Teacher To Teacher
Setting the stage to engage with text
High school teacher Amy Matthusen of East-West School of International Studies in Queens explains how to deepen students' engagement with a play or novel by having them produce a talk show featuring characters from the text.
Helping students become analytical readers
Strategies such as journaling, reader’s notes and social-emotional prompts can help students make the leap to making inferences from the fiction and non-fiction they read.
Student-created reviews boost math skills
As a middle school math teacher, I’ve learned that providing students with spiral reviews — having students revisit concepts throughout the year — created by their peers instills a sense of ownership of the work. It typically makes the problems more relatable to their lives.
Let students take the wheel sometimes
In my work as a 10th-grade social studies teacher, I’ve found that fostering student agency — allowing students some choices and control over how their day goes — increases engagement.
Here are some ways that a classroom teacher can encourage student agency in the classroom.
Collaborative roles key with small groups
The Department of Education has recently encouraged special education and integrated co-teaching teachers to prioritize targeted small-group instruction, including station teaching. That shift has meant that I’ve had to learn new classroom management and pedagogical strategies for my 12:1:1 special education class for 3rd- and 4th-graders.
Three informal assessment options
Sometimes, informal assessments can be more meaningful and less anxiety-provoking than traditional tests for students. Three informal assessments I use in my high school chemistry classes are 10-Point Bingo, a whiteboard activity and “I Can” statements.