"Engaging Students with Poverty in Mind" Chapter 9

As you reflect back on your reading of chapter 9, "Now What? Meeting the Challenge of Implementation" please comment on this post by answering the following questions.  Then, reply to at least one of your colleagues' posts.  I look forward to reading your reflections.

1.  Do you have a consistent plan for engagement, or do you have difficulty finding the time to plan?  What do you do when a strategy does not work well?

2.  What could we do to get the whole staff consistently working to engage every student, every day?

3.  What is the best-case scenario for you, for the rest of the school year, in terms of engagement?  what are your new engagement goals?  What is your mind-set going into this process?  What are your expected outcomes for your students and for yourself?

4.  What were some of your aha moments during your reading of this book?  

"Engaging Students with Poverty in Mind" Chapter 8

As you reflect back on your reading of chapter 8, "How to Automate Engagement," please comment on this post by answering the following questions.  Then, reply to at least one of your colleagues' posts.  I look forward to reading your reflections.

1. To what extent do you use social support to manage student behavior and boost academic progress?  How can you better foster collaboration and cooperation in your class?

2.  Do you currently make time to develop student leadership and teamwork?  If so, do you teach these skills overtly?  What are some new ways you could enhance leadership and teamwork in your classroom?

3.  Name two or three ways you can alter your curriculum to help you automate engagement in your class.

4.  Many teachers already use technology as a way to boost engagement.  What are some ways you can use technology more purposefully as a learning tool?

"Engaging Students with Poverty in Mind" Chapter 7

As you reflect back on your reading of chapter 7, "Engage for Energy and Focus," please comment on this post by answering the following questions.  Then, reply to at least one of your colleagues' posts.  I look forward to reading your reflections.

1.  What are the biggest challenges you face when it comes to eliciting appropriate levels of energy and focus from your students?

2.  This chapter offered several strategies to enhance student focus.  Which ones have you already tried and which fresh ones might you try in your own classroom?

3.  Do you already consistently use music in your teaching?  If so, how well does it work?  After reading this chapter, can you think of some ways to use it more purposefully and effectively?

"Engaging Students with Poverty in Mind" Chapter 6

As you reflect back on your reading of chapter 6, "Engage for Deep Understanding," please comment on this post by answering the following questions.  Then, reply to at least one of your colleagues' posts.  I look forward to reading your reflections.

1.  Is getting students to understand content an issue for you?  If so, what are the typical stumbling blocks you encounter?

2.  Most teachers are great at building students' knowledge of labels ("Let's define a tornado"), but developing their understanding of properties, context and meaning is a greater challenge.  After reading the chapter, what's your understanding of the term properties?  How might you use this concept in your teaching?  Outside of taking students on a field trip, how might you increase their understanding through context and meaning?

3.  The toughest part of building deep understanding is often ensuring that all students are able to transfer the content to their own lives.  How do you currently develop learning transfer in your students?  What might you try to improve your results?

"Engaging Students with Poverty in Mind" Chapter 5

As you reflect back on your reading of chapter 5, "Engage for Motivation and Effort," please comment on this post by answering the following questions.  Then, reply to at least one of your colleagues' posts.  I look forward to reading your reflections.

1.  When you were a student, did you ever work harder for one teacher than for another?  If so, why?  Is it possible to reconcile this kind of discrepancy with the notion that motivation is a fixed entity, and that some students are just "unmotivated"?  How might you increase your own students' motivation?

2.  What does "make it their idea" mean in the teaching process?  Do you already do this, or can you make this approach a viable part of your practice?

3.  Do your students seem to see any risk in raising their hands, contributing to the discussion, or asking questions?  If so, how might you alleviate this perceived risk?

4.  What have you learned about the mind-set of students who simply engage less?  What strategies can you use to build the learner's mind-set in all your students?

"Engaging Students with Poverty in Mind" Chapter 4

As you reflect back on your reading of chapter 4, "Engage to Build Cognitive Capacity," please comment on this post by answering the following questions.  Then, reply to at least one of your colleagues' posts.  I look forward to reading your reflections.

1.  What is your reaction to the admonition "Stop telling kids to pay attention; they already do!"?  What is one or two new ways in which you can try to build sustained student focus this school year?

2.  Some teachers sort and group students by their cognitive capacity.  Do you see capacity as fairly fixed or highly flexible?  What does the evidence tell us?

3.  Which higher-order thinking skills do you think are most important for you to build in your class:  attention, problem solving, critical thinking, working memory, processing speed, or self-control (deferred gratification)?  How would you go about building these skills in students?

"Engaging Students with Poverty in Mind" Chapter 3

As you reflect back on your reading of chapter 3, "Engage for Positive Climate," please comment on this post by answering the following questions.  Then, reply to at least one of your colleagues' posts.  I look forward to reading your reflections.

1.  Does your classroom have a "family atmosphere"?  What are the key ingredients that turn a group of students into a family?
 
2.  If someone used a "positivity clicker" in your classroom, what do you think the results would be?  Would every single student get the 3-to-1 positives-to-negatives ratio needed to optimize growth?  What can you do to improve this ratio?  

"Engaging Students with Poverty in Mind" Chapter 2

As you reflect back on your reading of chapter 2, "The Rules for Engagement," please comment on this post by answering the following questions.  Then, reply to at least one of your colleagues' posts.  I look forward to reading your reflections.

1.  Reflect on any engagement strategy you have used that did not work well.  What do you think went wrong?  Were the problems with the strategy, your implementation of it, the curriculum or classroom context, or your students?  How big a role in a strategy's success do you think you play?

2.  Do you ever have a hard time getting buy-in from your students?  If so, speculate why.  What are some ways you could modify your teaching to increase student buy-in?

3.  Do you and your colleagues build positive relationships with students?  What are some ways you could build stronger relationships with your students?

"Engaging Students with Poverty in Mind" Chapter 1

As you reflect back on your reading of chapter 1, "The Seven Engagement Factors," please comment on this post by answering the following questions.  Then, reply to at least one of your colleagues' posts.  I look forward to reading your reflections.

1.  Do you think this chapter overstates, understates, or accurately states the connection to poverty and achievement?  Why?

2.  Which of the seven factors pose the strongest challenge for you in your classroom?

3.  Do these factors seem impossible to overcome, or can you envision overcoming them?  Explain your reasoning.

It's Been a While...

I had such high hopes for actually keeping up with my teaching through this blog.  That definitely did not happen, but at least I am going to get some use out of it.  I currently am in my 4th semester in the MSA program through Appalachian State University's Distance Education program.  For one of my classes, I focused on at-risk males and completed an action plan that included a book study of Eric Jensen's "Engaging Students With Poverty In Mind: Practical Strategies for Raising Achievement".  Over the next few weeks, I will lead our staff through this book study on the blog as we look to expand our ways of engaging the students that we teach.  Currently we have 54% free and reduced lunch and that number continues to grow.