"B" for Boring
As teachers, we often feel that we should speak and our students should listen intently to our well-planned lecture. Reality check, children need to be engaged in a lesson; meaning, that we cannot be boring! We have to put on a "show" for our students, we have to act excited about the lessons we teach, and we have to act as if we just discovered something new (even though we've done this concept a thousand times) for the first time.
We have to be great actors (just as Rita Pierson had said) when we are in front of our classroom because our enthusiasm fuels our students' engagement. I recently have read some of Suzy Pepper Rollins books and she discusses the attention span of children from kindergarten to adulthood; essentially, we all have about a six to twelve minute attention span. What does that mean for us... DO NOT BE BORING! Sounds easy enough; however, in most cases it is not that easy. When I started teaching I began with a "do now," followed by an overview of the lesson, then lectured content (maybe with some questioning), and then 25 minutes later I would engaged my students in an activity. (For any of my students who are reading this now, I truly apologize!) I soon "woke up" and realized that my students were not retaining information, not learning content, and could not apply what I thought I taught them, so I started to re-think my approach.
ASCD provides "10 Steps to Create an Engaging Classroom," which are helpful to a degree; however, because we are all different in so many different ways. Once I started realizing that my students were bored for the first 20 minutes of my lesson, I started to change my mannerisms and began acting. To my surprise, engagement increased and my students were discovering things rather then me bestowing great knowledge upon them. After a few years, I started using a website to manage my content and provided assignments to read and review, so when my students arrived in class the next day we could be engaged in applying what we had learned. Years later, I was reading an article on the "Flipped Classroom" (smacking myself in the head - I should have came up with that term); and, it stated essentially what I had learned on my own: engage students within the classroom and make your time together meaningful and memorable.
ISTE discusses the classroom set up in "6 ways to create a more engaging classroom," sharing that the classroom of today; unfortunately, does not look much different than the classroom of the 1950s. If we think about what skills are considered to be the most valuable by businesses and employers we might think about our classroom design differently and shift our mindset to foster collaboration, communication, and problem-solving through perseverance. Indicating that we should use Stephen Covey's Habit Two: Think with the End in Mind. Of course, classroom design takes a great deal of understanding what we value and how we want our students to be engaged in our content; thus, extensive planning is required!
Please remember, every word we speak and every action we take within our classroom makes a difference and impacts our students. Do we want to bore them or engage them in our content? If we re-examine our plans to see how we want our students to apply what they learned; then, we can shift our mindset to allow our students to discover the knowledge required to work through activities, projects, and assignments. In return (hopefully), our students will not be bored and they will enter our classroom each day wondering "what are we going to do today?" Keeping them wondering, sustains their inquisitive nature; thus, increasing classroom engagement and ultimately developing applicable knowledge.
We have to be great actors (just as Rita Pierson had said) when we are in front of our classroom because our enthusiasm fuels our students' engagement. I recently have read some of Suzy Pepper Rollins books and she discusses the attention span of children from kindergarten to adulthood; essentially, we all have about a six to twelve minute attention span. What does that mean for us... DO NOT BE BORING! Sounds easy enough; however, in most cases it is not that easy. When I started teaching I began with a "do now," followed by an overview of the lesson, then lectured content (maybe with some questioning), and then 25 minutes later I would engaged my students in an activity. (For any of my students who are reading this now, I truly apologize!) I soon "woke up" and realized that my students were not retaining information, not learning content, and could not apply what I thought I taught them, so I started to re-think my approach.
ASCD provides "10 Steps to Create an Engaging Classroom," which are helpful to a degree; however, because we are all different in so many different ways. Once I started realizing that my students were bored for the first 20 minutes of my lesson, I started to change my mannerisms and began acting. To my surprise, engagement increased and my students were discovering things rather then me bestowing great knowledge upon them. After a few years, I started using a website to manage my content and provided assignments to read and review, so when my students arrived in class the next day we could be engaged in applying what we had learned. Years later, I was reading an article on the "Flipped Classroom" (smacking myself in the head - I should have came up with that term); and, it stated essentially what I had learned on my own: engage students within the classroom and make your time together meaningful and memorable.
ISTE discusses the classroom set up in "6 ways to create a more engaging classroom," sharing that the classroom of today; unfortunately, does not look much different than the classroom of the 1950s. If we think about what skills are considered to be the most valuable by businesses and employers we might think about our classroom design differently and shift our mindset to foster collaboration, communication, and problem-solving through perseverance. Indicating that we should use Stephen Covey's Habit Two: Think with the End in Mind. Of course, classroom design takes a great deal of understanding what we value and how we want our students to be engaged in our content; thus, extensive planning is required!
Please remember, every word we speak and every action we take within our classroom makes a difference and impacts our students. Do we want to bore them or engage them in our content? If we re-examine our plans to see how we want our students to apply what they learned; then, we can shift our mindset to allow our students to discover the knowledge required to work through activities, projects, and assignments. In return (hopefully), our students will not be bored and they will enter our classroom each day wondering "what are we going to do today?" Keeping them wondering, sustains their inquisitive nature; thus, increasing classroom engagement and ultimately developing applicable knowledge.
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