Engagement

The question is always, "How do I get the students to WANT to learn?"

In science, sometimes that is easily answered because the nature of the lab or activity is something that students are naturally curious about and just want to learn the material. But even in those cases, you have students who tune out because that's just not their cup of tea.

On the other hand, you have the day-to-day instruction that can sometimes feel like a drag. But here's a key: if it feels boring to you, it will definitely be boring for most of your students. I know that if I'm not excited about the day's lesson, then there's no chance for my students!

Engagement is not just about what you do at the beginning of class, either. Engagement is about how you design your curriculum, how you set up learning from one day to the next, one week to the next, one unit to the next. My students know that every unit, there will be a debate or presentation (which they love to do) - my "engagement" is simply that today is debate prep day! Of course, it's only easy because of the work that I've put in beforehand, establishing the norms and expectations so that it doesn't become tedious or too easy.

So if today isn't one of those days that you can wave a magic wand and say, "LAB DAY!" and automatically get their attention, then usually one of these strategies will help you out.

Compass Points (NEWS): Compass Points is a good way to engage students in a familiar format. You have the students write one piece for each cardinal direction, either on a sheet of paper in front of them, or on paper that is in each direction in the room. The E stands for "Excitement," the W is for "Worries," the N is for "Needs," and the S is for "Stance," "Steps," or "Suggestions." You would mostly use Compass Points for a debatable topic or a lab that students are about to start.

Demonstrations: Nothing beats an explosion, a reason to stand on top of a desk or table, or light something on fire. Just make sure the students know why you're doing it before you even allude to doing something crazy!

Discrepant Events: The kid sister of demonstrations, these are demonstrations and experiments that have a twist, and the trick is in the explanation. You can make it as inductive as you want and even have a discrepant event last an entire class period!

KWL: These are sometimes overly used, but they are a familiar and easy way to get students thinking about the topic that they are about to cover. Have students divide their paper in three columns, then label it Know, Want to know, and Learned. Students start the lesson by writing what they Know and Want to know, then revisit their KWL at the end of the lesson to write what they Learned (and if they Want to know anything else). I find KWL's to be particularly helpful for topics that students are already somewhat familiar with and more prone to be curious to find out more.

Videos: Ahh yes, some of us remember the TV being wheeled out and thinking, "Today's going to be a good day." But a good video can be just as effective as well-crafted direct instruction. As a biology teacher, my favorite YouTube channels are Amoeba Sisters, Crash Course Biology, and Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Cosmos.

Whole-Class Activity: Never discount the power of a fun game, human simulation or other way of getting the entire class up and about. When I teach ecology, I like to play a predator-prey game that I developed. Every student gets an organism card that they have to keep secret. Some students are producers (plants), a few are primary consumers (herbivores) and even fewer are secondary consumers (carnivores). One is a decomposer (like a worm), and I am the sun. I know it's astronomically heretical, but when I make a full circuit around the room, that completes one day - during that day, plants have to visit me in order to get little orange "energy" cards, herbivores need to find plants to get energy from them, and carnivores needs to find herbivores to get energy from them. There are wrinkles in the game: anyone who meets a decomposer loses one energy card to the decomposer; if two carnivores meet, the one with more energy takes from the one with less; etc. By the end of a "day," I've had plants hiding in corners of the room, carnivores fast-walking after their prey (no running allowed) and general mayhem in the strokes before midnight.

Padlet: This is a sort of interactive, collaborative Pinterest that can be used as a KWL, concept map, to-do list, Q&A, and more. Ultimately, it allows students to post ideas in text or graphic format and then refer back to those ideas over the course of a lesson or project.

Types of Inquiry

Everyone talks about inquiry, especially in science classrooms. But it can be very difficult to understand exactly what it is, particularly when you're under the gun and need to design a lesson on Sunday for Monday! Basically, inquiry is when we turn the tables, and instead of us asking the questions of students, they have to ask questions and discover answers to those questions.

Of course, this works very well in science, so here are the major four types of inquiry:

Open Students investigate questions that are student formulated through student designed/selected procedures.	Guided Students investigate a teacher-presented question using student designed/ selected procedures.
Structured Students investigate a teacher-presented question through a prescribed procedure.	Confirmation Students confirm a principle through an activity when the results are known in advance.

I find that true, open inquiry is very difficult to implement and has to happen closer to the end of the school year after students are comfortable with the basic tenets of inquiry and science. Essentially, these are science fair questions, but you can still guide students in open inquiry to investigate a question that is about a particular unit of study.

Differentiation Strategies

I have used a variety of differentiation strategies over my career, but the simplest way to start is to treat every student as an individual who needs as much customized instruction as possible. So the question becomes, how do you do that and have enough time to do everything you grade papers, design lessons, etc.? Here are some ideas:

Tiered Assignments: The idea behind tiered assignments is that you have different levels of scaffolding for different levels of learners in the classroom. I have assigned my students two scores: high/low literacy and high/low focus. When I present them with labs, I have a background written for high literacy and one for low, and a set of instructions listed for high focus and one for low focus. This creates four natural groups, and if those groups are too large, then I split into multiple homogenous groups.

Compacting: This involves meeting students exactly where they are, high or low. You can give students the same credit for different assignments that teach about the same concept, just on different levels.

Interest Centers: Also known as stations, these can be very helpful to maintain students' engagement if a wide variety of granular information needs to be introduced. I like combining this with peer instruction, having students leaving one station teach the incoming students how to perform the station. This can create lags in the station cycle, so I often intervene in order to even things out.

Flexible Grouping: I think most of us use a variety of groups for a variety of tasks, but this formalizes that practice. It can help to dig out of entrenched groups as students start to rely on their partners instead of themselves.

Learning Contracts: Learning contracts can be very complex or very simple. I've done them for 4-minute bellwork assignments before just for that class period, and it works well alongside objectives.

Choice Boards: These tend to rely too heavily upon (mostly debunked) learning styles, but if they are actually of the same difficulty and elicit the same amount of evaluative data, then it allows students to choose what's easiest for them. They are time-consuming to put together, so I only do one or two of these per year for major concepts.

Sidebar Investigations: Sidebars can be especially helpful for those students who just want to know more about a particular concept, but can be an impediment if too many students opt to do them. It's best to assign students to the sidebars and to emphasize that they are optional.