Student Engagement and Motivation

Student Engagement and Motivation Training

Do your students feel frustrated? Do they easily give up or sometimes not even try?

My strategies help you build student motivation which in turn increases student participation. Fun, engaging lessons are at the heart of building a classroom that has participation from all students. We also introduce methods for creating an inquisitive classroom, where students are free to question the material and explore the curricula in greater depth. By honoring student voice, giving them more opportunities to respond to instruction and presenting the material in several modes and intelligences of learning, we greatly increase the chances our students will discover more ways of learning. If we teach to their strengths and help them overcome their weaker areas, they will have more tools for their own learning.

Do you use strategies that promote attention and interest and garner greater participation in the classroom?

You are competing for your student’s attention every day. In today’s dynamic world it is hard to grab interest in biology or algebra! Through randomization and story-telling, I present very specific methods to re-engage your students and increase participation in your classroom. A student who isn’t interested is not likely to care about the lesson. Approaching instruction by using their vernacular, experiences, and points of view will greatly increase their interest and understanding of your lesson.

Can you make your lessons more relevant and engaging?

Students get frustrated if they don’t understand the task at hand. Because of our busy time tables and schedules, we are often forced to “press-on” just to get through the material. Even given these circumstances you can create memorable moments for your students and greatly improve the chance they catch the meaning of your lessons and attach them to their own experiences through the use of synectics and other strategies taught in my course! Reducing confusion and increasing understanding go hand in hand with my approaches to creating more relevant and engaging lessons.

Do you wish your students were more connected to the curriculum?

We present methods to increase “Aha!” moments by connecting concepts in the curricula with student voice and experience. Using strategies that honor student voice and allow them to approach the lesson from their areas of strength, will reduce resistance to learning and increase opportunities for your students to respond accordingly to the curricula.

Can we promote a sense of self-efficacy in our students?

Your state and school WILL put your students to the test and expect them to perform. My course will help you teach students to function under increased pressure! Except for performers and athletes, most of our students are not ready, or have little experience, to perform on demand. Through my dynamic tension strategies, you will teach your students how to work under pressure. When student’s truly “earn” their knowledge in such conditions, they are much more likely to understand how they learn best and feel motivated to learn even more. By allowing our students the time and opportunity to struggle a bit, we give them that moment of understanding when, through their own efforts, they discover the concept or answer for themselves.

Do you get frustrated reinventing the wheel? Is it possible to share our great ideas efficiently and effectively?

Too often teachers are left on their own to figure out what works and what doesn’t work. Learn a powerful strategy to increase dialogue between teachers and administrators and to showcase the best lessons that are being taught in your building, in your grade level, or department. Learn how to record and share your very best lessons and make them available for other teachers. By doing so you will preserve the best and most effective lessons. New teachers will greatly benefit as well as educators who suddenly have to change grades or subjects! Having a reliable and accurate method of sharing our very best lessons can increase teacher retention as well as student achievement. My matrix allows you to record your most engaging lessons, share them with others, and also track where we are lacking in either depth of knowledge or mode of learning.

Supports RTI, PLC’s and other fine programs.

Student Engagement and Motivation Agenda

Our training is proven in proactive, research based, practical, and easy to implement. We provide flexibility to best meet the needs unique to your campus. Participants will learn techniques to meet students where they are and lead them to where they need to be, capture attention, promote deeper learning, and engage students’ emotion.

8:30 am – 12:00 pm

Make the connection between differentiated instruction and student engagement and motivation

Clarify your understanding of what differentiated instruction is and isn’t.
Learn the pillars of differentiated instruction.
Assess which components of student engagement and motivation would be most valuable to focus upon.
Understand how multiple intelligences and learning modalities impact student engagement.

Gain tools for promoting positive feelings in the classroom

Explore ways to bring more of yourself into the classroom.
Use movement to stimulate positive affect and deepen understanding.
Learn fun strategies to ask for and respond to student feedback.

Discover strategies for stimulating attention and interest

Keep students on their toes with a variety of randomization techniques.
Capture students’ attention and lead them to deeper levels of understanding through specific questioning techniques.
Rediscover storytelling as a way to draw students into learning.

Lunch 12:00 – 1:00 pm

1:00 – 3:30 pm

Design lessons that are high on the “meaningful and relevant” meter

Guide students to make personal connections to key concepts.
Use a fresh approach to visual images to stimulate interest and engagement.
Encourage input from everyone with brainstorming.

Help students build confidence and self-efficacy

Prepare kids to respond on demand and under pressure.
Learn safe, fun ways for students to show what they know.

…and much more!

Reach students you’ve never reached before.
Facilitate deeper levels of understanding and learning.
Be better equipped to recognize and respond to individual needs and interests.
Collaborate with your colleagues to enhance your learning and teaching effectiveness.
Have more fun with your teaching!

Teachers will know…

…practical methods to build interest with students

…how to motivate the unmotivated

…how to use Storytelling for Project-Based Learning

…how to grab and keep student interest

…how to incorporate fun and divergent ways of learning

…how to develop critical thinking in the student’s approach to learning

…how this can be modified for all kids and communities

…how to become real to their students

…how to use human graphing to get immediate feedback from students

…how to quickly assess how effective their lesson is going

Component 1: Promoting Positive Feelings

We know that students come into our classrooms and schools with different backgrounds and cultures, but their cognitive abilities, assets, and experiences are just as wide ranging. Sometimes the only thing students have in common is their age! When students feel alienated, alone, and unsure about what is going on in school it is difficult for them to be able to adapt to and perform in the classroom. In an age where drama rules the day (check out reality TV!), it is important to remember students will be more ready and willing to learn when they feel positive about their classroom experience. Our strategies set the stage for that to occur.

Component 2: Promoting Attention and Interest

Today, you must compete for student attention. You compete with hundreds of channels available through cable and satellite television. Our phones and tablets stream most of them too! This is not to mention computer games, social media, and everything else available through the internet and cyberspace.

Our kids are overstimulated and our teachers overwhelmed as they endeavor to get their students interested and involved in the curricula. Paradoxically, it is our own lessons that teach students when they can be off-task and when they can minimally participate in class! The notion that fairness and that everyone must participate the very same way often create habits and gaps in student attention in the classroom. The good news is that promoting attention and interest is immediately doable!

Component 3: Promoting Connectedness and Relevance

The worse thing we can do is become Charlie Brown’s teacher! Subject matter that is irrelevant and meaningless (“whaa-whaa-whaa”) is easily ignored as simply…noise. If you are not connected with your students and they feel your subject matter has no relevance in their lives, you will feel as Sisyphus did at the end of every school day. The good news is that we teach you how to end the “myth of the struggle.”

By creating relevant points your students have a chance to attach meaning and value to what you teach which is critical in helping them care about what is being taught and to embrace the knowledge for themselves! Strategies that help students find their voice and explore your subjects are extremely valuable. Synectics, connecting relevant terms through visual and auditory methods, are some of the ways we help our students attach value and meaning to what we teach.

Component 4: Promoting Self Efficacy

The true purpose of an education is to discover how we learn best so that we may continue doing so throughout life. Because of our busy lives and the many extra tasks thrown at us, we as teachers often feel we have to give away the facts instead of having the students earn them. When we struggle yet overcome the obstacle, we become stronger.

The same is true for learning. If we have to think a bit harder and deeper and arrive at the answer, we have earned that knowledge. Our strategies emphasize this simple concept: The student is responsible for the learning and the teacher is the guide to help them discover how to do it. We can never learn for our kids, nor should we, but we can most certainly help them learn to work under pressure and discover how they can truly perform above and beyond our expectations. We will show you how to do this!

Component 5: Sharing Best Practices

By virtue of the physical structure of our educational institutions and the habits they have kept in place for so long, we have become a profession of loners. This is truly a shame since so many teachers are creating magic in their classrooms, yet other teachers struggle with the very same lessons and populations.

Through the use of our matrix, we demonstrate how the individual teacher can share their best efforts and successes with others, as well as entire schools sharing best practices across the grades and subjects they teach. By encouraging each other to share, we will prevent others from reinventing the wheel or suffer through ineffective methods already tried by others. This guided strategy is both powerful and useful as we learn to share successes and celebrate the great learning going on in our classrooms. We are great at helping you to share your best practices.

Student Engagement and Motivation Training Beliefs

All students are different

DI/SEAM is the implementation of strategies to reach multiple learning styles and intelligences.

Students should be taught content in the best way that they learn.

DI/SEAM is for all learners! Big or small, experienced or young, all learners deserve the best opportunity to learn.

DI should be used in every lesson we teach!

In order to be fair to all students we must differentiate their learning and our instruction.

Students have different modalities of learning.

Depth of knowledge is as important as breadth of knowledge.

Students need a reasonable amount of pressure to perform at peak academic levels.

Not all kids learn the same information at the same time or even at the same rate. Not all teachers teach the same and not all curricula can be taught the same. (Robinson, 2008)

Students in Differentiated Instruction classrooms enjoy a number of advantages over those in traditional “one-size fits all” approach settings. Students are able to be active participants in their own learning.

The curriculum is no longer pointed to the middle of the group but available and interactive to all students. Those students that found a traditional classroom lesson too difficult or something they had already learned which led to feeling of being “bored” or “not engaged” are now excited about their learning.

Students receive the content and curriculum in ways that ensure they are engaged. This engagement allows students to connect and learn the content at a deep level of understanding.

Student Engagement and Motivation Benefits for Administrators

Differentiated Instruction allows administrators to know that teachers are deeply covering the standards in their content or grade level so that students have a deep and solid understanding of the material.

Administrators in Differentiated Instruction schools know that each student is a part of an appropriately challenging and rigorous learning environment that will benefit them now and in the future!

Administrators have the tools to support their teachers and focus on instructional leadership!

Student Engagement and Motivation Benefits for Teachers

Teachers “buy-in” because this is not a training full of fads and buzzwords. Teachers are not asked to hear more “theory” and then figure implementation out on their own.

Teachers are always looking for ways to improve their craft and Differentiated Instruction does just that by giving strategies that can be modified for all kids and communities – for all grades levels and curriculum.

Differentiated Instruction is an effective way to reach all students in the classroom and the stress of meeting the high expectations for all students is alleviated. Educator’s energy can be poured into the students they work with.

Differentiated Instruction brings attention and engagement to each and every lesson. Students are actively involved in the content and excited about the learning they are undertaking

Differentiated Instruction strategies promote having a strong understanding of the students that we teach. Understanding our students in their learning styles on the deep level allow for accurate assessing the learning as well as strong relationships between student and teacher.

Differentiated Instruction fosters reflective practice in our lessons, which is an essential aspect of most evaluation systems.

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