All Systems... ENGAGE

    Student Engagement is one of my focuses. I detested the cookie cutter way that teachers worked when I was in school. Worksheets, question and answer, quiz. SNORE.
    I shadowed a few different teachers during my observation time and the best one for engaging his students was a second grade teacher named Mr. Sedgewick. The main thing he did was make things fun. Rather than sitting in awkward silence he would have kids shout out the answer and start picking good points out of the air and writing them down. Worksheets were basically abolished unless it was a team race on the worksheets. The thing that impressed me most was that he would include all the answers he got, even those blatantly wrong, and make them work.
   I have seen kids get discouraged in atmospheres where they get a wrong answer but in this format he was able to make everything work, even wrong answers by pulling some aspect of right out of it. The kids weren't afraid to speak up and they enjoyed participated. It was very refreshing.