There are seven engagement factors in engaging students in the elementary classroom. The first factor talks about health and nutrition. If a child is born with low birth weight in my classroom, that can be lead to a lack in brain development so to help in fixing this, if I as a teacher will have the parents as well as myself stay on top of the children's health in the very beginning, it can lead to a healthier life leading to more in brain development. The second factor talks about vocabulary. To engage students more into wanting to learn more, it helps when they already know as many words as they can because they would want to use those terms to show their peers and teachers what background knowledge they already have. Going along with that, the third engagement factor has to do with effort and energy. To get the students to not be lazy, I would want them to have experience with the real world to bring into the classroom. This will give them connections to what we are learning, helping them remember material better. The fourth engagement factor has to do with mind set. They have to have a view of the future and want to grow up and do something with their life. They shouldn't be in school because they have to be but because they want to be successful in life and to be successful, they have to put in the work and as a teacher I will stress this every day. The fifth engagement factor has to do with the cognitive capacity. If students grow up in poverty, that affects how much knowledge is actually getting put into their brains because with growing up with so little and learning so little, the brain becomes adapted to that and can only take in so much information until it just can't anymore. The sixth engagement factor has to do with relationships. "Strong, secure relationships help stabilize children's behavior." (Jensen, 2009) If my students have good relationships with me and people who will help them, they will want to learn more because they know there are people out there that care about their learning and want them to learn as much as they do. I will make sure every day I build my relationship with my students by sharing stories about my life and having them talk about theirs to get connected. Lastly, students need a non stressful environment to learn in. If students have a stressful home life, they can use school to go to and get away from all that stress to just learn and have fun while doing it. By involving all of these engagement factors into my students education, it will aid in an easier way for children to learn by having them want to learn what they are being taught.
Some other ways to not only build engagement but to build core skills in my classroom is to have a good attitude on what I am doing as a teacher. I will make sure to always have meaningful conversations with students using affirmations and talking about their own personal life. As much as this will help me as a teacher, I can learn a lot out of it from not only the students but myself as well. I want to learn about myself as a teacher but I also want my students to learn about me as well. By sharing something new with them every day, they can relate to me and build stronger connections making it easier to talk about other material in the classroom as well. By using those connections, my students will be able to share with me as a teacher what they like, and I can then build off those interests by placing interesting games or challenges having to do with those interests into lessons giving them motivation for wanting to do more with what they are learning.
When it comes to assessing my students on what they know or do not know, it is always important as a teacher to use as few words as necessary and really focus on being interactive with my students. By giving them interactive games and lessons, it makes it more enjoyable for them to learn about and easier for them to remember about in the long run. When I was a child, I remember doing this one project in science class on rocks that I was so interested in because I got to use my hands and do something on my own instead of having someone tell me what I had to be doing. By doing this on my own, I was able to focus more on what I wanted to learn about which was awesome because with that choice I remembered everything I was supposed to learn because the activity was so much fun.
Another thing I really focus on when trying to engage my students is to assess them in the right way and to build on those core skills by having good energy with them. If I excited about learning what I am teaching and I show it, why shouldn't the students be that excited as well? Energy is contagious and if I show my students I am happy when they get something right, they should be just as happy because they are doing something good for themselves. According to Jensen, "Celebrate effort as well as achievement." (Jensen, 2009) By doing this, I can pack acknowledgements and celebrations into every single class.
Jensen, E. (2009). Teaching with poverty in mind. (p. 16, 21). Alexandria, Va: ASCD.
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