Collaborative Learning and Teaching
March 19, 2018, Issue 6
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Students and teachers are looking forward to the next game!
Tip of the Week
Classroom Ideas - Student Engagement
"Learning experiences range from engaging to passive. Too often engagement is mistaken for active participation and/or time on task. If we think of engagement instead as the act of being interconnected or 'locked in' we get a better picture of what engagement really means. We want our learners to be interconnected with our content. For engagement to be most effective, it is: cognitive, physical, and emotional.
- Involvement is different from engagement. When involved, the learner is invested in the active learning experiences.
- Active participation is often mistaken for engagement. Even though learners can be called upon to participate in hands-on doing, they are not always actually connected (engaged) with the content. A flurry of activity doesn't equate with rigor or engagement.
- Occasional participation occurs when the learner is periodically 'called upon' to do something with the content such as respond to questions, or do a problem.
- Passive participation means the learner is present while the content is 'put out' through lecture, modeling, presentation, text, observing other learners 'doing' or listening to others responding to questions or providing thoughts.
Research shows that student engagement declines from elementary school to junior high school and reaches its lowest levels in high school. So food for thought: "How can students be engaged meaningfully and effectively beyond active participation and time-on-task?"
Gather more ideas on student engagement from Edutopia: https://www.edutopia.org/student-engagement-resources
Impacting The Classroom
Our next venture with impacting the classroom is to feature the fabulous teachers that we have on campus. A google form will be sent out for teachers interested in sharing great ideas that they have implemented within their classrooms so teachers can gain new ideas and collaborate with colleagues. Please come and join us for any meeting that we have. Also, we share notes with teachers that are interested in attending but can not make it.
Our next scheduled meeting will be on April 5, Mrs. McDonald will do a training over interactive notebooks and ideas integrating web tools with the interactive notebooks.
IMPORTANT UPCOMING DATES
March 29, 2018 - End of the 3rd Nine Weeks
March 30, 2018 - Holiday
April 2, 2018 - Holiday
April 3, 2018 - Grades Marked Ready to Post
April 4, 2018 - Verification Sheets Due
April 5, 2018 - Report Cards go Home
April 10th - 7th Grade Writing STAAR, 8th Grade Math STAAR, English I EOC,
April 11th - 8th Grade Reading STAAR
April 12th - English II EOC