have really gotten better throughout the year. Maybe your team of educators are just working so well together. And all of those things we need to take the time out and recognize and honor and really celebrate all of those good things happening in your schools I know that there are so many things. Alright so we're going to talk a little bit about student engagement first just what is student engagement. One source I'm going to move my bar here so we can actually see that definition. One source says in education student engagement refers to the degree of attention, curiosity, interest, optimism and passion that students show when they are learning or being taught, which extends to the level of motivation they have to learn and progress in their education. So it's it's more than just good behavior as they sit through class, but really how are they emotionally tying all that you know their attention that curiosity that interest, and really getting involved in their, their learning. So how do you know when students are engaged and is it is compliant behavior alone a sign of engagement. I'm not so sure so I'm again if you're with a group, pause this recording and talk about how you know that students are engaged in their learning. And then you know I think sometimes we confuse that you know that good behavior that quiet behavior for engagement so a kid can be looking at a book, and it seems as though they're reading but they're really not engaged much in it. And you know so we have to look for those signs and do students know what's going on in class. Are they able to complete tasks when asked, and is their mind really focused on the task at hand. So let's talk about some different examples as we go on here. Levels of engagement that we might have and that's how we can kind of start to see when students are engaged so if we start at the top there that's that true engagement moving my bars all over thanks for bearing with me there. And so that's persistence that sustained inquiry they're constantly trying to figure things out and trying to understand better. And that direction that they're going to keep learning without having the teacher on top of them telling them each step to do, and kind of a playfulness with the content, they might take it to a different level. They might make some great connections and things like that. And, and it's just unprompted so they're going to say that reminds me of this time when I did this or, hey, I learned this skill and science class I'm going to apply it in social studies class because it seems to fit here. So they need to really transfer that understanding between subject areas just on their own. And then we have some strategic strategic compliance. So there's some clear effort there, and some creativity and focus on directions and task completion, in order to meet those extrinsic extrinsic standards for motivation so that kid really isn't intrinsically not find their motivation within themselves. It's more like I'll be motivated to earn a prize, or to get a grade or to please my parents, or my teachers but it's not really within them to like be really engaged in learning. And then we have ritual compliance to, and, you know, this is the kid who yeah we're compliant because we're going to get decent grades to go out for a sport, maybe, and avoid those consequences those punishment that might be involved. So they say here no creativity genius curiosity transfer they're going to do what they need to do and get on with it. And then we have retreatism. So not much effort or productivity or progress. No inquiry they're just not connecting with what they're doing. And then we get to rebellion where it's almost a disruptive behavior. So we're going to go on here and we actually have a video to watch that's going to talk to you more about those levels of engagement. Check these levels of engagement in less than five minutes. I promise. If you watch this scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, you'll notice that even in the midst of a boring lesson, none of the students are actually misbehaving. They're quiet. Nobody is tossing spitballs or playing those paper football games or checking their cell phones because while the cell phones back then were the size of a brick, remember the Zach Morris phone. But most of the students are essentially following the rules. They aren't engaged. But what are they? Well, some seem to be retreating. A few seem to be playing the game of school, but nobody is actually committed to the learning. Well, here's where Schlechte's levels of engagement becomes helpful and provides a useful framework for thinking about what it means for students to be genuinely engaged in their learning. Schlechte defines it this way. Engagement is active. It requires the students to be attentive as well as in attendance. It requires students to be committed to the task and find some inherent value in what he or she is being asked to do. The engaged student not only does the task assigned but also does the task with enthusiasm and diligence. In 2002, Philip Schlechte developed a framework for thinking about student engagement based on two core ideas of attention and commitment. At the bottom you have rebellion, which involves diverted attention and no commitment to the task. This is the student who seems to be acting out and causing disruptions and as a result they fail to learn from the task. Next you have retreatism with no attention and no commitment. Unlike the rebellion, this student in retreat is not actively disrupting the learning but instead seems to be kind of checked out. This student is often distracted and emotionally withdrawn from the task and as a result this student learns little or nothing from the task. At the next level you have ritual compliance. This involves both low attention and low commitment. Unlike retreatism, a ritual compliance student doesn't completely check out but instead is doing the bare minimum to avoid confrontation. This student will learn at a low level and the task will not be retained over time. Next is strategic compliance. Often this looks like engagement because the student might be performing at a high level but it's not. Here the student has high attention on the task but low commitment to what he or she is doing. This is the student who is playing the game of school focused on things like grades, parental approval, rewards and class rank. But the learning isn't intrinsically rewarding and as a result this student will often learn at a high level but fails to retain the learning over time or transfer it to a new context. And then finally you have engagement. This requires both high attention and high commitment. Here a student completely buys in out of a strong sense of intrinsic motivation and this includes meaning and choice and challenge. This student will continue focusing even when the task gets more complex and challenging and often they're going to choose to learn even when it is ungraded. This student will learn at a deep level and a transfer will continue to new context. And this is why it's important that we as teachers focus on how to make the subject intrinsically engaging. And this happens when we tap into student curiosity and creativity and purpose. And when this happens students are more likely to grow into passionate lifelong learners. So isn't that what we want to cultivate right those those lifelong learners who just want to stay in the learning and get so much out of it so much personal fulfillment and fulfillment for their life. Maybe career choices and things like that. So like these. There we go. So we want to sustain that engagement that we might build during the school year, even in the springtime. So, like we say there are lots of learning until that last day. So we're going to continue learning through our whole school year. And just like you all asked for ideas on this topic. It's a challenge in the springtime. When does that engagement start to fade for them for me in the classroom I always felt like it was when the time changed. And in recent years we've started changing our time in March instead of April when it was April and it was warm out. The little kids that I taught were out playing more. I wanted to be up later at night they were a little tired when they came to school for the day they just wanted to be out playing during the day and it was hard to keep their focus. And older kids I think fall into the same boat and maybe even just, you know, get a little tired of our routines and things like that in the classroom. So we have to find ways that we're going to engage them, even when it gets tough. So, one author suggests that we think about engagement, like a DJ at a techno club. All right, and think about the way that they engage the crowd as they're playing their music for them. So think of us educators as kind of DJs here as we talk about these next few ideas. And we can use an acronym here so engagement is epic. So focus on experiences right participation and connect connect connect so that can be like epic. All right so some of the experiences that we can focus on with the kids. So I'm learning with the kids in mind and see lessons through the student size. Right, we might include some team building exercises and activities on a regular basis. Things like playing music for the class, changing up the furniture and decorations can engage them because it's a little bit of a switcher it's a little bit something new. So, you know, when we're seeing the lessons through their eyes we're just trying to make them a little bit more fun, a little bit more exciting. I know I played a lot of music in the classroom and you don't want it to be that distracting level. And you have to kind of know your crowd, you know, like if kids can handle a little more lively kind of music, then you can play that. It's just a song as they walk in the door to just really get them hooked. And I think that you know changing up the furniture or the decorations or maybe just on certain days when you really need their focus or their attention, or you really want to just draw, you know, some unique novel situation to their attention. Do something a little bit fun and out of the ordinary. In the same way as changing up their environment inside. On nice days, I would take my class outside every now and then my kids had clipboards that they could put their math worksheets on and sometimes we'd go outside to do those. But again, I taught younger students we'd go outside for read aloud. And, you know, it was just certain things and I tell my kids hey if you can't handle it we'll go back in, but I'm trying to make this a little bit fun a little bit different so let's try to maintain our same rules and procedures as we go outside and just switch it up a little bit for them. Also make learning hands on and minds on right this is different hands on and minds on think about that. So they're going to do something with their hands they're going to have maybe an investigation in science or they're going to build a model of something, but also that engages their mind. So it's difficult enough that it's going to keep them thinking about things maybe it's a problem to solve and community type problem or real world type problem that they can work as a team on. And they say not just ears and eyes on so ears on an eyes on can sometimes be deceiving it can kind of be that playing school that the video talked about where I'm looking at you, and I'm kind of listening. Well we can't really tell if kids are listening all the time right. So we really might engage them and make them think about things not just sit and look and listen. And we can use play based learning. Maybe they're going to role play some things out for us. I know in high school, one of the things we loved in one of our American government classes were having debates about different laws and rights that we had as citizens of the United States. And we could do something like that. And it was very engaging and we really were applying what we were learning about our government into these debates. Also the student investigations like we talked about in science and in social studies you might do some of these really inquiry based instruction. Research projects. So you're coming to the end of the year where you've gained a lot of knowledge throughout the year. Apply that knowledge into that investigation or that research project to really apply those skills and use those skills and pull them all together for the year. And also service learning. So is there a service project you can do with your students for your community and maybe the elderly in your community. I used to lead a community cleanup at our park where our kids all all of our elementary kids would go down and serve our park. But there's a lot of learning to go along with that too on how to how the city works and how the public works takes care of the park and things like that. So think about some kind of service learning you could do based on some of your content. Maybe it's just doing a random act of kindness around your building for another group, another classroom. Maybe their teacher or maybe several teachers. Think about just something that you can do that's nice. My teammate and I once just made bookmarks for her brother's class that they were first graders I think at the time. And just think of something nice that you can do. And you're really having kids think about others. And then also cultivate classroom to traditions and celebrate milestones. So we can engage kids by having those traditions and maybe it's on a birthday. Somebody's birthday that that's their tradition of we're going to do a certain thing. Maybe it's celebrating milestones like you're working with an intervention group. And after every so many lessons of mastery or something like that. And you have a small celebration and that celebration can still be like a little game played that's still learning based so you're still involved in that subject but you're taking time out to recognize them for something that's occurred during that year during that milestone period. I think everybody loves to celebrate most kids just love that time of something special in the classroom so I think also when we have those traditions and it connects the kids in the room. And that's so important in fact that's one of our letters that's going to come up here. There's a couple of different kinds of participation so first, that kind of involvement in your classroom. So when we can involve kids and it increases their engagement. So we might even give them clearly defined roles in our room. Now I said I was an elementary teacher so we all know we have a helper chart right and kids get to help around the classroom and do different jobs during the week. I always found that my little kids just love these jobs. They love to be part of the room they love to be an integral part of making our room run correctly. And of course there were certain jobs that were their very favorites. And I think it just gave them ownership in our room and then they even took care of our room better. And they, they didn't call it just my room but it was our room and even I would have kids come back I missed this you know, I think because they just felt so connected. But I think older kids can do this too. So think about some roles like the greeter at the door maybe somebody's going to greet the kids. And someone's the concierge and they could help people solve problems that they have. And someone's the reporter that they're going to be able to report on what's been learned or the recorder who writes it down, or shares it out in some way, maybe it's sharing it out to some sort of parent communication. And then a PR director of how are we going to get this out about the things that our class is doing to the whole school. Maybe you want to announce that to the whole school. So kind of neat to think about that and of course, you might want to switch up jobs, but also this can be kind of like roles for life or jobs that they would have for life. I had a junior high class where we each had to apply for a different job within our classroom. And I was the police officer and one day I was told to write myself to get for talking. And I know none of you can imagine that right. But it is very memorable and again we all had a role or a responsibility for helping our class run smoothly. And then just remember students should always be talking more than the teacher. If you have class periods where the teacher's doing all the talking, we can imagine, you know, that situation like in Ferris Bueller where where the teacher's just talking at the students and they are all checked out. The person who's doing the talking is doing the learning. So we have to make sure that we let kids communicate and we don't just talk at them the whole time. Also increase student agency and learning, so more choice and voice to show what they know. So let kids choose, you know, maybe we're going to focus on a certain topic but then give them a couple choices under that topic. We want them, you know, to hear that voice and to really find ways to show us what they know about something and not just tell us or turn in some little worksheet right. How can they prove what they know, how can they apply that into a project or something visible in that way. And also we want to provide opportunities for students to give feedback to us. So, hey, when we do this I'm not very engaged because it's really boring, I think we could try something else, or they might just tell us what they love about class and maybe we could see how we can do that more or in different contexts. So really let kids offer a little bit of feedback to us. And then we also have participation in the form of images. So, when we think about those DJs like they said, you know what images are they invoking and accessing for their crowd. We can do that with students too. So we're going to create stunning graphics to advertise class content, make memorable posters and turn important ideas and to stand out images. Our lives are full of images right, we are on Instagram and Facebook and different parts of social media and looking at images all the time we really remember what we see. And so when we create those graphics and those posters and things like that, that can help us show our learning. And kids can get really excited about it, it might even help high school teachers catch the interest of some kids that might be potential learners in their class right. We also might use something like thinking maps or anchor charts to make learning visible and provide visual references so I'm going to go ahead a couple slides here. And these would be some thinking maps. Basically, they're like a graphic organizer to help us organize those thoughts or maybe even details about things that we're reading. And they just help us get it out of our heads right and write it down. So for a lot of kids, this is a great way to study for a test or something like that. But sometimes it's just important to write it down in this kind of way to just disseminate all that we're learning in a topic and just put it down on paper and graphically kind of organize our thoughts. So these are some ideas of those kind of charts that we can draw. And there's a link there on this slide. So if you want more ideas from this source, you can go to that site they have a lot of good ideas. So you might have this parts and whole. And when we break down a topic, we also might do a sequencing, maybe even for a book or a novel that they're reading. And when we're studying vocabulary, lots of times we do a bubble map where one word's in the middle and other words that describe it around the outside. So we can really just draw out our thinking there. We talked about anchor charts to these are some some examples of some anchor charts that you can make on basically they're like on a chart with necessary information for kids right. And so you might want to sketch it out if you're going to make one of these with your students. You could use a pencil, you could reuse good parts again on another anchor chart. You could reveal a little bit of the chart at a time like if you're talking about text features of kids, and you're going to focus on the table of contents one day. Maybe that's the rest of it is kind of hidden in behind another piece of chart paper. And there's some other ideas over here but basically, you can let the kids come up with the parts of the anchor chart with you. So I used to make these during writing class and sometimes they would be reading a whole bunch of books that are all written in a certain style. So maybe they were how to books, and then we would come together to make an anchor chart that would focus on all of the things we noticed in the authors do in a how to book. And so we kept that chart on others might give directions on how to get something done, but they're kind of graphic and bold right you can hang them on your wall. And kids can use them almost like a cheat sheet or like, you know the essential information on a certain subject. So anchor charts can be a really good thing to do with your kids. I'm going to go back a couple slides here. And another idea here is to make time daily for visual literacy activities. And one idea is the New York Times. What's going on in this picture. So you can just Google New York Times what's going on this picture, and it'll show up even on social media for you. And so I'm going to pop ahead again. This is one of those pictures. So this I think we get, we're asked, even in a different way, like write a caption for this picture. So what's going on here so I kind of see that somebody was playing like giant Jenga there looks like to me. And the kid is dressed up where has face paints it looks like a lion, but yet it's got some like islandy feel to the style of that. I'm wondering if he's keeping those blocks away, you know, anyway, you can come up with unique situations and have kids just look critically at some different pictures to try to tell what's going on, and share those out. Some might be funny. Some might be poignant. You know, just important to really look critically at all these pictures that are surrounding us. I think this is very engaging just because kids are on Instagram all the time with their pictures right. Make it about find a picture that has something to do with something that you're learning and say we're going to do some more investigating like this too. So I think high school kids would really love something like this. Even junior high kids, elementary kids, everybody. Even even they say you know just for different images and the way we see things might change up the lighting in your classroom every now and then so we're used to having these overhead fluorescent lights on. They can honestly be pretty distracting for some of our students including our ADHD students. It's nice to have those floor lamps around the room or maybe even you're going to dim one set of lights. And you know it's like some quiet work time maybe for a little bit or group time and they're interacting with each other and you're going to just dim those lights to show hey we're switching our activity. And this is going to be kind of a low key thing. And we're going to have a softer light going the wrong way friends sorry. Okay, go back through. Alright, and now we are going to connect with our students and I think we've said this over and over in para training right. It's all about those relationships and connecting with our students. And there's a famous quote that where there is no significant relationship there is no significant learning. We have to connect with our kids. I think if we think back to our favorite teachers or our teachers that we learn the most from it's those ones that really connected with us, and that we could tell cared about us. So we have to show that to our kids too. So how can we connect with them. How can we keep them engaged with us then. One thing is every day, talk to your kids about things that aren't involved with school, maybe it's an activity that they're in. Maybe it's just their life, maybe you know that they're going through a hard time and you're just going to go check in with them and see how they're doing. And ask them how that dance recital was or that baseball game was and just let them know that you care about them as a person to. They have class meetings to so I'm you know depending on your level elementary this is easier because you have the same kids first thing in the morning every day, or all day long maybe. For older kids maybe they have a homeroom time that you can have some kind of class meeting and some sort of topic to discuss as a whole. So class meetings would oftentimes be a time where I would bring up a concern I was having for the kids or maybe a problem we were having in our classroom. And I let them help me solve that problem and make a commitment into what their behavior would be in the future. So we might end the class meeting by saying, you know, one thing I will do in the future is, and then we'll end the class meeting with a compliment to the person sitting on their right. And then that person had to say thank you and give eye contact and the other person said you're welcome. So we were practicing some great social skills there. I think that is one of the biggest team builders I've ever done in my classroom, I saw that comments to the kids go from being very superficial like you're a good friend at the beginning of the year to very specific like you've been trying so hard to pass your 12s and multiplication. You did that the other day and I'm so proud of you for it. And that just really bonded my class and I love those moments of hearing them. Also be intentional about positive interactions, the gestures and the words through the greeting and the feedback that we give kids. We have to show them that positivity and that we're going to be careful about the way we talk to them and give them dignity in those feet in that feedback and respect. But letting them know I'm proud of you. I see you what you're doing is great. And sometimes our feedback has to be a little bit more corrective and that's fine too, but when they know that we care, then it's easier to give that feedback so we really want to connect to kids and have them respect us and us respect them. And then just at the bottom smile more. We get stressed out and bogged down and boy the last few years in teaching have been absolute examples of of that kind of stress but we have to smile more we have to be nicer we had you know, take time to do all those things for the kids remember we might be the most positive people they meet all day long. Look for those times to really connect with kids and show them that we care, engaging our students is not something that we can force. It is not about compliance. Instead, educators must create the conditions that invite students to throw more of themselves into their learning. And that is from the 2017 14 Michigan teacher of the year, who supplied us with a lot of this information today so thank you to him. And again, we can't make kids be involved, but we have to get creative. It's us honing our art of education to really get them involved in school. I just want to invite you all to my August training day, we don't have the date set quite yet, it will be very soon. But I hope you can join in for a great day in August, we always have a theme, and this year is cooking up a great year, and it will be your recipe for success so check back at esu8.org, or check your inbox because I'll be emailing you with the updated details with that training. But we hope you can make it. I just think one of the best parts is getting all of you wonderful pairs together, so that you can really collaborate, and talk and share ideas and share your own expertise from your, your building so you guys are so wonderful at your jobs and all of your students are so lucky to have you working with them. So again thanks here's my email if you have any questions always shoot them to me or call the issue. I love hearing from Paris. And these are some of our resources from today. So, hey thanks everybody. Have a great end of the year take care of yourselves and try to relax and practice a little self care to make it through to the end. I know you can do it. Thanks again. Bye bye.