7 Student Participation Hacks: A Cheat Sheet for Teachers

Summer holidays. We're all longing for them. Some of us are mentally there already. So, how can we overcome inevitable student apathy at this time of year? Here are some quick hacks to increasing student participation in your lessons...

#1 Make Learning Intentions Clear and Relevant

Students are much more likely to actively participate when the context of learning is relevant.  Reinforce what students will gain from successfully completing your lesson.

For example, when learning about time in First Grade, I encourage students to think about occasions when it is necessary to be able to tell the time.  They inevitably generate a huge list of situations relevant to their lives such as; play dates, church services, birthday parties, watching movies at the cinema, catching a bus or train etc.

#2 Increase Wait Time 

On average, teachers tend to wait only one or two seconds before answering their own questions (Clarke, 2005). This, coupled with rapid answers from fast thinking students, can be very demotivating.

Introduce a "thinking time" visual clue for younger learners (e.g. a sand timer) and make it explicit that answers will not be sought until that period of time is over.

#3 No Hands Up! 

A lot of classrooms have a cluster of students that regularly put their hands up whilst others are happy to sit back and let their classmates do all of the work. Implementing "no hands up" with increased wait time, can dramatically increase student participation since students will be very much aware that they might be expected to contribute.

There are a variety of fun ways you can randomly select students including names on lolly (popsicle) sticks, spin the bottle etc.

#4 Pair/Share

Given the opportunity to share ideas, students are a lot happier to discuss their thinking with the class.  In the early years, time will have to be spent on explaining "partner voices" as well as basic talking and listening skills (e.g. actively listening and looking at your partner when talking).

#5 Encourage Questioning 

Invite expert visitors to your class, or have students "hot seat" (take the role of an expert character) to encourage active talking and listening.  In the early years focus on forming who/what/when/where/why questions.

#6 Plan Collaborative Lessons

Carefully planned collaborative lessons involve allocating responsibilities to individual students and holding them accountable within their grouping.  If you are working in the early years you may wish to begin with simple partner work.

An example could be the creation of a 4 seasons poster.  Each student within a group of 4 would be allocated a season to research.  Students could then share their findings and discuss and create a "jigsaw" style poster (consisting of 4 jigsaw pieces) which showcases each of the 4 seasons.

#7 Introduce Choice

Research has consistently shown that introducing choice increases student engagement levels as well as their ability to think deeply and creatively.

If you wish to assess your students understanding of a chapter of text, you could provide them with a variety of choices to demonstrate their learning, for example; create a slide show explaining the key points, write a newspaper article detailing the "news" revealed in the text or work in a small group to "act out" the main event/idea.

Finally...

Enjoy these last few months with your classes.  Take heart, summer is almost upon us. Remember that, as an educator, you are all kinds of awesome.

OkinawanGirl is a Scottish primary school teacher who has taught in the UK, Japan and Spain.  She has trained preschool teachers and developed curriculum for students whom speak English as an additional language.  You can help prepare your students for your end of year vocabulary assessments by downloading her free Dolch Sight Word Game available by subscribing to her blog.

Credits:
- photos from pixabay
- research cited by Shirley Clarke
- quotation image from http://www.pinterest.com/pin/569916527816227192

6 Mistakes You Can Make When Teaching Children To Read

As a newly qualified teacher, you probably struggled with the mechanics of teaching children how to read.  However, once you mastered phonics instruction and guided reading sessions, it all fell into place, right?

But are you teaching this essential skill as well as you could be?  Is every child in your class getting it?

I've been doing some research* and will share my findings concerning common mistakes with you below.

Mistake #1: Teaching Upper/Lower Case Sounds and Letter Names in Isolation

I'm the first to admit, I have been guilty of this.

Why?

It made sense to me to break letters into manageable segments (lower case letter recognition and sounds, upper case letter recognition and sounds and then, finally, letter names) to make it "easier" for students.

Wrong.

Learning is all about making connections.  By teaching sounds and letter names in isolation this way, I was doing my students a disservice.  Struggling students often experience difficulties in making connections.   Teaching letter sounds and names in isolation makes the process more challenging for those types of students.

Mistake #2: Telling Students that "Tricky Words" are Non-Decodable

“Decodable words can be sounded out. Tricky words need to be learned by sight.”

Sound familiar?

Well, as it happens, only 4% of words in the English language are completely non-decodable.  

Picture yourself learning an additional language.  You spend weeks, perhaps months, learning the code only to be told to "forget all about that" and, instead, learn a whole bunch of words by sight.  Confused/frustrated much?  I know I would be.  

Instruction should address students' levels of decoding skills.  Emergent readers will most likely have to learn the word "the" before learning the "th" sound.  Initially, you should teach these students "the" as a whole sight word.  HOWEVER, later instruction should go back and address the fact that the "th" part of the word is decodable. 

The powers that be in England have attempted to address this common misconception in their curriculum guidance by using the phrase "common exception words" as opposed to "tricky words".  

Mistake #3: Teaching Rules and Exceptions Together

The English language has many rules with exceptions.  For example, "i before e except after c".  It can be tempting to teach "achieve"and "ceiling" together with some exception words such as, "seize" and "vein".  

Sure, you will save yourself a bit of time.  However, chances are you will confuse some students in the process.  After all, what is the point of learning something that doesn't always work anyway?  

Exceptions should be addressed when, and only when, students are proficient in their knowledge, understanding and application of the rule.  

Mistake #4: Teaching Phonics Exclusively During Phonics Lessons

Reading is an essential skill in every curricular area.  Use opportunities in lessons other than phonics to make connections with phonics instruction.  

As a primary school teacher, I often find myself explaining the meaning of various words.  However, I have to remind myself to discuss how to decode the word and then explain the meaning.  

Mistake #5: Not Making the Process Explicit and Multisensory

Do your students know exactly what to do when they encounter a word they don't know?  Is the process explicit and on display with visual clues?  If not, it most definitely should be.  

Students need to know what to do when they don't have us around to support them.   This is particularly essential when it comes to homework and school holidays.  

Building confidence is essential.  

A bookmark with visual clues / text would serve as an excellent reminder when students are reading at home.  

Mistake #6: Making Assumptions

I love this wonderful quote from Shantell Berrett over at ReadingHorizons:  "Assume nothing, connect everything".  

Regardless of how many times we, as experts, have explained various terms connected with reading, are you confident that every single student knows what you are talking about?  Check and check again.  

Finally......A Gift

To celebrate the launch of my new blog, I have created a free Dolch sight word game exclusively for my blog followers (the first of many treats!).

If you wish to claim this free download, suitable for Kinder through to 3rd Grade, please opt in at:  www.theokinawangirl.com

Warm wishes,

OkinawanGirl Lisa is a teacher/nomad/Internet junkie with experience teaching in Scotland, Japan and Spain.  You can check out her shiny new blog at:  www.theokinawangirl.com 

*Research:  Much of the content of this post was thanks to the wonderful webinars hosted by the team at Reading Horizons.  I highly recommend checking them out.  

Get Writing in First Grade: Tried and Tested Ideas That Really Work!

Does it feel like a huge challenge turning an entire class of little people into independent writers?

It doesn't really need to be a headache.  You can do it and it can even be fun!  Here I'll share some of my favourite techniques for promoting independent writing.

Overview of Early Writers

Early writers are not yet capable of a wide range of writing.  Focus on topics that are personally significant to them  (e.g. "A Trip to the Park").  Teaching should emphasise:

• exploring the purpose of writing

• differences in oral and written language

• planning and editing 

• spelling strategies

• extending range of vocabulary 

• use of connectives to expand simple sentences 

Stage 1 - Talk for Writing

• Introduce and discuss an interesting stimuli (curious object, book, illustration, photograph, newspaper article, music, video clip or act as a character in a "hot seat" fielding questions from your class).

Story starter video clip - The Antique Shop

• Plan quality questions in advance, give students "thinking time" and implement a "no hands up" policy  to emphasise that you expect everyone to think and that anyone could potentially be picked.  A simple, yet effective, way to ask quality questions is to turn a question into a true or false statement (e.g. "The Big Bad Wolf deserved to get burned in the little pigs pot.  Agree/Disagree/Justify").  

• Explain learning objectives (e.g. to use past tense accurately).  Have students generate the success criteria.  

• Allow time for students to "pair/share" ideas.   Have a random selection of students share their ideas with the class. Encourage active listening by having students make the “WOW” sign (below) every time they hear language linked to the learning objectives. 

• Record ideas. The actual activity will vary according to your learning objectives. Examples include creating an illustration, taking a note of key words in student dictionaries (below) and voice or video recording. 

photo used with kind permission from Page Protector Printables and More

Stage 2 - Shared Writing

• Teacher models writing whilst focusing on handwriting, grammar, spelling and punctuation.  Think aloud and encourage input from students.  Great opportunity to work on up-leveling sentences (e.g. change "The dog barked." to "The scruffy dog barked and wagged his tail").

• A fun way to ensure sentences make sense and include punctuation is by having the class read them aloud whilst demonstrating "Kung Fu Punctuation" (video demo below).  I often deliberately make some mistakes to model self correction.  

Mr Martin demonstrating the art of kung fu punctuation!

• Highlight areas of the story that can be changed to your students individual preferences (e.g. "I went to the park and I played _________________").  Have them either write a story completing the blanks (possibly with a writing frame or word banks depending on level) or have them act out their stories in pairs/small groups.  Ask students to peer assess based on the success criteria.  I always use the 2 stars and wish system which involves highlighting 2 positive points (stars) followed by one suggestion for improvement (wish).

Stage 3 - Independent Writing

• In addition to the overall lesson learning objective remind students of their additional objective (the "wish" feedback from their previous piece of writing).  

• Depending on your students individual levels "independent writing" can involve: generating a story from scratch, personalizing writing frames, tracing text they dictated to an adult or simply orally recording their story.  

• Self editing.  As a matter of routine have students circle their use of punctuation and how they have met their learning intentions (e.g. circle their use of an interesting adjectives).  Ensure you have a supply of erasers on hand as this is where many students realise they have made some mistakes.  

Stage 4 - Review and Rewrite

• When marking students work I focus ONLY on their learning intentions (which are typically the focus of the lesson plus an individual target based on their previous piece of writing).  I use pink highlighter pen to emphasise areas that "tickled me pink" (i.e. made me happy as they demonstrated the success criteria) and green highlighter pen to signify "areas that can grow like grass" to emphasise areas that can be improved upon (e.g. missing capital letters).  

• Students rewrite focusing on green highlighted sections of their work (areas that require growth).

• Students whom have met all of the success criteria use this time to complete literacy fast finisher activities focusing on their weaker areas of literacy (see below). 

Extension Activities 

The key to successful extension activities is that they are fun and focus on your students individual needs.  One of my favourite examples is using levelled games to review reading and/or spelling sight words.  

One of a collection of sight word game boards featuring various levels of Dolch words.

Questions or Feedback?

If you liked this article please go ahead and pin it by simply clicking on any of the above images.  If you have comments or questions I'd love to hear from you below, it would go a long way in reassuring  me that I'm not simply, "talking to the wind" as the Japanese say.  

About the author:  OkinawanGirl is a Scottish primary school teacher addicted to books, technology, world travel and the Japanese language.  Rumours that she moved to Japan in a feeble attempt to meet Kenichi Matsuyama are quite simply not true (she didn't discover him until AFTER she relocated).  You can check out her Facebook page by clicking here.  

Spelling disclaimer:  please note that OkinawanGirl used British spelling when writing this article.