Don't Confuse Compliancy with Engagement

In many of our classrooms, students appear engaged (to be honest, I would say an incredible 95% of the time); however, to be reflective practicioners we need to take a closer look at what's rote work vs. thinking work.

Student Notetaking - compliant or engaging?
Student Listening - complaint or engaging?
Student Debate - complaint or engaging?


Of the three listed above, how many did you think were engaging and how many were compliant?

As you plan your lessons, know that there will be times when students must comply, when you just have to give information.  However, work to ensure that you are engaging them regularly with that information.  The 10:2 (10 minutes of teacher-directed work to 2 minutes of student-directed work) rule is a good guide to help you in this endeavor.

Students demonstrate their understanding of text features through a game on Kahoot.

Students apply their math knowledge by playing a game...to progress, they must accurately answer the problem.

Students are protons, neutrons, and electons.  Protons and neutrons "steal" electrons to learn about ions. 

In this class, students are engaged in both inquiry-learning and required reading.  They start by physically organizing the features of non-fiction text and end with applying their understanding to leveled non-fiction articles.

What could be more engaging (and exciting!) than frog dissection day?

Students demonstrate understanding of geometric principles as they manipulate parts into a whole.

Students work with partners, counting to twenty by twos in German.  Then, the inner circle of partners rotates so that each student has a new partner for the next engaging task.

Shifting to Learning Goals

In the last week, there have been a couple of emails about helping students set goals, but how often have you been irritated by a student goal that sounds like this, "My goal is to get an A in the class."?  Is that the goal we want for our students, a grade?  Answer:  NO, unless the grade is 100% reflective of the learning.  To be 100% of the learning, then we'd have to fix all 15 of Ken O'Connor's suggestions in our book study, and let's face it...we aren't ready to do that...yet.

Instead, we need to get students focused on setting goals related to learning, but in order for that to happen, we must:

1)  Set clear learning targets.
2)  Engage students with those targets so they can understand and set their own goals.
3)  Build lessons that engage students to learn autonomously so that they feel a sense of control over their learning.

Here are great examples of these 3 steps....

Given their writing rubric, students reflect upon their writing progress, identifying skills they have mastered and skills they need to improve.

Once students have reflected on their work, they are given options for personalized writing goals.  The samples directly correlate to their rubric to ensure alignment to learning targets and student ownership of learning.

Students writing DBQs work with partners to get feedback on their DBQ learning targets that are directly aligned to the rubric.



Students set the goal to eliminate bullying by targeting specific audiences.  They then begin to research and create presentations that can be given to various groups of students.

When we consistently accomplish these, we've built a learning culture where students will never ask, "Do I have to do this?"