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Having positive reinforcements in the classroom including having positive talks and ways to encourage them to continue on. Being able to have those encouragers on your side will help students feel more comfortable in the classroom. Positive reinforcements work well with Kindergarten through second graders because they help behaviors and they help the way that things are used throughout the classroom. In an article by Craig (2019) it says that positive reinforcements that are a contengiency between a specific behavior and a desirable consequence (p. 4). The engagement and motivation in the classroom will improve because the encouragements will allow the students to work better together and wanting to work more at things to be more encouraged more.

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Using Scaffolds in the classroom to help your ELL students include using sentence starters or graphic organizers to help them learn. Sentence starters are the ways that will help students who have trouble learning english will truly help them be able to come around and learn English and will allow them to learn to start sentences. Having tools like these and introduce them to your students it helps them and makes them feel more included within the classroom. Being able to engage them in things like this and help them be more involved in the classroom and can keep them motivated and making sure you can help them with everything and make them feel involved in the making.

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Strategies to teach students with disabilities

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Strategies to teach students with disabilities

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One strategy that can help all students in all grades K-8th because students with disabilities need aall the help and attention that they can get. This one would be to eliminate distractions from their work areas and will help them cut it back and will help them stay-on-task through it all. In an article by Malone (2025) and states that having visual timers will help students stay on task and self regulate their learning process (p. 11). This helps students with disabilities like ADHD because it keeps them focus on everything they are learning.

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Having online projects especially with the older grades like (6-8th) and having them work with otehrs around them. The best ways to get your students involved while being on digital classroom is to have them do online projects working with other students. Being able to have them work together will grow their motivation to keep going back online and wanting to keep doing projects with classmates. In an article by Lieberman (2018) it states that group work has long been a source of friction between students and instructors (p. 1). These will allow the students working together and keep them motivated through everything.

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Welcoming the students to the online class is also a great way to keep students engaged. Including videos in the process will allow students to know where they are and how much they will want to keep going to class and want to keep coming to the class and stay engaged through everything. On the website Benefits of APT there are a bunch of different videos that you can watch to help the students go through it all (https://www.academically-productive-talk.org/benefits/fostering-engagement?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiAlbW-BhCMARIsADnwasoSr6BTM3SQhXzUT0wHeHvNANdg0XeoN_KRNhvAGeomfneOUCFuJJYaAtw8EALw_wc)

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As they went about the activity, students explained their thinking to each other and built on each other’s ideas. Students may well have gotten the same answers to the questions in the workbook if they had worked independently, but the fact that they are moving through the task together focuses their attention. Students are more engaged with the subject matter making it a better learning experience.

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Using technology within the classroom will allow them to be more focused and will be able to work more on their own and be able to go through and help them with it all. In an article by Chen (2010) it says that the students taking the test with a paper and pencil tend to get distracted and end up quitting but when taken on a computer they seem to have a better chance of finishing the exam (p. 5). The students enjoy taking the exam on the computer and had a higer rate passing on the computer rather than paper and pencil. (https://www.edutopia.org/blog/motivating-students-technology)

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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Some other things that can make students more engaged is using a game like Kahoot or even having flashcards on a quizlet that will help students through it all. Having these resources can help students be engaged in the class and can help them all. (https://www.edutopia.org/article/using-technology-support-student-engagement/)

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Students engage deeply in class when tech tools encourage them to construct ideas, collaborate with peers, and create unique work.

Over my years as a secondary school teacher, I've attended professional development opportunities that introduced me to new classroom technology that piqued my interest. I enjoyed playing and interacting with the new technology, and I assumed that my students would too. I'd go home and redo my lesson plan for the next day so that I could incorporate the new technology.

The next day, my anticipation couldn't be contained as my students walked into the classroom because I was excited to see them engage with the classroom technology that would guide their learning. On a number of occasions, the result was unanticipated disengagement. At times, they would outright refuse to participate in the activity.

Finding the Right Tech for Your Class Is a Process

Engagement is crucial. I want my students to participate in class discussions, ask questions, comment on their peers' ideas, take notes, read out loud, post in online classroom discussion threads, and probe deeply into what they're reading. These are all visible indicators of student engagement, and research supports the idea that student engagement leads to academic achievement.

I've seen digital technology capture my students' attention; it seemed natural that it would be a valuable educational tool. However, I've also seen students disengage from technology. Therefore, I sought to understand how I could leverage it to support their learning. When I was standing in front of my disengaged students and needing to spontaneously come up with a new lesson plan, I learned the hard way that I can't assume that digital technology inherently engages students.
"I like being able to come up with different types of ideas... things we didn't discuss in class."
By intertwining my own PhD research with my experiences as a classroom teacher before and after the pandemic, I've found that technology engages students when it allows for students to do what I call the 3Cs: construct, collaborate, create.

When technology is used as a tool to transmit information to students to read and memorize, students will disengage by opting out of the task. Instead, we can use technology to allow students to construct their own ideas in order to create personal meaning. Technology is effective when used as a tool for knowledge construction, not knowledge consumption.

In the classroom, this looks like having students read two news articles on the same topic and then letting them decide which article was more persuasive. This allows students to access recent texts through technology, but it also allows them to sort through their own thoughts to decide which article was more effective. Students are able to use technology to construct their own ideas.
"I don't want to quietly sit at a computer and work by myself. I can do that at home. I want to be able to work with other people."
Collaborate

When technology is used as a tool to foster collaboration with others within and beyond the classroom, it will engage students. As educators, we need to position technology to facilitate activities that foster social interaction.

Sometimes, we imagine classroom technology to be isolating-students quietly sitting at their desks working on a computer. Instead, we can use it as a tool for communication. For example, I've had groups of students gather around a single device to watch a short video. Yes, they could all watch it at their own desk on their own device, but positioning technology this way allows students to pause the video, talk to their peers, and rewind and rewatch as necessary.
"I know that I could create without the technology, but the technology means that I can create something better, something I couldn't create without the technology."
This huddled viewing makes the activity interactive and collaborative. Students continue to process their own ideas and engage with their peers to help refine them further.

Technology leads to student engagement when it's a tool that allows students to design, build, and perform tasks that would otherwise be difficult for them to do without access to the technological tools. Students feel accomplished when they create a product that's different from everyone else's. If we can design an evaluation task that allows them to choose how they'll design their final product and provide them with the technological tools to do so, the technology will engage them.

For example, I've had students redesign the cover of a book they've read in their secondary English classroom so that the book can be marketed to preschoolers. This enables them to consider colors, shapes, and images that would appeal to preschoolers and subsequently design, build, and create something that's new and doesn't exist.

Uniting the 3Cs

Despite the amount of learning that happened through and with technology during the pandemic, I've noticed that students still find it engaging. However, I've found that rather than tasks that allow for one of the 3Cs, tasks that unite all of the 3Cs foster greater engagement that can be sustained over several classes. The 3Cs allow students to inquire, connect, and design-three facets of education that emergency remote pandemic learning eroded. To rebuild these important skills, I implemented a task that unites the 3Cs.

This activity gave students voice and choice, and the result was that they created work that they were proud to submit for evaluation. Some products included a radio ad, a TikTok video, an Instagram post, a city bus advertising wrap, an infomercial, a television commercial, a rap with a music video, and a magazine ad. What my students created was beyond what I could have suggested because they had creative skills and media knowledge that I hadn't been aware of until this project.

I learned that when we design an activity that unites the 3Cs, it's a gateway to invite student engagement.

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Supporting Student Engagement With Technology

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Students engage deeply in class when tech tools encourage them to construct ideas, collaborate with peers, and create unique work.