Student Engagement Reflection

During my JA in a Day internship, I learned quickly that student engagement would be important to the lesson plan. Having younger classes, I knew that we would have to keep the students engaged or they would lose interest quickly. A main engagement strategy we used was positive reinforcement. Students, especially the younger ones, want to be praised for their hard work. While the students were working on the activities, my partner and I would constantly let the students know they were doing a great job. While we were in discussion mode, we would thank them for listening and participating. Positive reinforcement made a major difference in how the day went. Another engagement strategy we used was facilitating discussion. We would as simple questions and have a handful of students give us answers. Having some students answer gave …show more content…
Once the students went off to their first set of specials we knew how we wanted the rest of the day to go. We made sure for classroom management that when one of us was discussing the lesson, the other would be walking around, focusing students on the speaker, and answering any questions a student may have. Also, during the activities, we decided to go through them together. One of us would have hand out the papers, while the other gave the instructions. We would help out around the room and keep the students on task. To keep the students’ attention, we would either clap a rhythm for them to copy or hold up our hand and wait until everyone was quiet. We would say at the beginning of each class that we would “respect the speaker.” When it came to student engagement strategies, we just tried to make it interesting and fun so the students would want to join in. Everyone wanted to participate so we would ask tons of questions and make sure everyone who had something to say would be able to say it at some point in the