Claims

Claim 1: Engagement Increases Achievement

While many people would see this as a no brainer, I think this claim often gets passed up in the classroom as not as important. Not only have there been article after article written about how engagement increase achievement, but I have had the opportunity to see this very theory play out in my classroom. It was amazing to see how the difference of a little playing with curriculum and including more “fun” aspects into a lesson really made a difference in my learners’ educations.

When I first stepped into my classroom, reading or social studies was often done as a step-by-step process. First they would read the story, then answer some questions. After that they would read the story again and answer some more questions. It was the same dreadful routine over and over again and it was clear that the students hated it too. My goal was to take the lessons I was in charge of and make it more “interesting”. Because of increased interest, you could see the excitement in the way they talked and the effort that they put forth in discussions and assignments. It was no longer a thing that they had to check off their to-do list but was something that they were intrinsically motivated about because THEY were interested. I found this same idea included in one of my literature summaries from, Deconstructing Engagement: Rethinking Involvement in Learning.

It is evident in the attached writings about physical and chemical changes that my connected lesson, which included group work and an experiment, made an impact on their learning. Most students would only write one or two sentences usually but because they had learned so much and felt so comfortable with the material they wrote more, which lead me into my next claim.

Claim 2: Visual Aids Increase Engagement

I believe that based on my particular learners in the classroom, visual aids played a large role with increased engagement. Based on the data collected from lessons I observed in the classroom, I thought that based on my learners more visual aids were needed for certain concepts. Not only did these help with the teaching of certain subjects, but it also helped increase interest which lead to increased engagement.

For example, for a social studies lesson I taught about regions the book gave me a step-by-step lesson to do with the kids but I just felt like that was not best for my students. Instead, I put together a slideshow of real life pictures of different regions so that instead of hearing about them, my students could form different visuals about places they may or may not have ever seen. This alone interested them more than just being able to read about certain places that they may have never seen. It allowed them to be creative and for my visual learners, it made more sense for them. This encouraged them to share out their ideas more as well which leads me to last and final claim.

Claim 3: Because of increased engagement, students feel more comfortable to share and participate

This claim works right off my last claim. Because I am focusing much of my claims off of my lessons and especially my connected lesson, I got to see first hand what affected my students positively or negatively. I found that based on the way the content was taught, this affected how the students learned and engaged. For example, with my connected lesson I decided to include different types of learning to support my individual learners in the classroom. This included collaborative group work, visual learning, writing and reading. I feel like this lesson provided many opportunities for students to learn different aspects of that particular content share and apply.

Because of this, there was comfortableness about the content where you could tell that my students truly understood the content I was teaching. This caused them to be bolder with sharing and definitely applying themselves with their final assessment (attached). This caused me to make the claim that because of increased engagement, students feel more comfortable to share and participate.