Quora Question: Which educational practice has made the biggest impact on student engagement in your classroom?
Great Question!
The biggest impact on student engagement: Starting each lesson or unit with an engaging “hook” that stimulates student curiosity and opens student’s minds to want to know more. The hook should set up a cognitive disconnect in a student’s mind so that they start to think. Here are some examples:
Science-Demonstration-putting 2 different cans of soda each into a clear container of water. One will sink and one will float. The cans are either turned away from the students so that they cannot see the labels or the labels are marked out with permanent marker. Student cognitive disconnect: Both cans are the same size. Why does one sink and one floats? (One can has sugar in it and one is sugar free-it’s just enough of a difference in density for one to sink while the other floats).
Math and Science-Real world example: Question: Why are sea otters disappearing in one bay in Alaska but not the other? (I posed this question and students needed to figure out if it were possible that Orcas were killing and eating the sea otters in the one bay-How many sea otters would one male and one female Orca have to eat daily in order to survive?). Part of the hook was the question posed and for part of the hook I showed my students video clips of sea otters to help familiarize them with these super cute mammals. The math word problems were challenging for them so it was important to get them curious before we got to the hard part.
Social Science-Why did people hate King Richard III so much? Was he really a hunchback? Students were very interested in this topic after I showed them some short video clips from a popular movie and some other clips to stimulate their curiosity.
English-To motivate my students to read, write and speak from a text I held Socratic Seminars. For example: My students read the book, “Silent Spring” and their challenge question for the Socratic Seminar was, “Some thought that Rachel Carson was a heroine and some thought she was a villain. What do you think? Be prepared to defend your answer.”
Final Thought: There are many fun and interesting ways to set up an interesting and engaging hook for your students. If you open their minds to “wanting” to know more about your topic/concept you will have a lot of fun teaching and your students will enjoy learning.
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