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Want to see highly engaged students? Check out these videos.

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We share evidence and practitioner-based learning strategies that empower you to improve K-12 education.

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Benefits Of Educational Toys That Your Kid Must Grab

PreK-12 Federal Funding Resources

10 Ways To Take Care Of Your Child's Mental Health

Why do we want learners of all ages to be engaged during instruction? Because involved students learn more efficiently and are more successful at remembering what they learned. In addition, students who are engaged in learning are more likely to become passionate about learning in general. Student engagement is one byproduct of effective instruction that has major pay offs. Now that you know how to measure your students' level of engagement, how can you increase the amount of time that students in your class are engaged in your instruction? Here are some suggestions...

Do you have any other suggestions?

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7 Ways to Increase Student Engagement in the Classroom Infographic - e-Learning Infographics

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Why do we want learners of all ages to be engaged during instruction? Because involved students learn more efficiently and are more successful at remembering what they learned. In addition, students who are engaged in learning are more likely to become passionate about learning in general.

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Students in Steven English’s 8th grade science class build their understanding of variables in an experiment by engaging in small group and whole class discussions. The teacher facilitates student-centered discussion through questioning and the use of a koosh ball technique.

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Practice Brief 6 -- Topics:InformalEd Instruction Equity
How Can I Get My Students to Learn Science by Productively Talking with Each Other?

Teachers should routinely support students in "sense-making" talk to help them work through their understanding while engaging in the science and engineering practices.

District staff and PD providers should provide models of productive talk in PD and as an integral part of enacting curriculum materials.

School leaders should observe productive science talk in classrooms and provide support to teachers as they develop talk facilitation skills.

What is the Issue?

Talking is integral to human learning. The science and engineering practices described in the NRC Framework for K-12 Science Education highlight that scientists and engineers routinely communicate through talk-not merely to share their final form products-but to make sense of their work and to gather feedback and refine their ideas as the work unfolds. Learners benefit from such accountable talk as well, but it can be tricky to scaffold and manage productive discourse in the classroom.

Authors:

RICH BACOLOR, TAMMY COOK-ENDRES, TIFFANY LEE & ANNIE ALLEN

Reflection Questions

What do you think productive classroom talk looks like? What is your role in supporting that talk at different phases of student investigations?

What explicit and implicit social norms are at play in your classroom, and how can you effectively shift these to support productive talk?

What cultural styles of talk and sensemaking are present in your community of students that you should make room for in science learning conversations?

Things to Consider

The science and engineering practices in the NRC Framework are deeply social and require that students communicate. They involve reasoning with others and seeking a shared understanding of science phenomena. The goals of productive talk include: (1) sharing and clarifying one's own thinking, (2) listening to one another, (3) deepening one's own reasoning, and (4) thinking together.

Talk makes student thinking explicit and public-so that it can be engaged with, interpreted, built upon, and refined. Student ideas can then become resources for learning.

I-R-E (initiation, response, evaluation) is the dominant discourse pattern of classroom interactions, and it needs to change. In order to engage students in science and engineering practices, they need access to and experience with discourse-rich sensemaking conversations. Breaking the I-R-E pattern and integrating productive talk may require practice, preteaching, and scripting student roles and language. (STEM Teaching Tools #35 and #48 may be helpful.)

Students should be supported to make sense of complex natural phenomena. Rich discourse among students should be encouraged through thoughtful lesson sequences and skilled facilitation that position them as collaborative constructors of knowledge.

"In order to process, make sense of, and learn from their ideas, observations, and experiences, students must talk about them... Talk forces students to think about and articulate their ideas. Talk can also provide an impetus for students to reflect on what they do-and do not-understand."

- Ready, Set, SCIENCE!

"We suggest that trying to present science [communication] in a culturally neutral way is like trying to paint a picture without taking a perspective."

- Doug Medin, psychologist

Attending to Equity

Recommended Actions You Can Take

Routinely focus instruction on student talk related to making sense of phenomena and their ideas. Read about making thinking visible through talk and argument, including how to establish classroom norms and use talk moves to cultivate learning conversations. Review the Talk Science Primer and use the Talk Move Checklist.

These classroom videos and supporting discourse primer highlight the use of different talk moves. Learn more about different approaches to managing classroom talk.

ALSO SEE STEM TEACHING TOOLS

STEM Teaching Tools content copyright 2014-19 UW Institute for Science + Math Education. All rights reserved.
This site is primarily funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through the Research + Practice Collaboratory (Award #1238253). Opinions expressed are not those of any funding agency.

Work is licensed under aCreative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 Unported License. Others may adapt with attribution. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Opinions expressed are not those of any funding agency.

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How Can I Get My Students to Learn Science by Productively Talking with Each Other? : StemTeachingTools (en-US)

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Practice Brief 6 -- Topics:InformalEd Instruction Equity Teachers should routinely support students in "sense-making" talk to help them work through their understanding while engaging in the science and engineering practices. District staff and PD providers should provide models of productive talk in PD and as an integral part of enacting curriculum materials.

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Teaching Channel video on pinwheel discussions

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Teaching Channel video on pinwheel discussions

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Pinwheel Discussions: Texts in Conversation

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What a fun way to get high school students to discuss literature. The Pinwheel Discussions lesson plan puts students in roles that will force them to be engaged and effectively discuss the readings.

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Most of the LEARN NC Content has been archived using the Wayback Machine. Instructions for how to access that content is below, including links to frequently requested materials.

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NAEP statistics on discussion and achievement

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NAEP statistics on discussion and achievement

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Not about discourse but about self-esteem (a new take on it?)

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Not about discourse but about self-esteem (a new take on it?)

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Nancy Flanagan has written another of her all-too-numerous to count insightful posts. This one is called I'm OK-You Have Self-Esteem. She approaches the concept of self-esteem in a thoughtful and balanced way, and it's another of her "must-reads."

In that post, she mentions a study that came out last year that, as she puts it, "dared to suggest that kids perform better when given the simple assignment of writing for fifteen minutes about their strengths, to re-affirm their competence." I remember reading about it in the New York Times , and also remember thinking to myself that I needed to find out more about what exactly the researchers had the students do. That task has languished on my "to do" list until Nancy's post prompted me to finally get around to doing some digging.

Here is my summary of what the researchers actually did (you can purchase the article here. I don't think the article itself is very helpful, but the online addendum is).

They had students write three-to-five times during one school year about their values.

The first two times, students were given this list of values:
athletic ability, being good at art, being smart or getting good grades, creativity, independence, living in the moment, membership in a social group (such as your community, racial group, or school club), music, politics, relationships with friends or family, religious values, and sense of humor.
The first time, they were asked to circle one; the second time,they were asked to circle the two or three on the list that were most important to them.

Next, they were asked to think about times when those two or three values (the first time, they just wrote about the one they circled) were most important to them, and then to write a few sentences about why they were important to them.

Finally, students were asked to write if they agreed or disagreed with these statements (there were six levels of agreement/disagreement that students could check):
"These values have influenced my life"
"In general, I try to live up to these values"
"These values are an important part of who I am."
In the third, fourth, and/or fifth times, researchers made minor changes such as giving a different list of values, or asking students to write about which values might be most important during a certain time period, like Winter Break.

Though the academic improvement among students wasn't enormous, it was certainly measurable, and appeared to be sustained after they left the class.

The researchers started their experiment at the beginning of the school year, and spaced the exercises out every two or three months.

I'm certainly going to give it a try, and start now. I'm hopeful it will help, and reflecting on values is certainly never going to hurt. I'll also have students share what they wrote with a partner, and invite class-wide discussion. We do reflective writing each Friday, so it should fit right in.

I'll let readers know how it goes.

If you've tried something like this, or are now going to do so, please leave a comment now or in the future, too.

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Useful Writing Exercise For Helping Students Develop Self-Esteem

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Nancy Flanagan has written another of her all-too-numerous to count insightful posts. This one is called I'm OK-You Have Self-Esteem. She approaches the concept of self-esteem in a thoughtful and balanced way, and it's another of her "must-reads."

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The Big List of Class Discussion Strategies

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The Big List of Class Discussion Strategies

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Listen to this post as a podcast:
When I worked with student teachers on developing effective lesson plans, one thing I always asked them to revise was the phrase "We will discuss."
We will discuss the video. We will discuss the story. We will discuss our results.
Every time I saw it in a lesson plan, I would add a note: "What format will you use? What questions will you ask? How will you ensure that all students participate?" I was pretty sure that We will discuss actually meant the teacher would do most of the talking; He would throw out a couple of questions like "So what did you think about the video?" or "What was the theme of the story?" and a few students would respond, resulting in something that looked like a discussion, but was ultimately just a conversation between the teacher and a handful of extroverted students; a classic case of Fisheye Teaching.

The problem wasn't them; in most of the classrooms where they'd sat as students, that's exactly what a class discussion looked like. They didn't know any other "formats." I have only ever been familiar with a few myself. But when teachers began contacting me recently asking for a more comprehensive list, I knew it was time to do some serious research.

So here they are: 15 formats for structuring a class discussion to make it more engaging, more organized, more equitable, and more academically challenging. If you've struggled to find effective ways to develop students' speaking and listening skills, this is your lucky day.

I've separated the strategies into three groups. The first batch contains the higher-prep strategies, formats that require teachers to do some planning or gathering of materials ahead of time. Next come the low-prep strategies, which can be used on the fly when you have a few extra minutes or just want your students to get more active. Note that these are not strict categories; it's certainly possible to simplify or add more meat to any of these structures and still make them work. The last group is the ongoing strategies. These are smaller techniques that can be integrated with other instructional strategies and don't really stand alone. For each strategy, you'll find a list of other names it sometimes goes by, a description of its basic structure, and an explanation of variations that exist, if any. To watch each strategy in action, click on its name and a new window will open with a video that demonstrates it.

Enjoy!
a.k.a. Chat Stations
Basic Structure: Stations or posters are set up around the classroom, on the walls or on tables. Small groups of students travel from station to station together, performing some kind of task or responding to a prompt, either of which will result in a conversation.

Variations: Some Gallery Walks stay true to the term gallery, where groups of students create informative posters, then act as tour guides or docents, giving other students a short presentation about their poster and conducting a Q&A about it. In Starr Sackstein's high school classroom, her stations consisted of video tutorials created by the students themselves. Before I knew the term Gallery Walk, I shared a strategy similar to it called Chat Stations, where the teacher prepares discussion prompts or content-related tasks and sets them up around the room for students to visit in small groups.
a.k.a. Values Continuum, Forced Debate, Physical Barometer, This or That
Basic Structure: A statement that has two possible responses-agree or disagree-is read out loud. Depending on whether they agree or disagree with this statement, students move to one side of the room or the other. From that spot, students take turns defending their positions.

Variations: Often a Philosophical Chairs debate will be based around a text or group of texts students have read ahead of time; students are required to cite textual evidence to support their claims and usually hold the texts in their hands during the discussion. Some teachers set up one hot seat to represent each side, and students must take turns in the seat. In less formal variations (which require less prep), a teacher may simply read provocative statements students are likely to disagree on, and a debate can occur spontaneously without a text to refer to (I call this variation This or That in my classroom icebreakers post). Teachers may also opt to offer a continuum of choices, ranging from "Strongly Agree" on one side of the room, all the way to "Strongly Disagree" on the other, and have students place themselves along that continuum based on the strength of their convictions.

Basic Structure: Students are divided into 4 groups. Three of these groups are assigned to represent specific points of view. Members of the fourth group are designated as "provocateurs," tasked with making sure the discussion keeps going and stays challenging. One person from each group (the "speaker") sits in a desk facing speakers from the other groups, so they form a square in the center of the room. Behind each speaker, the remaining group members are seated: two right behind the speaker, then three behind them, and so on, forming a kind of triangle. From above, this would look like a pinwheel. The four speakers introduce and discuss questions they prepared ahead of time (this preparation is done with their groups). After some time passes, new students rotate from the seats behind the speaker into the center seats and continue the conversation.

Variations: When high school English teacher Sarah Brown Wessling introduced this strategy in the featured video (click Pinwheel Discussion above), she used it as a device for talking about literature, where each group represented a different author, plus one provocateur group. But in the comments that follow the video, Wessling adds that she also uses the strategy with non-fiction, where students represent authors of different non-fiction texts or are assigned to take on different perspectives about an issue.
a.k.a. Socratic Circles
Basic Structure: Students prepare by reading a text or group of texts and writing some higher-order discussion questions about the text. On seminar day, students sit in a circle and an introductory, open-ended question is posed by the teacher or student discussion leader. From there, students continue the conversation, prompting one another to support their claims with textual evidence. There is no particular order to how students speak, but they are encouraged to respectfully share the floor with others. Discussion is meant to happen naturally and students do not need to raise their hands to speak. This overview of Socratic Seminar from the website Facing History and Ourselves provides a list of appropriate questions, plus more information about how to prepare for a seminar.

Variations: If students are beginners, the teacher may write the discussion questions, or the question creation can be a joint effort. For larger classes, teachers may need to set up seminars in more of a fishbowl-like arrangement, dividing students into one inner circle that will participate in the discussion, and one outer circle that silently observes, takes notes, and may eventually trade places with those in the inner circle, sometimes all at once, and sometimes by "tapping in" as the urge strikes them.
a.k.a. Affinity Diagramming
Basic Structure: Give students a broad question or problem that is likely to result in lots of different ideas, such as "What were the impacts of the Great Depression?" or "What literary works should every person read?" Have students generate responses by writing ideas on post-it notes (one idea per note) and placing them in no particular arrangement on a wall, whiteboard, or chart paper. Once lots of ideas have been generated, have students begin grouping them into similar categories, then label the categories and discuss why the ideas fit within them, how the categories relate to one another, and so on.

Variations: Some teachers have students do much of this exercise-recording their ideas and arranging them into categories- without talking at first. In other variations, participants are asked to re-combine the ideas into new, different categories after the first round of organization occurs. Often, this activity serves as a good pre-writing exercise, after which students will write some kind of analysis or position paper.
a.k.a. Speed Dating
Basic Structure: Students form two circles, one inside circle and one outside circle. Each student on the inside is paired with a student on the outside; they face each other. The teacher poses a question to the whole group and pairs discuss their responses with each other. Then the teacher signals students to rotate: Students on the outside circle move one space to the right so they are standing in front of a new person (or sitting, as they are in the video). Now the teacher poses a new question, and the process is repeated.

Variations: Instead of two circles, students could also form two straight lines facing one another. Instead of "rotating" to switch partners, one line just slides over one spot, and the leftover person on the end comes around to the beginning of the line. Some teachers use this strategy to have students teach one piece of content to their fellow students, making it less of a discussion strategy and more of a peer teaching format. In fact, many of these protocols could be used for peer teaching as well.

Basic Structure: Another great idea from Sarah Brown Wessling, this is a small-group discussion strategy that gives students exposure to more of their peers' ideas and prevents the stagnation that can happen when a group doesn't happen to have the right chemistry. Students are placed into a few groups of 4-6 students each and are given a discussion question to talk about. After sufficient time has passed for the discussion to develop, one or two students from each group rotate to a different group, while the other group members remain where they are. Once in their new group, they will discuss a different, but related question, and they may also share some of the key points from their last group's conversation. For the next rotation, students who have not rotated before may be chosen to move, resulting in groups that are continually evolving.

Basic Structure: Two students sit facing each other in the center of the room; the remaining students sit in a circle around them. The two central students have a conversation based on a pre-determined topic and often using specific skills the class is practicing (such as asking follow-up questions, paraphrasing, or elaborating on another person's point). Students on the outside observe, take notes, or perform some other discussion-related task assigned by the teacher.

Variations: One variation of this strategy allows students in the outer circle to trade places with those in the fishbowl, doing kind of a relay-style discussion, or they may periodically "coach" the fishbowl talkers from the sidelines. Teachers may also opt to have students in the outside circle grade the participants' conversation with a rubric, then give feedback on what they saw in a debriefing afterward, as mentioned in the featured video.

Basic Structure: One student assumes the role of a book character, significant figure in history, or concept (such as a tornado, an animal, or the Titanic). Sitting in front of the rest of the class, the student responds to classmates' questions while staying in character in that role.

Variations: Give more students the opportunity to be in the hot seat while increasing everyone's participation by having students do hot seat discussions in small groups, where one person per group acts as the "character" and three or four others ask them questions. In another variation, several students could form a panel of different characters, taking questions from the class all together and interacting with one another like guests on a TV talk show.
a.k.a. Pyramid Discussion
Basic Structure: Students begin in pairs, responding to a discussion question only with a single partner. After each person has had a chance to share their ideas, the pair joins another pair, creating a group of four. Pairs share their ideas with the pair they just joined. Next, groups of four join together to form groups of eight, and so on, until the whole class is joined up in one large discussion.

Variations: This structure could simply be used to share ideas on a topic, or students could be required to reach consensus every time they join up with a new group.

Whereas the other formats in this list have a distinct shape-specific activities you do with students-the strategies in this section are more like plug-ins, working discussion into other instructional activities and improving the quality and reach of existing conversations.

One of the limitations of discussion is that rich, face-to-face conversations can only happen when all parties are available, so we're limited to the time we have in class. With a tool like Voxer, those limitations disappear. Like a private voice mailbox that you set up with just one person or a group (but SOOOO much easier), Voxer allows users to have conversations at whatever time is most convenient for each participant. So a group of four students can "discuss" a topic from 3pm until bedtime-asynchronously-each member contributing whenever they have a moment, and if the teacher makes herself part of the group, she can listen in, offer feedback, or contribute her own discussion points. Voxer is also invaluable for collaborating on projects and for having one-on-one discussions with students, parents, and your own colleagues. Like many other educators, Peter DeWitt took a while to really understand the potential of Voxer, but in this EdWeek piece, he explains what turned him around.

A backchannel is a conversation that happens right alongside another activity. The first time I saw a backchannel in action was at my first unconference: While those of us in the audience listened to presenters and watched a few short video clips, a separate screen was up beside the main screen, projecting something called TodaysMeet (update: TodaysMeet has shut down. Use YoTeach! instead.) It looked a lot like those chat rooms from back in the day, basically a blank screen where people would contribute a few lines of text, the lines stacking up one after the other, no other bells or whistles. Anyone in the room could participate in this conversation on their phone, laptop, or tablet, asking questions, offering commentary, and sharing links to related resources without ever interrupting the flow of the presentations. This kind of tool allows for a completely silent discussion, one that doesn't have to move at a super-fast pace, and it gives students who may be reluctant to speak up or who process their thoughts more slowly a chance to fully contribute. For a deeper discussion of how this kind of tool can be used, read this thoughtful overview of using backchannel discussions in the classroom by Edutopia's Beth Holland.
a.k.a. Accountable Talk
Talk moves are sentence frames we supply to our students that help them express ideas and interact with one another in respectful, academically appropriate ways. From kindergarten all the way through college, students can benefit from explicit instruction in the skills of summarizing another person's argument before presenting an alternate view, asking clarifying questions, and expressing agreement or partial agreement with the stance of another participant. Talk moves can be incorporated into any of the other discussion formats listed here.

Whole Brain Teaching is a set of teaching and classroom management methods that has grown in popularity over the past 10 years. One of WBT's foundational techniques is Teach-OK, a peer teaching strategy that begins with the teacher spending a few minutes introducing a concept to the class. Next, the teacher says Teach!, the class responds with Okay!, and pairs of students take turns re-teaching the concept to each other. It's a bit like think-pair-share, but it's faster-paced, it focuses more on re-teaching than general sharing, and students are encouraged to use gestures to animate their discussion. Although WBT is most popular in elementary schools, this featured video shows the creator of WBT, Chris Biffle, using it quite successfully with college students. I have also used Teach-OK with college students, and most of my students said they were happy for a change from the sit-and-listen they were used to in college classrooms.

An oldie but a goodie, think-pair-share can be used any time you want to plug interactivity into a lesson: Simply have students think about their response to a question, form a pair with another person, discuss their response, then share it with the larger group. Because I feel this strategy has so many uses and can be way more powerful than we give it credit for, I devoted a whole post to think-pair-share; everything you need to know about it is right there.

TWO MORE YOU'LL LOVE

Since writing this post, I have learned about two more discussion strategies that teachers are finding to be incredibly effective and powerful for getting students to talk, especially about books and other texts:

This protocol has students come up with their own Thoughts, lingering Questions, and Epiphanies from an assigned reading. Teachers who have used this method say it has generated some of the richest conversations they have ever heard from students!

This strategy places students into one-on-one conversations, getting them to learn each others' names better and create a track record of what they talked about. Excellent for classes where you want to assess for discussion and help students get more comfortable with each other.

So what else do you have? I would like to think this is a pretty complete list, but I'm sure more strategies are out there. If you use a discussion strategy that's not mentioned here, please share it below.

Come back for more.
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The Big List of Class Discussion Strategies

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Here they are: 15 formats for structuring a class discussion to make it more engaging, more organized, more equitable, and more academically challenging.

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Attention, Teachers! Why Students Are Bored

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Attention, Teachers! Why Students Are Bored

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Last week I tweeted out a request for teachers to find some students willing to write about needless boredom in schools and received a number of replies. (This is a follow-up to my student survey results.)

Sarah, a high school teacher in NJ, collected some great writings. Here are excerpts from two of her 9 th graders.

From Olivia:

If I ever asked a large amount of students to give one word to describe school, I think that about 90 percent of them would simply say: boring.

Fortunately, in the past I have always had fairly good teachers that kept me interested. However, I remember one of my seventh grade teachers being possibly the most boring person I had ever met. Every day our class schedule was the same: read the chapter -> complete worksheets -> copy down immense PowerPoints for the rest of class. Everyone I talked to dreaded going to that class where we had to learn to write fast and continue writing even with hand cramps. I never really learned anything in that class, I just memorized information, took a test on it and then forgot everything. Imagine that cycle for an entire year. It was tremendously boring.

For other teachers, I recommend not making your students copy 20 slide power points with size 8 font~ Sincerely, every student

Ways to keep students (or at least me) interested:

Change up the outline of the class. Do fun activities so that students have something to look forward to in class.

Speak to the students about the topic. Try to stay away from making the students read about the topic because 99 percent will just skim the material and say that they read it. (I am guilty)

Interact with the students one on one.

Try to incorporate students' at home lives with the class. For example, I love how Mrs. G uses Twitter in class! It's a great way to connect with the students on a more personal level.

Only give homework when absolutely necessary. I know that I sound like I am only saying this because students (including me) don't feel like doing it, however, there is a real reason. Unless the homework is a fun activity, most students will try to get it done and over with as fast as possible, even if it means doing in incorrectly. Doing homework incorrectly is worse than not doing the homework at all because when students put false information on homework, it becomes engraved in their knowledge.

From Maggie:

Why Am I Bored?

1. PowerPoint. Yes, I agree that PowerPoint is a very valuable tool, but this only applies in certain situations. When a teacher writes paragraphs upon paragraphs on a single PowerPoint slide, and then proceeds to read them all verbatim to "teach" the class, I completely zone out. To engage their students, a teacher needs to talk to us like we're people. We need examples, and relatable stories that provide the information a permanent residence inside our minds.

2. The Never-Ending Videos. I think that videos are a great tool for teachers to utilize. With sources like YouTube readily available, it is easier than ever to pull up a video on any topic imaginable. However, when a video is more than 20 minutes long (when I say video, I mean something informational, not a movie), it gets harder and harder to pay attention, and easier and easier to spiral downward into the abyss of boredom. Videos, in my opinion, should be used in moderation.

3. The Lackadaisical Attitude. Personally, I feel that if a teacher seems to have no interest in a subject, neither will I. It is so much harder to pay attention when a teacher seems unenthusiastic, and I can't even begin to explain how much more interested I am in class when a teacher really cares about what they are teaching.

How to Avoid Boring Your Students (For Teachers)

1. Like I said before, use PowerPoints wisely. Use them as a guide instead of a word-for-word of what you're going to say.

2. Use relatable examples. Show funny (not too lengthy) videos that somehow correlate with the subject material, and make the information more memorable for your students.

3. Make class enjoyable. Throw around a ball for students to answer questions, or have a little friendly competition.

4. Even if you're having a bad day, try to be positive. You attitude, whether it is unenthusiastic or constructive, tends to rub off on your students.

5. Engage all your students. Even if only one student is raising their hand, try to call on other people, who may not have their hand up, to answer questions. If they do not get the answer correct, try to guide them towards the correct answer instead of just saying, "No," and skipping to another child.

How to Avoid Boredom in Class (For Students)

1. Ask questions. Try as hard as possible to think of logical questions that will benefit the entire class. This will stimulate your mind, and (hopefully) keep you focused on the subject material.

2. Be open-minded, and give each class a chance. Maybe last year your English class was the quintessence of boredom, but that doesn't mean that English this year will be the same. Keep a positive attitude towards all your classes until you have enough time to form a logical opinion of them.

3. Raise your hand! Even if you are really doubtful of your answer, there is still a chance that you are correct. If you are wrong, a teacher could explain your mistake and make the correct answer more memorable.

4. If you are not actively writing, try not to have a pen or a pencil in your hand. This leads to doodling and thus, zoning-out.

5. Keep your head up. Resting you head on the desk will make you focus, but not on class. Instead, you will be fighting boredom, and lack of sleep.

Just a note: This post is not in any way meant to point out all the faults of teachers. Teachers are people too, and of course, like any other person, they make mistakes.

Words of wisdom from our clients.

And please, teachers, take special heed on the PowerPoints. This was the #1 disliked practice in our student survey:
Too much text on each slide; and reading directly from the slide.
BORING!!!

It is not easy to admit that our approach might be needlessly boring. (Please don't write me and say that there is always boredom in life; I simply won't post it. We're talking about needlessly boring and improvable teacher practices here.) That's why I encourage you to use the video/audio function on your phone and watch or just hear yourself and ask: if school weren't required, would people happily sign up for and keep coming to such a class? Lectures got so boring at MIT that attendance dropped to 50 percent in many of them. Why go, given that the course ID online and the Internet has a million resources?

Here is a practical suggestion: either take voice lessons or do a thorough study of effective monologists, comics, storytellers and public speakers; watch good TED Talks; go to Toastmasters; sit in on a teacher who has great classroom presence in your building, etc. The typical teacher use of voice is not very effective: too much of a monotone, poor use of silence for effect; little crescendo and diminuendo, etc. -- leaving aside the quality of the lessons and assignments. (How odd that voice lessons aren't a core course in teacher prep.) In short, as I keep saying, there is much in our control that we can do to improve student engagement and achievement.

PS: Here -- AE Student Survey 2013-2014 -- is a PDF of our SurveyMonkey student survey, for the many people who requested a look at the questions.
Grant Wiggins is the co-author of Understanding by Design and the author of Educative Assessment and numerous articles on education. He is the President of Authentic Education in Hopewell NJ.

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Attention, Teachers! Why Students Are Bored

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Last week I tweeted out a request for teachers to find some students willing to write about needless boredom in schools and received a number of replies. (This is a follow-up to my student survey results.) Sarah, a high school teacher in NJ, collected some great writings.